Abortion practices in North America can be traced back to 1600, with different indigenous communities using varied methods like black root and cedar root as abortifacient agents.

The procedure was socially acceptable from 1776 until the mid-1800s, after which states started passing strong waves of anti-abortion laws.

Here are some excerpts adressing misconceptions about the history of abortions from ‘Scarlet Letters: Getting the History of Abortion and Contraception Right’ by Ranana Dine, published by the Center for American Progress:

“To many people, the facts about abortion’s legality in early America can be surprising. This is partly thanks to the American imagination, which paints the Puritans—the first English settlers on American soil to focus on creating communities and families—as strict, foreboding people, incapable of joy or laughter, let alone sexual pleasure. This popular perception is drawn partly from books such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which portrays Puritan society as deeply religious, dark, and unforgiving...

Colonial women procured prequickening abortions mainly with the help of other women in their communities; skilled midwives knew which herbs could cause a woman to abort, and early American medical books even gave instructions for ‘suppressing the courses,’ or inducing an abortion...

Acceptance of early-term abortion changed during the 19th century as Victorian sensibilities took hold. By 1910 abortion—except in cases to save the mother’s life—was a criminal procedure in every state except Kentucky, where the courts declared the procedure to be judicially illegal. The new restrictions on abortion were caused by many factors, including changing social, class, and family dynamics in the early 19th century...

During the mid-19th century, American physicians also began to battle ‘irregular’ doctors, such as homeopaths and midwives, in an attempt to assert the authority and legitimacy of male-dominated scientific medicine. To tackle these irregular doctors, the ‘scientific’ physicians attacked legal abortion because it was midwives and other ‘unscientific’ medical practitioners who safely performed the procedure. White men were also concerned by shifting ethnic and racial dynamics in the United States, worrying that the low birthrate of the white upper class would lead to racial inferiors and ‘un-American immigrants’ overrunning the country.”