Marcia Biederman's Blog, page 2

My two op-eds marking the pub date of “Emma Gill” & the anniversary of Roe

Today is the publication date of “The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill,” which, sadly, would have marked the 51st birthday of Roe v Wade had it not been overturned. To note the occasion, I wrote two op-eds—for the Daily News in New York and the Connecticut Mirror. More here, soon, but in the meantime, you can read the op-eds by heading to:

New York Daily News:

When Americans shrugged at criminal abortion

CT Mirror:

When abortion was a crime in Connecticut

My book picks on Shepherd.com

The day before the launch of my newest title, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, marked 51 years since Roe v. Wade guaranteed all Americans the constitutional right to an abortion. Explaining why the US Supreme Court overturned Roe in its 2022 Dobbs decision, Justice Alito falsely wrote that the right to abortion is not rooted in American history or traditions. Shepherd.com, a readers’ website that’s a great alternative to Goodreads, invited me to assemble these book recommendations, which prove Alito wrong. You can find the list and my notes on each book here on the Shepherd site.

I’m excited about the upcoming launch of my book at P&T Knitwear, a terrific independent bookstore on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The event is a benefit for The Brigid Alliance, which brings people from states with abortion bans over long distances to New York for abortion care. Get your tickets here, or just head over to P&T.

My op-ed in the Hartford Courant

As we approach the release date of my next book, “The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill,” I ask Hollywood to update its abortion scripts.

November 24, 2023

By MARCIA BIEDERMAN.  Marcia Biederman is the author of a forthcoming nonfiction book, “The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill,” to be released by Chicago Review Press in January 2024 and available for pre-order NOW via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.

What does the Republican Party have in common with its arch-nemesis, Hollywood? Both are woefully out of step with the widespread support of abortion rights demonstrated in Ohio and elsewhere in recent elections.

With Hollywood poised to go back to work after the settlement of the writers’ and actors’ strikes, studios should join the GOP in taking stock.

In 1972, television viewers watched a controversial two-part episode of “Maude,” in which a 47-year-old grandmother ended her surprise pregnancy with an abortion — legal in New York, where the character lived, but mostly criminal elsewhere.

Two months later, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade. But under Roe, overturned last year, few movie or TV shows matched Maude’s chutzpah In the late 1990s. The word “abortion” was banned from scripts on at least one network soap opera. The 2007 hit movies “Knocked Up” and “Juno” dismissed abortion as a choice for characters confronted with unplanned pregnancies.

Yet, in the late 19th century, when abortion was strictly illegal in every state, many American newspapers wrote frankly about it. Defending a Yale-educated doctor charged with procuring an abortion on a New Haven woman, the doctor’s lawyer said in 1883 that “there was not a father in New Haven who would not be willing that an abortion should be performed on his daughter to save her from shame and trouble and that he would have no difficulty in finding physicians to perform the operation.”

Fifteen years later, New Haven was dubbed a “hotbed of abortion” at a city hearing on the licensing of Gertrude Vaughan, a boarding house operator seeking to move her establishment closer to Yale, near faculty homes and the headquarters of a collegiate secret society.

Vaughan’s facility was widely known to be a brothel that also provided post-abortion care. Her loudest opponent was the New Haven chapter of the Law & Order League, whose objections to the lax enforcement of Connecticut abortion laws had put several abortion practitioners behind bars.

Among them was Dr. Henry Gill, the alias of a former Massachusetts shoe salesman, Henry Guilford. In Massachusetts he’d been tried for procuring abortions on two women, one of whom had died in the care of his wife, Nancy Alice Guilford. Nancy was sentenced to 6 1/2 years, and Henry was banished from the Bay State. Covering their trial, the Daily Evening Item of Lynn avoided sensationalism.

The same couldn’t be said of the New York journalists who descended on Bridgeport in September of 1898, when the dismembered body of a young woman was found under a bridge. A medical examination found the woman had had an abortion, dying from a consequent infection. Suspicion immediately fell on Nancy Guilford, who’d joined Henry in Connecticut after her release from a Massachusetts prison.

To tie the death to Nancy, police needed an identification of the victim. With fingerprint identification not yet available, an appeal went out to the public. The woman’s severed head went into a glass-topped bucket and was put on display.

For days, hundreds of adults and children filed past this spectacle. No one recognized the face looking up through the glass. However, mailbags full of tips poured into the police station. There seemed to be no one in Connecticut without a wife, neighbor or daughter who’d been absent for a while and who, the tipsters thought, would have likely sought an abortion.

