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Letters from Women Pleading for Abortion, Sent in 1917, Mirror Emails Sent Today

In the early 1900s, desperate American women wrote letters to the founder of Planned Parenthood begging for help with unwanted pregnancies. A century later, they're sending eerily similar messages to an international abortion-by-mail service.

"I'm in the family way again, and I'm nearly crazy, for when my husband finds out that I'm going to have another baby, he will beat the life out of me… Please write to me and help me."

"I am in need of help desperately. I am pregnant and cannot have this baby. My husband is very abusive and did it on purpose because I want to leave. I need help… Please help me."

Both of these pleas come from American women—both of them pregnant against their will, with few options, and fearing for their lives and safety. The first was written in 1917 and published in  Birth Control Review, a twentieth-century magazine devoted to extolling the virtues of contraception. The second was written almost a full century later. It's one of countless frantic emails sent by American women to Women on Web, an abortion-by-mail service located in the Netherlands.

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On the surface, the circumstances surrounding these letters seem starkly different: In 1917, abortion and contraception were both illegal, and even sharing information about how to prevent pregnancy was considered a criminal act. In the 100 years that have passed since then, the feminist movement has made huge strides towards sexual and reproductive liberty; birth control was fully legalized in 1972, and abortion followed suit in 1973.

But conservative politicians have worked tirelessly to attack and undermine these rights in recent years—passing legislation that shuttered hundreds of abortion providers throughout the South and Midwest, preventing low-income women from being able to afford abortion care, attempting to make contraception as expensive as possible, and waging constant legislative battle on Planned Parenthood. As a result, the right to choose is a right in name only for many women throughout the US, poor women and women of color in particular.

(This article was originally published on Broadly. Continue reading it here.)