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b'Abortion wasn\'t always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Obstetrics was a new field, and they wanted it to be their domain\\u2014meaning, the domain of men and medicine. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state, spreading a potent cloud of moral righteousness and racial panic that one historian later called "the physicians\' crusade." And so began the century of criminalization.

In the first episode of a two-part series, we\'re telling the story of that century: how doctors put themselves at the center of legal battles over abortion, first to criminalize \\u2014 and then to legalize.

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