New Book Alert: In The Hands of Women (A Gilded City Series) by Jane Loeb Rubin; Revealing Historical Fiction About Reproductive Rights Resonates In Modern Day

 

New Book Alert: In The Hands of Women (A Gilded City Series) by Jane Loeb Rubin; Revealing Historical Fiction About Reproductive Rights Resonates In Modern Day

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Some Historical Fiction novels are not necessarily about capturing the time period in which they are set. Well that's important as well. But they are written in response to current events. They show how these struggles started, why they are necessary, why people are still fighting for them, and why those who are against them fear accepting those rights. They remind us how far we have come and what still needs to be done.

It's hard to distance Jane Loeb Rubin’s novel, In The Hands of Women from the current events dealing with the controversies towards granting reproductive rights. It was certainly the nucleus of inspiration or at least a reminder of what was lost, gained, re-lost,and needs to be regained.

In the Hands of Women concerns Dr. Hannah Isaacson, an obstetrician and suffragist in 1900 Baltimore and New York City. This situation is dour as many do not take her seriously. Some midwives are even performing illegal and badly performed abortions which seriously hurt the patients more than help. When a close friend dies in childbirth, Hannah decides to take action. 

Hannah befriends Margaret Sanger, birth control advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood. Hannah joins Sanger on her crusade to provide contraceptives and safe early trimester abortions for patients, in defiance of the restrictive Comstock Laws. Unfortunately, after a patient that she is attending to dies from the results of a botched unsafe abortion, Hannah finds herself on trial for murder and is sent to the notorious Blackwell’s Island Prison.

In the Hands of Women has one foot set in the past and another foot set in the immediate present. The historical details of a female doctor's experience in the early 20th century are well written and researched. However, the themes are timeless and serve as a word of caution, a warning,maybe anger that we were not listening, and hope that we will.

Hannah's story is rich with details about the struggles that women had to go through (and some still do) to become and be taken seriously as doctors. Even though Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States in 1849, that was still a long way from accepting her younger successors into the medical establishment. Hannah is such an example.

Hannah is shoved to the sidelines by her male colleagues and is often mistaken for a nurse or a midwife. Many mock her ambitions and dismiss her medical advice. Even when her advice is proven right, either her colleagues take credit or the patient's husband or father downplay it.  Even Hannah's husband who was at one time supportive of her drive and career turns against her and ignores her when her alliance with Sanger lands her in prison and threatens his reputation.

The patients often have it worse. Many of Hannah’s patients are overlooked by male doctors because “everyone has babies.” Hannah isn't always called in unless the situation is dire and by then it is often too late.

Some of the patients are teenage or younger aged girls who have been raped. Some have trouble giving birth having difficult labors that could kill them. Patients have had one too many children and really don't want another one but their husbands insist and some have had miscarriages or stillbirths that are treated like abortions.

Because of the bad treatment from many of the medical professionals, these women often turn to herbalists and midwives who have had very little training, don't always know what they are doing, and are careless when it comes to saving lives. 

The book is filled with bloody surgeries, last minute life saving techniques, and terrified patients on their deathbeds or reduced to victims of PTSD because of the medical treatment. In one chapter, a woman undergoes a torturous abortion only to have a nervous breakdown and be institutionalized (and the mental health treatment is not any better so it is a certainty that she will continue to suffer). It is easy to see why Hannah wants to change things and while she and Sanger work to provide better reproductive care for women, why such a situation takes a long time to improve potentially not in Hannah's lifetime and certainly late into Sanger’s. When the entire  establishment is at fault, change can take several generations.

While this is a book about the past, it is also a call to action for the present. Even now women's reproductive rights are threatened as Roe V. Wade was overturned in several states (though the recent election has resulted in potential changes in that). Many businesses and individuals question paying for contraceptives, wanting to end not only the means to terminate a pregnancy but the means to prevent it in the first place. Planned Parenthoods are forced to charge for services, threatened by demonstrators, and even forcibly shut down so cis and trans women can't always get the proper inexpensive health care that they need. The bad old days from In The Hands of Women are unfortunately not far behind us and could be in the immediate future if we are not vigilant.

In The Hands of Women is less of a historical fiction novel than it is simultaneously a savage look over what happened in the past when reproductive rights weren't granted and a warning of the potential dark future that could happen if they are denied once more.