Sonja Czekalski
 Feminist Artist

Guilty by Association: On Witchcraft and Women’s Health

 

Over the last few years, I have used my work as a diary to advocate and protest for a woman's right to bodily autonomy. In Guilty By Association: On Witchcraft And Women's Health I use garments, sculptures, and collected artifacts to explore the whispered herstory of women’s health, the erasure of generational knowledge, and the sacred space made by these shared experiences. The works in this exhibition are explicitly about abortion, birth control, menstrual cycles, mental health, and the overall ignorance of women’s symptomatic experiences. This exhibition demonstrates the systemic repression and restriction of access and education to women’s healthcare, leading to the current women's healthcare crisis in the United States. This exhibition is heavily inspired by the texts Drink Me and Abort Your Baby: The Herbal Abortion Tea by Maya Lewis, Witches Midwives and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Madame Restell: America’s Most Hated Abortionist by Jennifer Wright, and Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Sylvia Frederici.

 

In a tale as old as time, during a period of social uprising, a phenomenon occurs that counteracts progressive culture by using fear to  weaponize marginalized groups and instill traditional Christian values. In 15th century Europe, the fear of heresy inspired The Malleus Maleficarum, also known as The Hammer of Witches. The text explained the unexplainable taboo of the rise of women’s empowerment and sexuality claiming that women’s sexual autonomy and control over their reproductive experiences, translated to an intrinsic lust for the devil. In essence, heretics became women, and women became witches; inspiring the conspiracy  responsible for  the murder of  hundreds of thousands of women across Europe. 

 

A few hundred years later, in the early half of the 19th century, the contemporary practice of gynecology was invented by the exploitation of enslaved women in the United States. Based on the Christian ideology that a woman’s suffering is deserved due to Eve’s original sin, the inhumane medical experiments were practiced on their bodies without consent or anesthetic. Around the same time, The American Medical Association came to fruition. The association created propaganda campaigns to antagonize midwives, nurses, and abortionists to  attack their competing medical accreditation. Women healthcare workers were deemed  witches and targeted for their wickedness against patriarchal structures. In time, this campaign made it illegal for any person to practice healthcare without a proper education from an accredited institution, omitting most women and all persons of color from obtaining the right to practice in the medical field. By 1910, a national abortion ban came into effect, and 95% of medical practitioners were white males. The phenomenon of the witch and the witch hunt is ingrained into our cultural consciousness. It continues today, reflecting in laws such as Texas Health and Safety Code SB 8, “ to allow a private right of action for any citizen… to bring a civil claim against anyone who aids or abets in the performance or inducement of an abortion.” The lack of study in women’s health from the professional practice of researchers and educators coupled with a lack of sexual education in public schools, further instills these dangerous beliefs and misinformation.

 

For the past century, the Pro Choice movement has been fighting for the right to medically supervised abortions from trained healthcare professionals. For most, this is the obvious and safest Plan A, for Plan B. But during the nearly 50 years of Roe, we failed generations of women. The protection of the constitution was taken for granted and the right to choose a holistic path was, again, deemed dangerous witchcraft. So, what happens now that the threat to our reproductive freedom came true? 

To quote Sylvia Frederici “the witch-hunt destroyed a world of female practice, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the foundation of women’s power.” Born into devious heretical bodies, women are guilty by association to an inherited patriarchal culture with a war on women’s autonomy. My work aims to reclaim and demystify the stigma of  women’s health as witchcraft and create a culture that promotes accurate and accessible information for future generations. Guilty By Association: On Witchcraft And Women's Health shares some of these collective experiences as they have evolved through generations of women, demonstrating the legacy of women’s resiliency and determination for equality.