Abstract
Abstract This article examines obstetricians’ professionalization efforts, focusing on the “gradient argument” employed: that those who have jurisdiction over the margins of professional territory should control the entirety. That margin was the birth of “monstrous” infants with atypical bodies, studied under the rubric of teratology. An analysis of 235 teratological articles published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire from 1902–1925 reveals that they enhanced obstetricians’ professional status but ignored health outcomes for mothers and infants. The normalizing, eugenic framework employed by obstetricians had negative implications for people with disabilities, some of which persist today.
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