Carmel’s Cautionary Tale for Post-Roe America
Poet Nora May French’s Account of Her 1907 Abortion Is an Infuriating Read—and a Sobering Reminder of What History Omits
I am no longer able to think of Carmel without thinking of abortion and Nora May French.
For this new habit of mind, I blame two things: the U.S. Supreme Court, and the literary scholar Catherine Prendergast’s searing 2021 masterpiece, The Gilded Edge: Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America.
From visiting Carmel, I had heard all about Carmel’s early 20th-century history as a colony of artists and bohemians. But I had never heard of the poet French, or understood how much the popular history of Carmel left …
