| On Tuesday, voters in Ohio delivered a resounding victory for abortion rights, affirming—by a wide margin—a ballot measure that will enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The result is the latest fallout from last year’s Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and indicates that reproductive freedom will be a galvanizing force in the 2024 election. But abortion, whether legal or not, will take place as long as there are unwanted pregnancies, just as it always has. In the decades surrounding the Civil War, an English immigrant to New York City gained local fame—and notoriety—by providing countless secret abortions under the name Madam Restell, earning a fortune along the way. Ann Trow, a former maid, would eventually buy herself one of the most luxurious mansions on Fifth Avenue, a four-story brownstone with frescoed ceilings and stables. From a side street, Trow’s patients entered a door marked “Office,” then received “preventive powders”—or, in some cases, surgical intervention. In 1941, The New Yorker revisited the career and legal troubles of the abortionist. “Nobody can now guess how many patients Madam Restell received in her forty years of practice,” the writer observed, adding that she became known as “the wickedest woman in New York.” Yet it is safe to assume that, in the estimation of many of her patients, she was far from wicked, and more akin to a savior. | 
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