“The last safe abortion,” a new installation at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, brings together archival and new photographs of Midwest health clinics, centering imagery of workplace camaraderie and intergenerational care.
The Social Order
From the time of the Roman Empire until well after the discovery of the tuberculosis bacterium in 1882, many of the best medical minds believed that miasmas invisible vapors emitted from the earth caused killer infections such as typhus, diphtheria, and malaria. Though the bacteriological revolution of the late nineteenth century routed that theory, a new miasma theory has lately sprung up in schools of public health, holding that racism and sexism, though as unmeasurable as the ancient miasmas, cause AIDS, cancer, drug addiction, and heart disease. Indeed, according to public health professors, living in America is acutely hazardous to women and minorities, so shot through is the United States with sickness-producing even fatal injustice and bigotry.