From Salem to Roe v. Wade: When Society Controls Women's Bodies

In 1692, the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, was gripped by a wave of accusations of witchcraft that would become one of the most infamous episodes in American history.

It began when a group of young girls started having strange fits that doctors could not explain. Rather than looking for a medical cause, the community turned to a supernatural explanation: witchcraft.

Over the following months, more than 200 people were formally accused. The court accepted "spectral evidence", meaning testimony that someone's spirit had appeared in a dream or vision, evidence that could never be disproved.

By the end of the trials, twenty people had been executed. Most of them were women who did not fit the community's expectations: widows, the poor, or those simply considered too independent.

Roe v. Wade: A Constitutional Right

Nearly three centuries later, in 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled on a different question about control over women's bodies.

In Roe v. Wade, the Court decided that the constitutional right to privacy extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, effectively legalising it across the entire United States.

For almost fifty years, this ruling stood as one of the most significant protections of reproductive rights in American law, though it remained a deeply contested issue in American politics throughout that time.

Dobbs v. Jackson: Reversing Roe

In June 2022, the Supreme Court reversed course. In its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, it overturned Roe v. Wade entirely.

The decision did not ban abortion nationwide. Instead, it returned the power to regulate abortion to each individual state, resulting in a patchwork of very different laws across the country.

Some states moved quickly to restrict or ban abortion almost completely, while others acted to strengthen legal protections, leaving access to abortion largely dependent on where a woman lives.

Key Vocabulary

bodily autonomy : l'autonomie corporelle
reproductive rights : les droits reproductifs
to overturn a ruling : annuler un arrêt
to be denied a right : se voir refuser un droit
a taboo subject : un sujet tabou
public scrutiny : le regard/contrôle public

Why This Theme Matters

Studying private and public space helps us understand how a society defines the limits of the intimate, and who holds the power to set them.

This chapter explores two facets of this tension: the female body as a political issue, and the mechanics of the witch-hunt, from past to present.

Key takeaways

Salem (1692): twenty executions based on unprovable "spectral evidence", mostly targeting women who did not conform.
Roe v. Wade (1973): established a constitutional right to abortion, in force for almost fifty years.
Dobbs v. Jackson (2022): overturned Roe v. Wade, returning abortion regulation to individual states.

Exercise: Guided Writing Practice: Bodily Autonomy