Throughout history, culture, events and even geography have affected several aspects in which a piece of literature is written, and therefore also how it should be read/interpreted. By reading any random writing within the past several hundred years, one can make educated deductions of when, where and why the work was created. In “Hills Like White Elephants” written by Ernest Hemingway you can see a girl weighing pro and cons on whether she will undergo an abortion or not. To better understand the girl’s concern about her situation surrounding abortion you must study the historical contexts that formed the author’s arguments and story. This is important because current rules on abortion as we know, are different from those once applied in the past. Abortion was seen as witchcraft and was strictly illegal. They were also more hazardous than they are today.

The text was written in 1927, when there was no legal way to execute an abortion, and women had to "flee" to the larger cities to find people who ran the illegal practice of abortion.  The two of them were on their way to Madrid, the capital where she could undergo the surgery, even though it was illegally practiced. This action determines our speculation that she is about to have an abortion, because such illegal abortions often took place in the urban areas, where more people had access to this if desired. As Peter L. Hays writes, "One must remember that the setting for the story is Catholic, conservative Spain of the 1920s: abortions are illegal, condemned by the church, difficult to obtain, and dangerous" (56-57).

Hemingway wont tell us directly in the text that the girl is pregnant and the reason why she is waiting for a train to Madrid, is to undergo an abortion. We must understand this by digging deeper into how abortions were performed in the 1920s.  As David Henry’s article, “Abortion in Europe 1920-90” states;

“Techniques for dilating the cervix to pass instruments into the uterus had remained unchanged for more than two and half millennia (Ricci, 1949) before Simpson, an Edinburgh surgeon, in 1863 introduced anesthesia to midwifery and lectured students on the use of syringe attached to a small-diameter cannula inserted into the uterine cavity to induce menstruation (Simpson, 1863) “ 

Simpson’s technique of vacuum aspiration was rediscovered in 1927, and the reader must recognize that the text was written in this time.

The American lies to the girl, who is called Jig, on page 528. He says; “It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig. It's not really an operation at all. It's just to let the air in.”  This “operation” he is talking about, and the operation described above, did far more often before, than now, demand the woman's life. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, we experienced 50 times more deaths of women as a result of abortion during the 1920s than in and after 1973. So what happened in 1973?

In Washington, January 22, 1973 it was decided in the Supreme Court that it is a woman’s choice to decide whether she will have an abortion during the first six weeks of pregnancy. (Hereby referred to as Roe vs. Wade) This was a historic decision because abortions were banned, unless the mother or child's life was in grave danger, in the United States before this. It was adopted with 7 votes against 2, meaning that the abortion laws in 46 states were overruled. Pregnancy got divided into three periods, and the new law said that the deeper into pregnancy a woman came, the more control the government has over the woman's "private life." Initially (during the first 6 months) it is the woman now by statute free to choose for themselves, whether she will have an abortion or not.

Before this law passed, abortions were illegal and performed in heinous ways. Blood transfusions were carried out using non-sterile instruments, which often led to infections, and serious consequences for both mother and child. Today, according to Faundes and Hardy’s article: "Illegal abortion: consequences for women's health and the health care system." illegal abortion is responsible for up to half of maternal deaths and consumes a large proportion of health resources in many developing countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America. This is a reflection of how it was in Europe 100 years back in time. (Faundes, 1997)

The fact that this operation was not as clean as the American “thought” and expressed to the girl, is a good example of the gender roles in Spain during the 1920s.  It also shows the power the “American man” had over uneducated women in the post war period in Europe. Prior to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), it was wrong for women to vote or to do other masculine things. Women were considered biologically unfit to have a role in society outside of the family and they were expected to be child-bearers only. The duty of the wife was to be good to both her husband and children. Before the law that provided free and secular education to all people, including women came in 1931, the majority of the women were uneducated and unsophisticated people, with less knowledge en therefore also less power then men. In “Hills Like White Elephants” we get that feeling throughout the whole story. At first, the whole situation and conversation between the American and the young girl seem absurd, and it is difficult to understand what is happening. The American man constantly treats, the young woman nicely as we expect a man to do, yet we do not get a feeling that the young woman feels well treated by him. Even though she doesn’t seem angry on him, she keeps on asking him to shut up and talk about something else, several times. The girl says: “Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?” (Hemingway 530) and when he doesn’t listen she goes on saying: “ I’ll scream if you don’t” This tells us a story of a girl who is tired of her “boyfriend’s” opinions all the time, and makes it clear that she want to make a decision independent from his thoughts. She has probably not decided whether she wants to undergo an abortion or not, but one thing is certain. She will not let the man affect her choice anymore.

