A Miscarriage of Justice: Women's Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil by Cassia Roth (review)

Feminist scholar Cassia Roth's masterful study of infanticide, abortion, and other facets of women's struggles to control their fertility in early twentieth-century Brazil provides key insights for the field of Latin American studies, but also the history of science, technology, and medicine. In addition to gauging the early-1900s role of such key factors as honor, race, eugenics, patriarchy, and the criminal justice and legal systems in making women frequently powerless in their reproductive choices, Roth reveals how the medicalization of women's reproductive health and the rise and professionalization of male-dominated obstetrics meshed with the emergence of the Brazilian nation-state. These developments culminated in the view of women as primarily producers of children and guardians of the family and motherhood during the first, authoritarian, pro-natalist rule of President Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945). Roth interweaves this history with Brazil's efforts to create a public health system.

Analyzing hundreds of primary sources—in particular, health statistics and police and judicial investigations of infanticide, abortion, and other crimes involving reproduction in the federal capital of Rio de Janeiro—A Miscarriage of Justice vividly portrays the complex difficulties and deep suffering women faced in obtaining assistance from a medical system that more often viewed them as potential suspects to be punished rather than patients to be aided. Roth also explores the local networks of individuals outside institutional medicine (such as unlicensed midwives) who sought to assist women in reproductive distress. In this social environment, even miscarriages came under suspicion. Ironically, many of the accused were ultimately acquitted of charges of infanticide or abortion because male-dominated juries, police forces, and judicial systems believed that these women were seeking to preserve their honor (by not becoming single mothers) or had become victims of the providers of illegal services. In other instances, women were absolved because of their alleged "'momentary state of madness'"—which cast them as "helpless, irrational victims" rather than equal citizens capable of making their own decisions (15). The notion of a woman's choice simply did not exist—but, as Roth stresses, women did act to form and run their families as best they could.

Roth's focus on women's reproductive health in one of the world's largest countries is a beacon for further research and reflection on a key social, political, and moral dilemma of the twenty-first century: the global conflict over abortion rights. My own ongoing research on the practice and politics of abortion in Brazil since 1940 will benefit greatly from comparison with data and trends interpreted by Roth, including the clandestine nature of the phenomenon and the resultant highly negative impact on women's health, especially among the poor and individuals of color (see Serbin, "Simmering abortion debate goes public in Brazil," Christian Century, March 8, 1995). Roth traces how Brazil's physicians (and, by extension, the rest of society) assimilated the Catholic Church's doctrine elevating abortion to the level of murder, helping to consolidate in Brazil the idea of life beginning at conception and the primacy of fetal rights over mothers' rights. Roth emphasizes official teachings. Taking a cue from what scholars of both the colonial era and the post-1940 period have learned, future research on reproductive health in early twentieth-century Brazil could tap into ecclesiastical sources to investigate actual relations between clergy, nuns, and lay Catholic faithful on the one hand and women on the other. This angle could provide yet further insight into women's reproductive lives and their own understandings of religious teachings, which Roth has effectively shown to be highly influential.

Roth has done immense work in describing the structure of the practice of abortion, infanticide, and other aspects of women's reproductive lives. As she points out in the Conclusion, recent medical challenges such as the threat of the Zika virus (which can cause congenital...