A Miscarriage of Justice

Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil

Cassia Roth

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781503611320, 9781503610477
• eBook ISBN: 9781503611337
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

A Miscarriage of Justice examines women's reproductive health in relation to legal and medical policy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the onset of republicanism in 1889, women's reproductive capabilities—their ability to conceive and raise future citizens and laborers—became critical to the expansion of the new Brazilian state. Analyzing court cases, law, medical writings, and health data, Cassia Roth argues that the state's approach to women's health in the early twentieth century focused on criminalizing fertility control without improving services or outcomes for women. Ultimately, the increasingly interventionist state fostered a culture of condemnation around poor women's reproduction that extended beyond elite discourses into the popular imagination.

By tracing how legal thought and medical knowledge became cemented into law and clinical practice, how obstetricians, public health officials, and legal practitioners approached fertility control, and how women experienced and negotiated their reproductive lives, A Miscarriage of Justice provides a new way of interpreting the intertwined histories of gender, race, reproduction, and the state—and shows how these questions continue to reverberate in debates over reproductive rights and women's health in Brazil today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Currency, Spelling, and Translation
• Introduction
• 1 The Law of Responsibility, the Medicine of Gender, the Science of Race
• 2 Constructing Motherhood: Obstetricians, Politicians, and the Creation of a Reproductive Healthcare System
• 3 Birthing Life and Death: Childbirth, Stillbirth, and Maternal Mortality
• 4 A “Plague of Criminal Abortions”: Fertility Control and the Consolidation of Medical Authority
• 5 Ouviu Dizer (Heard Said): Rumor, Sex, and Race in the Republican Capital
• 6 Policing Pregnancy: Statecraft, Poverty, and Reproductive Health
• 7 Prosecuting Honor, Defending Madness: Abortion and Infanticide in the Courts
• Conclusion
• Notes on Sources
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Appendix F
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index