Proving Pregnancy with Felicity Turner

Felicity Turner, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Georgia Southern University, discusses her book Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America. Professor Turner explores the intersection of law and the emerging medical professionalization in cases of infanticide in the United States. By examining the legal documents, she is able to show how women’s knowledge was invaluable to pregnancy and birth, often called to be expert witnesses at inquests, yet over time women were marginalized by the white male struggle for professional authority. Doctors and lawyers used access and understanding to women’s reproductive processes to solidify expertise. Infanticide allowed white men to extend their authority and access to women’s birthing bodies leading to racialization, biological essentialist, and outright wrong medical and legal knowledge.