1800s or 2000s: The Quiz
1800s or 2000s: The Quiz
What century are we even in anymore?
This is just the quiz. If you want to read the story of how I gave this quiz to women who “didn’t care either way about abortion”, click below.
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Is it the 1800s or the 2000s? We don’t want to go back.
Women have fought so hard for more rights, yet at every step there are men trying to bring us back. In America, our reproductive rights are in trouble. The following quotes, bills or situations are either from today’s Republicans, or from the 1800s. It’s hard to tell the difference. Can you?
In some of these I changed a few words, without changing the meaning, but only if the grammar or word choices were going to give away which century it was from.
You can choose 1800s, 2000s, all 1800s or all 2000s.
All but one of my 1800’s quotes are from an 1867 book by Dr. Edwin Hale because it was just so full of atrocities I didn’t need quotes from anyone else.
Many of my current quotes, bills or situations come from Idaho or Missouri. This is because I created the quiz specifically to give to women from those states. You can find out why by reading “Know Your Century” linked above.
Do you know your century? The answers will be linked at the end.
1.
A) Abortion “lessens the population of a state or country, to an appalling degree. The ratio of births over deaths of all kinds, is rapidly decreasing. Only among the foreign population are the births increasing. At this rate, if the ratio of total deaths over birth goes on increasing, it will not be long before the Americans left on American soil, will be few and far between.”
B) Abortion is bad because it causes states to have less population. It causes “injuries from the loss of fetal life and potential births, leading to a resulting reduction in the actual or potential population of each state.”
2.
A) “Pregnancy is not a disease”
B) “Pregnancy is a natural condition”
3.
A) “A young woman falls victim to the false promises of a man. She loses her virginity. A pregnancy follows and she is left alone with her great shame.” She gets an abortion.
B) Abortion is “depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers.” This is bad because “a loss of potential population causes further injuries,” like “diminishment of political representation and loss of federal funds.”
4.
A) Doctors do abortions in the “ninth month.” They “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day.”
B) Women are having abortions “in the last month [of pregnancy] much more frequently than even in the first or second.”
5.
A) A bill passed in which an adult who helps a minor get an abortion will face two to five years in prison, and the minor’s parents and siblings can sue, as can the person who impregnated the minor and children of the minor. Even in cases of rape, someone who helps a minor obtain an abortion can be charged.
B) “Shouldn’t the father, husband, relative or friend be punished in some manner, for keeping the abortion hidden from the authorities? Shouldn’t the doctor or nurse also be punished?”
6.
A) People want abortion legal “so that kids can get abortions. [So that] a 1 year old could get an abortion.”
B) A woman who has an ectopic pregnancy (a nonviable pregnancy that will not result in the birth of a child but could kill the mother) should be imprisoned a minimum of 10 years.
7.
A) “If you want to go after the rapist, let’s give him the death penalty. Absolutely, let’s do it, but not the innocent person caught in-between that, by God’s grace, may even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity.”
B) “Even the best doctors can’t look at a victim of rape without feeling sympathy. That they have performed abortions is not surprising, but doctors need to remember ‘thou shalt not kill,’ is as binding here as elsewhere.”
8.
A) “I would hope that when a woman goes into a physician, with a rape issue, that that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage, or was it truly caused by a rape."
B) We should “issue [doctor’s] licenses” based on “proof of moral standing.” Only doctors that won’t perform abortions should be allowed.
9.
A) Pro-choice advocates support abortion after birth. “The baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”
B) “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down.”
10.
A)“In natural, healthy childbirth, there is little or no actual pain. Painless relaxation and childbirth, with no suffering, is a perfectly normal labor. Abortion, on the other hand, always causes a great amount of suffering.”
B) A staggering increase of 56% of maternal deaths, women dying from their pregnancies, was reported.
11.
A) A bill is signed that will allow private parties to sue abortion providers after 6 weeks of pregnancy.
