For millennia, across cultures and continents, those receiving abortion care and those providing it have been persecuted, criminalized, and even accused of witchcraft — regardless of practicing the craft or not. In her upcoming book Reproductive Rites, journalist Sophie Saint Thomas untangles the joined histories of witches and reproductive rights throughout history.
Noting the populations most affected by persecution in reproductive healthcare in the US, including Native Americans, enslaved Black people, and trans people, Reproductive Rites provides further context to the history of the abortion and reproductive healthcare climate in the present day after the end of Roe V. Wade.
Ahead of the book’s release on October 15, Teen Vogue spoke with Sophie Saint Thomas, to learn more about her research and what she learned about reproductive care and its ties to witchcraft along the way.
Edited for clarity and length.
Teen Vogue: From the time of the pharaohs to Donald Trump, society has had a conflicted relationship with reproductive rights. What are some commonalities between the ways abortion was restricted in ancient history, and today?
Sophie Saint Thomas: What’s most interesting to me is how, mirroring the modern-day reproductive justice movement, is the way that the ancients looked at abortion the same way they did pregnancy. In ancient Egypt, people went to the Nile to give offerings to the Gods asking for help in procuring and terminating a pregnancy. Correctly so, both of those desires fell under the same umbrella. The reproductive rights movement, which gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly focused on the right not to have children, but through the reproductive justice movement, a term coined by Black activists including Loretta J. Ross in 1994, we return to both the right to not have children and the right to parent with dignity.
Teen Vogue: Particularly drawing from colonial America, how has the modern witchcraft movement continued to draw from white supremacist and colonialist influences to further marginalize Black and Indigenous spiritual (and reproductive health) practices?
Sophie Saint Thomas: In my research, I particularly became struck by modern “witches’” obsession with the Salem Witch Trials. Many sources declare these the “deadliest witch hunt in North American history,” but that is incorrect. Nineteen people were executed during the Salem Witch Trials, and a few more died during torture or in prison. Comparatively, around the same time … Indigenous and enslaved Americans were being killed for being witches, and I don't mean that in the metaphorical definition of a witch. Colonists looked at their spiritual practices, called them witches, and executed them, and yet everyone still obsesses over Salem, I assume, because it was white Puritans dying. Salem is only interesting to me because I believe it to be completely the product of fear, in particular, largely fear of being attacked by neighboring Indigenous tribes. If anything, Salem most closely mirrors the Satanic panic that occurred in the 1980s, also as the result of hysterical parents and manipulated children.
Yet another example is the burning of sage. We hear that it’s cultural appropriation, but it’s so much worse than that. It was illegal for Indigenous people to burn it in America until 1978. We talk a lot about how awful it is to impose one’s religion on another, and it is, and our society 100 percent did that to Indigenous cultures, but it’s equally evil to take away one's spiritual practices.
I went to a very dark place at times while writing this book, learning all of this, and it completely changed how I identify with the word “witch.” It's not a term I use to describe myself anymore, and I gave this book my everything because, professionally, I will be moving away from writing non-fiction occult books after this one. Within that space, I look forward to reading titles from my friend Marisol Vibración, who was kind enough to let me interview her for this book.
Teen Vogue: Who is one figure in history whose role in providing reproductive care surprised you the most? Why?
Sophie Saint Thomas: Pat Maginnis (1928-2021), the “Che Guevara” of abortion reformers, is pretty fascinating and will appeal to those who prefer their abortion activists a little more punk. She performed two out of her three abortions herself. Maginnis and her “Army of Three” taught classes on female anatomy, how to find abortion doctors, and how to protect yourself from the police, largely in the 1960s, and stood out from other abortion activists for their desire to work around the system rather than conform to it. Shoutout to Jex Blackmore, a modern-day abortion activist, for continuing to keep abortion punk.
Teen Vogue: What can reproductive healthcare providers, midwives, or those seeking abortion care learn from figures and dynamics with power structures in the past? What lessons are there that are relevant to impart on future generations (or modern day young folks)?
Sophie Saint Thomas: When I got to the end of this book, I confronted the fact that, as a white married woman in New York City who’s not living in poverty, abortion will always be accessible to me. My needs are not radical. It is marginalized genders, races, and those in states with limited or no abortion access who can’t afford to travel or fear the persecution still associated with getting medical abortions (the abortion pill) by mail who are forced into parenthood. But everything is connected, and reproductive injustice is systemic.
As a result, the final chapter of Reproductive Rites largely focuses on the importance of helping trans people access reproductive health care, as we live in a world where we’re not only not being educated about this, but through laws like the Don’t Say Gay bills, it’s actively legislated away. In my opinion, today, the most evil and active witch hunt is the one against trans women, although such violence is certainly not new, just look at what happened during the colonization era to Two-Spirits. Although when speaking to the modern era, the medical misinformation being propagated on the message boards of QAnon also deserves a shoutout and is also covered extensively in the final chapter. We can break away from the cycles of the past by focusing on fact and daring to treat people like humans.
Reproductive Rites is available for preorder now and will be available for purchase on October 15.
