Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist

by Jennifer Wright

No one in any period of history has ever had as much sex as men thought briefly unchaperoned nineteenth-century women had.

Wealth and celebrity have always had a mesmerizing effect on Americans. In a country where everyone wants to be rich, many refuse to accept that the rich can be bad.

George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, advised followers: “Do not delight in apparel.… [K]eep to your plain fashions, that you may judge the world’s vanity and spirit, in its vain fashions, and show a constant spirit in the truth and plainness.”20

as Walt Whitman wrote in 1858, it was “no uncommon thing for medical attendants to be as coolly and unconcernedly asked to produce an abortion as a dentist would be to draw a tooth.”

In America, the pendulum is always swinging between enlightenment and puritanism, and never rests entirely to one side.