B) “The doctor who neglects to notify the partners of the probability of miscarriage”who “allows the miscarriage to occur, becomes, to a certain extent, a criminal and should be punished.”
12.
A) “I know women who chose to keep the baby and are very satisfied with their child of rape.”
B) “You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.”
13.
A) All the criminals in cases of abortion should be prosecuted and the law doesn’t need to “require it to be proved that the death of the child was intended.”
B) A bill was filed that would treat fetuses as human beings, which would allow criminal charged to be filed, including charges of murder and manslaughter, against anyone who gets an abortion, helps someone get an abortion or provides abortion care.
14.
A) A woman was forced to carry her dead fetus for two weeks after a miscarriage when doctors feared they would be prosecuted.
B) “A perfectly humane law, framed for the purpose of preventing the destruction of the unborn child, should be so framed as to prohibit marriage in certain cases, and also to make it obligatory on the part of the husband and wife to prevent conception [or else face punishment.]”
C) Maternal death rates in areas where abortion is restricted are 62% higher than states with abortion access.
D) A woman who miscarried in her home was arrested.
E) A woman was at risk of losing her uterus while carrying a non-viable fetus, but doctors still couldn’t help her because they feared they would be prosecuted.
15.
A) An 1873 act against the mailing of obscene matter could be used against the mailing of anything that produces an abortion even where abortion is permitted.
(Yes there is only one.)
16.
A) States should track “comparisons between live births and abortion.” They would be forced to report “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”
B) The menstrual periods of patients at a medical center were kept track of by the health department without the patients’ knowledge.
C) We should have a “board of registration and examination in every county and large city of the United States” to monitor that abortion is not happening.
17.
A) If a woman has an abortion “from the date of conception to the end of the third month” she should be punished with “not less than seven years.”
B) It should be up to the states whether to prosecute women for abortions or whether to monitor women’s pregnancies.
18.
This one is slightly different. Which of these quotes is from Donald Trump?
A) “A life for a life.” Abortion should be punished by death.
B) The woman should be punished if she has more than one abortion. Doctors should be imprisoned.
C) “After the first abortion, women should be sterilized so no more babies can be conceived and murdered.”
D) “There has to be some form of punishment [for abortion]” for women. “I have not determined what the punishment would be.” The guy that gets her pregnant should not be punished.
E) “Murder is murder. Punishment should fit the crime.” “Death Penalty.”
F) We should imprison doctors and Planned Parenthood’s top executives should be given the death penalty.
Answers
1.
A: 1800s B: 2000s
B is from a suit filed by the Attorney Generals of Missouri, Idaho and Kansas against the FDA over the abortion drug mifepristone. Essentially they are upset over the FDA’s elimination of the requirement for in-person administration of mifepristone, physician supervision, and patient follow-up. Women can travel from states where abortion is illegal to receive the pills and then bring them back to their home to take them. They are also being sent in the mail to women who need them in states where abortion is illegal. One of the reasons they are upset is because if women in their states get abortion, their states lose that potential population.
2.
A: 2000s B: 1800s
A is from the same suit as above. “Pregnancy is not a disease.” These women shouldn’t want to end their pregnancy. Women were born to make babies. They should be pregnant. Girls too, were born to make babies…
3.
A: 1800s B: 2000s
B is again from the same suit as above. The attorney generals specifically said that the loss of teen mothers is hurting their states.
4.
A: 2000s B: 1800s
A is a very incorrect recent quote from Donald Trump.
5.
A: 2000s B: 1800s
A is a bill Idaho’s Governor Brad Little signed in 2023.
6.
A: 2000s B: 2000s
Both of these are from Missouri. A is Missouri State Senator Bill Eigel in 2024 and B is the gist of a section of a bill (HB 2810) that Missouri State Representative Brian Setz introduced in 2022.
7.
A: 2000s B:1800s
A is State Senator Rick Bratton in 2024. He said a baby might be just what a woman needs to recover from rape.
