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Abstract

This essay recontextualizes United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s views on abortion within a broader system of early modern (c. 1450-1700) reproductive knowledge. By focusing on printed medical texts as well as manuscript books that offer recipes for medicines to treat reproductive issues, the essay contends that Alito’s Majority Opinion, which relies on the legal scholar Sir Matthew Hale in the case of Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaves out a breadth of voices, specifically those of women. Manuscript recipe books for medicinal treatments demonstrate women’s limited but essential control over their own health and well-being. The bodily autonomy demonstrated by these texts has important implications for reproductive care, including abortion. The existence of these manuscript books implies that many early modern women had access to medical recipes that gave them a measure of control over their reproductive health. The manuscript evidence suggests a different attitude towards reproductive care than that identified in Hale’s print record. This key difference between print and manuscript sources allows for a more nuanced view of the time period and illustrates the need for the comparative use of print and manuscript sources in both scholarly, activist, and legal work.

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