The deprivations and cruelty of slavery have overshadowed our
understanding of the institution's most human dimension: birth. We
often don't realize that after the United States stopped importing
slaves in 1808, births were more important than ever; slavery and
the southern way of life could continue only through babies born in
bondage.
In the antebellum South, slaveholders' interest in slave women
was matched by physicians struggling to assert their own
professional authority over childbirth, and the two began to work
together to increase the number of infants born in the slave
quarter. In unprecedented ways, doctors tried to manage the health
of enslaved women from puberty through the reproductive years,
attempting to foster pregnancy, cure infertility, and resolve
gynecological problems, including cancer.
Black women, however, proved an unruly force, distrustful of
both the slaveholders and their doctors. With their own healing
traditions, emphasizing the power of roots and herbs and the
critical roles of family and community, enslaved women struggled to
take charge of their own health in a system that did not respect
their social circumstances, customs, or values. "Birthing a Slave"
depicts the competing approaches to reproductive health that
evolved on plantations, as both black women and white men sought to
enhance the health of enslaved mothers--in very different ways and
for entirely different reasons.
"Birthing a Slave" is the first book to focus exclusively on
the health care of enslaved women, and it argues convincingly for
the critical role of reproductive medicine in the slave system of
antebellum America.
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