Birthing a slave

"In the antebellum South, slaveholders' interest in slave women was matched by physicians who wanted to assert their own professional authority over childbirth, and the two began to work together to increase the number of infants born in the slave quarter. In unprecedented ways, doctors tried to manage the health of enslaved women from puberty through the reproductive years, attempting to foster pregnancy, cure infertility, and resolve gynecological problems, including cancer." "Black women, however, proved an unruly force, distrustful of both the slaveholders and their doctors. With their…