This article examines the debate among physicians over abortion, from the turn of the nineteenth century through to the 1930s, especially in the Academia Nacional de Medicina (National Academy of Medicine). Considered a crime, abortion was seen as something that threatened the dominance of husbands over wives and the control over medical practice in relation to the female body. Midwives, seen as the propagators of the techniques of medical termination of pregnancy, were opposed as a serious threat to the established gender order. Ten theses of the Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro were analyzed, as well as the bulletins of the Academia Nacional de Medicina and articles published in the Correio da Manhã and O Globo newspapers.
abortion; crime; body; midwives; domination