FYS The Fifties

In the novel Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, there are an unlimited amount of controversial topics. From suicide to incest, from abuse to religious intolerance, but perhaps the most controversial topic was abortion. Selena’s story of abortion included incest, which only added to the scandal of the situation. Selena was raped by her stepfather (although Metalious adds that in the original publication Selena was raped by her father), and became pregnant. She ran to the town doctor, Doc Swain, and explained her situation. At this time, abortion was frowned upon, and made both the patient and the look bad in the eyes of society, even though society was hardly ever aware of the true situation. Doc Swain internally struggled with the idea of performing an abortion. He struggled mostly with his own previous idea that there is “nothing dearer than life (Metalious 143). He also had to consider Selena’s life, and how his decision would impart her life as much as it would the baby. After two drinks of hard liquor, the doctor finally made the most scandalous decision of his life; he would perform the abortion.

Selena was one of the lucky ones of the time. She was able to have a clean abortion performed in a hospital setting. Most girls were not so lucky. It is never explained in the book, but when Betty Anderson becomes pregnant by Rodney Harrington, she is not met with the same fortune as Selena. She is sent off to “live with her aunt,” which back then was an excuse used to placate society even though they knew exactly where she was going and why. Many girls, like Betty, had to find clinics (which were illegal) to help them. These clinics were not always friendly, nor were cheap. One woman of the 1950’s recalls her experience as a negative one: “the doctors whom I asked for an abortion treated me with contempt, their attitudes ranging from hostile to insulting. One said to me, “You tramps like to break the rules, but when you get caught you all come crawling for help in the same way.”” Just by reading this one woman’s story, one has basically heard all of them. Even the people who were supposedly helping the women in need were extremely judgmental.

Most times these clinics were unsanitary, as they had no regulations to follow. This caused the deaths of many women, either due to the procedure itself or an infection they contract afterwards. Although doctors performed many of the procedures, a great deal of women simply could not afford it. These women resorted to either performing the abortion themselves, which rarely ended in success, or they sought the assistance of unqualified individuals. It was society’s fault that these women died, as they were not provided with a fair choice. The only choice they had was which abortionist would be the least likely to kill them, and most of the time the woman’s economic stability made that choice for them. Because of society’s judgmental ways, women of the 1950’s died when they did not have to. But what was worse, death by abortion or social suicide?

Here is a link to a book review of the book When Abortion Was A Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in United States, 1867-1973. I thought this was important because the book covers the time period of the 1950’s and the utter disapproval of abortion of that time. It explains how this disapproval affected the health and lives of women and teens across the country.

— Allie D.