The dead woman was finally identified as Emma Gill of Southington, but not before Bridgeport authorities released the body to the wrong family (whose daughter returned to stop her own funeral) and allowed Nancy Guilford to flee to London, where Scotland Yard found her. A grand jury indicted her for second-degree murder and President McKinley ordered her extradition.

As Guilford’s ship landed in New York, she was swarmed by the big-city press, eager to revive memories of the mutilated body. But in Bridgeport, the shock had subsided, and the mood had changed.

A New Haven paper wrote of Bridgeport, “There is a wishy-washy sentiment that is surrounding ‘Dr.’ Nancy Guilford … with a halo of glory.” A Boston paper echoed with complaints about a local “circle of sympathy.”

Guilford pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years. A local paper speculated that most people in Connecticut thought she “simply was unfortunate in getting caught in an unlawful act which is being repeated weekly in every city in this state.”

That was written in 1898. Get with it, Hollywood.

Marcia Biederman is the author of a forthcoming nonfiction book, “The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill,” to be released by Chicago Review Press in January 2024.

Dr. Betty Hayes Memorial Highway sign unveiled in PA

The new sign on Route 255 is green, and my writer friends are green with envy.

It isn’t every day that a nonfiction author sees a state road named for the hero of her book, but that’s what happened to me on Labor Day 2023. I was honored to be invited to the dedication of the Dr. Betty Hayes Memorial Highway, where I shared the stage with state Rep. Mike Armanini and former Elk County Commissioner Christine Gavazzi, who made this happen.

Inviting me to the ceremony, Rep. Armanini was gracious enough to mention the title of my book. He wrote, “Dr. Betty Hayes was ‘A Mighty Force’ who devoted years of her life to fight against inhumane conditions of the mining town she called home. She fought for the vulnerable miners and patients in Force and the surrounding Bennetts Valley area.”

The ceremony was held in north-central Pennsylvania’s beautiful Bennett’s Valley, nestled in the Alleghenies. The dedication was part of a joyous Bennett’s Valley Labor Day and Homecoming celebration. This is an annual event, held for decades but suspended for the past two years because of the pandemic. Hundreds of families came for the food trucks, the nickel toss, and the chance to see friends.

As the state representative said in his remarks, if it hadn’t been for Hayes’s efforts to find a safe new source of drinking water for the miners’ families, some people attending the event might never have existed. Fearing a typhoid outbreak from the contaminated water, Hayes led the miners in a five-month walkout. Lives were at stake.

It was a thrill to see several of Hayes’s relatives there, including some that had helped me with my research for the book or the subsequent “Overlooked No More” delayed obituary of Hayes, which appeared in the New York Times on April 1, 2022.

As I told the crowd, what Hayes fought for, above all, was a spirit of “genuine community” —something the miners couldn’t enjoy while they were forced to live in horribly unsanitary conditions. How happy she would have been to see the Bennett’s Valley celebration.

Courier-Express, DuBois, PA

PA road to be named for the hero of A Mighty Force

The Pennsylvania state legislature has named a stretch of state road “The Dr. Betty Hayes Memorial Highway” in honor of the subject of my 2021 biography, A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health.

I was thrilled to get an invitation to the Labor Day dedication ceremony. I’ll be back in Force, PA, where in 1945, “Dr. Betty” led 350 coal miners on a strike that forced Shawmut Mining to clean up its filthy company towns. Because Shawmut had failed to make improvements for thirty years, outhouses were leaking into wells that were the only source of drinking water for the miners and their families. Fearing a typhoid outbreak, Elizabeth Hayes quit her job as the company doctor and organized a work stoppage with the community’s full support.

I look forward to returning to Bennett’s Valley in the north-central part of the state, where three local historical societies and area history enthusiasts have been so helpful and supportive. It’s always exciting for me to meet people who had heard of Dr. Betty from their grandparents or great-grandparents—and even some who were delivered by her!

Kirkus Praises My Forthcoming Title!

I was delighted to read the pre-publication review of The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, to be released in January 2024! Almost a year to go before publication, but this is heartening. The reviewer clearly understood how this story sheds light on “the extensive harm caused by regulating women’s bodies.” Another gratifying excerpt from the review: “The narrative unfolds like a high-stakes crime novel.”

