As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

I found a number of interesting claims in a Washington Post article written in May of 2022 by Gillian Brockell. She addresses some of the historical material the Dobbs majority discusses in the decision.

About Matthew Hale:

“At least seven times, Alito cited Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist who didn’t think marital rape was possible because wives were the property of their husbands, and who sentenced at least two women to die for witchcraft.”

About Henry de Bracton:

“Alito also cited a legal text from 1250 by Henry de Bracton that, in another section, says women are inferior to men, and that they sometimes give birth to literal monsters.”

About abortion as a common and well-known practice:

“In the Revolutionary War era and the decades after, most homes would have had a medical manual like William Buchan’s ‘Domestic Medicine’ or Samuel K. Jennings’s ‘The Married Woman’s Best Friend,’ according to James C. Mohr in ‘Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy.’ These books included recipes for concoctions that could induce menses that had been “blocked” or “suppressed” — a common way to refer to early pregnancy. One gave advice specifically for young women who had “what you call a common cold” (emphasis in original), before listing plant extracts believed to induce abortion. Another advised that if the concoctions didn’t work, one could try ‘violent exercise … jumping or stepping from an eminence, strokes on the belly, [and] falls’.”

The Mohr book looks like it would be particularly useful.

About early views of the fetus:

“Unlike many antiabortion activists today, most religious and legal scholars at the time did not think ‘ensoulment’ began at the moment of conception but at the time of ‘quickening’ — when a pregnant person can feel fetal movement, generally between 16 and 22 weeks. The vast majority of Alito’s historical references concern cases of abortion after the fetus was ‘quick.’ He took pains to point out the few times his sources don’t mention it, but this isn’t necessarily evidence the people involved thought abortion before quickening was also wrong or a crime. Back then, a woman was simply not considered to be ‘carrying [a] child’ before quickening, according to British historian Kate Lister.”

Kate Lister looks to be another name to remember.

And there are four interesting paragraphs about the case of Eleanor Beare, which I think is fascinating and was the subject I was searching for when I found this article. Here’s a point that I made in my post about her (but Gillian Brockell wrote this more than a year before I recorded my babble):

“But a read of Alito’s source for this quote, a contemporaneous trial summary in Gentleman’s Magazine, reveals that the judge was talking about more than just abortion. Beare was tried on three charges and convicted of two: giving a man poison for the express purpose of killing his wife, and ending the pregnancy of a servant who was raped in her home by inserting an iron skewer into the woman’s uterus.”

And Brockell makes a point I didn’t, because she actually did research for her article:

“The exact timeline is unclear, but the servant implied in her testimony the abortion may have taken place at least 14 weeks after the rape (by current measures, this would have made her at least 16 weeks pregnant), so it is clearly possible the abortion happened after quickening. She also implied that the last time she saw Beare, an associate of Beare’s may have tried to poison her.”

There’s also an interesting passage about the beginnings of anti-abortion laws in the United States:

“England passed its first law officially banning post-quickening abortion in 1800. The United States didn’t follow until 1821, when the Connecticut legislature banned giving a noxious substance to a woman ‘quick with child.’ This was in the wake of a sex scandal involving a controversial preacher and a young woman he allegedly impregnated. The pastor gave her ‘poison’ and, when that didn’t work, inserted ‘a tool’ inside of her. She later delivered a stillborn child.”

This is a really useful article, and it points the way for a lot more research if or when it becomes necessary.