She is the author of Adam and Eve in the Protestant Reformation.
Crowther applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Policing Pregnant Bodies: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America, and reported the following:
If you open to page 99 of my book, you will see a picture of a naked woman covered in hair and a Black child. This image [below, left] comes from the 1702 edition of a book called Aristotle’s Masterpiece. First published in 1684, Aristotle’s Masterpiece was a hugely popular guide to sex and reproduction that remained in print until the 1930s. Despite the title, it is neither by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE), nor derived from his writings. Historian Mary Fissell described it as “a mash-up of earlier works on midwifery and natural philosophy.” The hairy woman and the Black baby illustrate the concept of maternal imagination, the notion that if a woman looks at something striking or unexpected at the moment she conceives, or while she is pregnant, that impression will mark the fetus in some way. The hairy woman is hairy, according to the text, because her mother looked at a picture of John the Baptist wearing animal skins while she was having sex. The resulting baby was a girl covered in fur. The Black child refers to an apocryphal story about the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. When a white princess, married to a white prince, gave birth to a Black baby, she faced accusations of adultery. Hippocrates exonerated her of these charges by explaining that the princess had a picture of a “Moor” on her bedroom wall, and that she had seen this picture while having sexLearn more about Policing Pregnant Bodies at the Johns Hopkins University Press.with her husband. The impression of the dark-skinned Moor was imprinted on the baby. By the time the hairy woman and the Black baby made their appearance in Aristotle’s Masterpiece, their stories were well-established in medical literature, along with many other similar accounts.
The Page 99 Test works very well for my book, because the picture of the hairy woman and the Black baby encapsulates a central theme; for centuries people have believed that the greatest threats to fetal life and well-being come from their mothers. By “people,” I mean physicians, scientists, philosophers, politicians, moralists, and the general public. For centuries, the most common explanation of congenital deformities and disabilities was maternal imagination. Cleft lips, once called “harelips,” were caused when a pregnant woman was startled by a rabbit. Babies could be born resembling monkeys or frogs or some other animal their mother saw or touched or encountered while pregnant. Unsatisfied cravings could also imprint themselves on fetuses. If a pregnant woman craved a certain kind of food and could not get it, her baby might be born with birthmarks in the shape of this food.
And maternal imagination was only one way that pregnant women harmed the fetuses they carried. In the second century CE, the Roman physician Soranus claimed that the fetus could be harmed if the mother ate the wrong kind of foods, ate too much or too little food, got drunk, had sex, got angry, sneezed too hard, went dancing, carried heavy weights, or fell. For two thousand years, medical opinion has held that women are irrational and emotional, and as such, poor caretakers of fetuses. From the ancient Greeks to the 21st century, physicians have dictated regimes of diet and exercise to pregnant women and advised them to avoid stressful or unpleasant situations. And they have blamed women for poor pregnancy outcomes.
The belief that fetuses need protection from the people that carry them is deeply rooted in our culture and continues to inform law and policy. Even before the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision on June 24, 2022, many states had begun to criminalize miscarriage and to punish pregnant people harshly for drug and alcohol addiction. And yet, if we really want to improve the alarming rates of infant and maternal mortality in this country, and foster the health and well-being of fetuses (and babies), we should not focus on policing women. Instead, we should work to ensure that all pregnant people have access to medical care, healthy food, clean water, safe housing, and supportive communities.
--Marshal Zeringue
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