“Hills Like White Elephants” was written in a time when women were still subordinate to men. Meaning that girlfriends and wives should do what they were told. This text represents, this part of the history through the American’s desires. It is pretty clear what the American wants. He is a typical Hemingway character. Ernest Hemingway’s literary characters were actually often strong male individualists. He urges her to undergo the abortion, because he doesn’t want the child for whatever reason. You can tell by the way his maneuvers and by the way he is acting and talking that this is an educated man, with more knowledge than the girl. This is stated by the simple fact that the American knows how Anis del Toro’s (the drink they order) taste, while the girl on the other side has never heard about it before. The fact that the girl tries to stand up for her own thoughts and meaning, represent the other part of the historical context. “During the 1920s and 30s the core issue for most sexual reformers was divorce.  In Madrid, a number of social movements converged to produce agitation in favor of permitting divorce. Groups promoting feminism, prostitution reform, sex education, mental health, and eugenics all had interests in this area”. (Glick, 2003)

By paying attention to the first six phrases and especially the first to sentences, which describe the landscape and the climate around the protagonists, the reader can get further explanation about the gender roles exposed and expressed in this piece.  “The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun.” (527) The girl went on to describe the nature as white elephants to the American. In the story about Buddah, a white elephant is connected to knowledge and fertility, which is most interesting in this case, where the American represents knowledge, and the girl represents fertility. This goes back to the typical gender roles on that time again, where the man should be the powerful and wise figure in the relationship, while the woman was supposed to give birth to a child/give her man a child and continue the family name for generations to come.

Part of the reason that the story is difficult to understand at first glance is because people's actions are irrational in relation to how "parents" should and would have acted today.  People had not developed common sense regarding health and nutrition related to pregnancy by the time the characters lived. It was not until the late 1970s, the research showed the effects of drinking alcohol during pregnancy.  The results from the research indicated that both moderate and high levels of alcohol intake during early pregnancy may result in alterations of growth and morphogenesis in the fetus.(Hanson, 1978) While the two of them are waiting for the train, that is going to take them to Madrid to come, they order not just one, but two and three beers to themselves. It tells the reader one of two things. Either the woman is so unsophisticated that she does not understand that drinking alcohol during pregnancy is a bad idea, or they lived in a period of time when research, which says that alcohol has negative effects on a pregnancy, did not exist. 

The historical context played a huge part in the girl’s concerns about whether she would have an abortion or not. Considering how the thoughts around abortion were back then, and how they have changed during the last centuries on can understand that. Going from being illegal and dangerous, to becoming legal and practiced in safer and more professional circumstances. The main message of the amendment (Wade vs. Roe) was that women had the right to decide over their own privacy to a much greater extent than before. Neither the father nor the authorities should be entitled to make the decision for you. Although Wade vs. Roe was about abortion laws in the United States; it may also be relevant in this text. It was prohibited abortion in Spain until this enactment, but this law was seen as a cornerstone for the legalization of abortion in other countries as well. Spain included, according to Peir, Rosana’s research, “Does the liberalization of abortion laws increase the number of abortions?” after abortion was legalized in Spain in 1984. This is an important message, and you can draw lines message in "Hills Like White Elephants," where the American in a polite and proper, yet fussy way trying to persuade the woman to have an abortion. He keeps on telling her that they’ll be fine afterward. Just like it was before, and he insists that they’ll be al right and happy. But is that really true, even though abortions legally executed nowadays? The question about abortion has always done, does now, and is still going to raise ethical and moral questions that cannot be answered or decided by a Supreme Court. Because abortion is a matter of much more than that.
