In the novel Nick we read about how Ella, a French woman Nick becomes involved with, gets pregnant and forces a miscarriage. When Nick is tending to the sick Ella, he realizes that she had taken many pills in order to have an abortion.
Abortion laws in the early 20th century were all over the place, depending on where you lived. In 1920, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the first European country to legalize abortion, and by 1925, most abortions in Moscow were done in hospitals. Other Soviet republics followed, making abortion more accessible and safer compared to the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. and U.K., abortion was still illegal and risky. By 1910, abortion was banned in the U.S., partly because white male politicians wanted upper-class white women to have more children. In England, abortion was also criminalized, and by 1929, the Infant Life (Preservation) Act reinforced those restrictions. That didn’t stop women from trying. There was an estimated 100,000 abortions in England in 1914 were attempted using drugs, such as Ella did in Nick.
Without safe medical options, people turned to some pretty dangerous DIY methods. In Welsh mining towns, women used candles (originally meant for Roman Catholic ceremonies) to dilate their cervix. Others tried glass rods, curling irons, knives, and even sitting over pots of steam. Abortion was actually more dangerous than childbirth until the 1930s, but medical advancements, like suction-aspiration, slowly made it safer.
The 1910s and 1920s show how restrictive laws didn’t stop abortion, but they just made it more dangerous.