8.
A: 2000s B: 1800s
A is Idaho State Senator Chuck Winder. Apparently he felt rape victims hadn’t gone through enough and they needed to be harassed by their doctors on if maybe, maybe did they actually want it.
9.
A: 2000s B: 2000s
A is a recent quote from Donald Trump on how he thinks people are giving birth to viable infants, killing them, and calling that abortion. B was Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin in 2012.
10.
A: 1800s B: 2000s
B is a statistic of Texas after their abortion ban in 2021. The rate of women who died from their pregnancy increased by 56%.
11.
A: 2000s B: 1800s
A is from 2022’s SB1309, a bounty-hunting bill signed by Idaho Governor Brad Little.
12.
A: 2000s B: 2000s
A was Republican Lupe Diaz in 2022 and B was Rush Limbaugh in 2013.
13.
A: 1800s B: 2000s
B is the Abolition of Abortion in Missouri Act by Senator Mike Moon. Since it’s really difficult to tell whether the situation was a miscarriage or an abortion, if we treat all fetuses as human beings, we could criminalize miscarriages.
14.
A: 2000s B: 1800s C: 2000s D: 2000s E: 2000s
A was Texas resident Marlena Still, but she’s not alone in having that happen. C is a statistic on maternal death rates in states with abortion restrictions versus states that allow abortion. D is Brittany Watts of Ohio who was arrested after she miscarried into the toilet. She had already sought the help of doctors who told her that her water broke and her pregnancy was non-viable. She was charged with mutilation of a corpse. After outrage, the charges against her were dropped. E is Kate Cox of Texas, but again her story has happened to other women. Many doctors in states where abortion is illegal fear providing medical care because they could be prosecuted.
15.
A: 1800s and 2000s
The 1873 Comstock Act could still be used today. Trump recently said he wouldn’t enforce it, but many Republicans are upset over that stance. Project 2025 calls for enforcing the Comstock Act. JD Vance signed a letter demanding the DOJ enforce the act to stop abortion medication from being mailed. The punishment under the Comstock Act is either a fine, a sentence of up to 5 years for a first offense, a sentence of up to 10 years for any offenses after, or a combination of jail and a fine.
16.
A: 2000s B: 2000s C: 1800s
A is from Project 2025. B happened in Missouri in 2019. Dr. Randall Williams testified that he directed others to compile a list of patients’ last menstrual periods.
17.
A: 1800s B: 2000s
B is another quote from Trump.
18.
D: Donald Trump
He later walked back this and said it wasn’t what he meant, but only after backlash. He flips back and forth so much that what he says is meaningless. The best thing to do is look at the views of those he aligns himself with and those that support him. The other quotes are all from MAGA Republicans, his supporters. I asked them if women should be punished for abortion and those quotes are what they said. That’s his base. In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time before Trump says that out loud too.
26% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, pregnancy loss before the 20th week. 1 in 160 pregnancies end in stillbirths, pregnancy loss after 20 weeks. It’s difficult to tell whether a pregnancy ended in a miscarriage or an intentional abortion. Even if you would never get an abortion, if you can get pregnant, you are not safe. Your friends and family are not safe.
Harris has her flaws, but she has promised to fight for women’s reproductive rights. If Trump wins, we get what his supporters want. He will have control to remove even more of women’s reproductive freedoms. Voting pro-choice doesn’t mean you have to want abortion, or that you would have one, it just means you don’t want the lives of women put in danger.
Is it the 1800s or 2000s? We don’t want to go back.
I also gave this quiz to 6 women who said they were moderates who didn’t care one way or the other about abortion. Find out here if I was able to change anyone’s mind.
You can find my sources linked in that post.
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There was a time that I used to claim not to care about politics. I was young and ignorant. But issues like this one have absolutely changed my mind, especially now that I have daughters of my own. I just hope it's not too late to change things for the better. I'll be voting this November.