The review was posted on the Kirkus website.

My next book, soon to be available for pre-order: A story of Victorian New England and its thriving underground abortion scene

I’m thrilled to unveil the cover of my next book, forthcoming in January 2024. It will soon be available now for pre-order via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

In 1898, a group of schoolboys in Bridgeport, Connecticut discovered gruesome packages under a bridge holding the dismembered remains of a young woman.

Finding that the dead woman had just undergone an abortion, prosecutors raced to establish her identity and fix blame for her death. Suspicion fell on Nancy Guilford, half of a married pair of “doctors” well known to police throughout New England.

A fascinated public followed the suspect’s flight from justice, as many rooted for the fugitive. The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill takes a close look not only at the Guilfords, but also at the cultural shifts and societal compacts that allowed their practice to flourish while abortion was both illegal and unregulated.

Focusing on the women at the heart of the story—both victim and perpetrator—Biederman reexamines this slice of history through a feminist lens and reminds us of the very real lives at stake when a woman’s body and choices are controlled by others.

My next book, available for pre-order: A story of Victorian New England and its thriving underground abortion scene

I’m thrilled to unveil the cover of my next book, forthcoming in July 2023. It’s available now for pre-order via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

In 1898, a group of schoolboys in Bridgeport, Connecticut discovered gruesome packages under a bridge holding the dismembered remains of a young woman.

Finding that the dead woman had just undergone an abortion, prosecutors raced to establish her identity and fix blame for her death. Suspicion fell on Nancy Guilford, half of a married pair of “doctors” well known to police throughout New England.

A fascinated public followed the suspect’s flight from justice, as many rooted for the fugitive. The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill takes a close look not only at the Guilfords, but also at the cultural shifts and societal compacts that allowed their practice to flourish while abortion was both illegal and unregulated.

Focusing on the women at the heart of the story—both victim and perpetrator—Biederman reexamines this slice of history through a feminist lens and reminds us of the very real lives at stake when a woman’s body and choices are controlled by others.

PA lawmakers push for a “Dr. Betty Hayes Memorial Highway”

I just discovered that some Pennsylvania state assembly members have introduced a bill to name a stretch of Pennsylvania road the “Dr. Betty Hayes Memorial Highway,” in honor of the subject of my 2021 book, A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health.

The bill, drafted in July 2022, was referred to the Pennsylvania House’s transportation committee. If enacted, this would be a fitting tribute to Hayes, who for years fought for the improvement of living conditions in north-central Pennsylvania’s Bennett’s Valley. The section of Route 255 proposed for the naming runs through the area, where Hayes drove over unpaved roads in all kinds of weather to see her patients.

The idea for the highway naming originated at a May meeting of the Elk County Board of Commissioners. As Marilyn Secco reported in the DuBois Courier Express, “

“Former Elk County Commissioner Christine Gavazzi . . . addressed the commissioners, asking that a letter be drafted to state Rep. Michael Armanini seeking approval of a Highway Memorial Sign on State Route 255 in honor of Force native Dr. Betty Hayes.

Gavazzi referenced the book, A Mighty Force by Marcia Biederman. The book details the work of Hayes beginning in 1942 after her father’s death when she took over his practice and served as company doctor for the miners working for the Shawmut Mining Company. She fought tirelessly for improved living and working conditions for the people of Force and Byrnedale. There was no sanitary sewage system, and raw sewage ran through ditches. Water was contaminated by outdoor privies and the owner of the towns, Shawmut Mining Company, refused to remedy the situation. Dr. Betty attracted national attention and eventually won her fight to improve living conditions in these mining towns.

The commissioners agreed that the recognition of Dr. Betty Hayes’ accomplishments by placing a sign along Route 255 was appropriate. Commissioner Matthew Quesenberry read the letter drafted by the commissioners that will be sent to Armanini in support of the sign.”

If any action is taken on the measure, I’ll post updates.

“Dr. Betty” gets long-overdue NY Times obit!

How thrilling for me to return from a book tour in Elizabeth Hayes’s native north-central PA to find that the New York Times has featured Hayes in its “Overlooked No More” obituary series. Luckily, Bill Kunkle, a relative of Hayes, had given me some incredible family photos of her I’d never before seen. I was able to pass these along to the Times when they asked for pictures.

Many thanks to writer Steve Greenhouse, who did such a terrific job capturing Hayes’s essence, and to the people who laid out the page with the great photos.