The Trials of Madame Restell: 19th-Century America's Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime
Madame Restell (1811-1878) was the most famous abortion provider and female physician in nineteenth-century America, so much so that "Restellism" became a synonym for abortion. Nicholas Syrett, author of The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America's Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime (2023), reflects on Restell's life, placing it alongside the history of the criminalization of abortion in the United States.