1. Alfred Kinsey in Mary Steichen Calderone, ed., Abortion in the United States: A Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. at Arden House and the New York Academy of Medicine (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), 40. [BACK]

2. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom, rev. ed. (1984; Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 100-116. For college participation rates, see Kenneth A. Simon and W. Vance Grant, Digest of Educational Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972), 77, table 103; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial ed., part 1 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), Series H 602-617, p. 380. [BACK]

3. Women's labor-force participation transformed in the 1950s and 1960s. More women entered the labor force, remained after marriage, and returned

after childbearing. Alice Kessler-Harris reports, "A third of all women worked in 1950—only half of them full time. By 1975, nearly half worked, more than 70% at full-time jobs." Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University, Press, 1982), 300-303; quotation on 301. [BACK]

4. Julie A. Matthaei, An Economic History of Women in America: Women's Work, the Sexual Division of Labor, and the Development of Capitalism (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), 133-136, 224-227; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, 1984), 63, 100-101, 148, 196-197. [BACK]

5. Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade (New York: Routledge, 1992), 109-110. [BACK]

6. Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie , 103-186; Regina G. Kunzel, "White Neurosis, Black Pathology: Constructing Out-of-Wedlock Pregnancy in the Wartime and Postwar United States," in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 , edited by Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 306-308; Morris J. Vogel, "The Rise and Fall of Homes for Unwed Mothers" (paper presented at the Columbia University Seminar on American Civilization, New York, March 18, 1982). [BACK]

7. Patricia G. Miller, The Worst of Times (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 173; Ellen Messer and Kathryn E. May, Back Rooms: Voices from the Illegal Abortion Era (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 31-62. [BACK]

8. Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice , chaps. 3, 7-8. [BACK]

9. Rose S., [pseud.], to Leslie Reagan, October 3, 1987. [BACK]

10. Letter to NARAL from "North Suburban" Illinois, August 4, 1985, Illinois File, Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Washington, D.C. These letters were made available to me without names. Instead, the area or zip code and date, if included, identifies the letters. [BACK]

11. Dr. Sophia J. Kleegman in Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 37, 113. I have calculated the averagc price for a Chicago abortion in the 1950s from four articles on abortions between 195o and 1956, Abortionists Files, HHFC. Morton Sontheimer et al., "A Report on Abortion from Nine American Cities," Woman's Home Companion 82 (October 1955): 45, 96. [BACK]

12. Letter to NARAL from Chicago zip code 6064-0, May 6, 1985, Illinois File, Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Washington, D.C. [BACK]

13. John Bartlow Martin, "Abortion," Saturday Evening Post 234 (May 20, 1961): 21. [BACK]

14. "The Abortion Menace," Ebony 6 (January 1951): 21-26. The series of photos on p. 24. purporting to show an illegal abortion are probably staged. See also "The Abortion Racket—What Should Be Done?" Newsweek 56 (August, 15, 1960): 50; Martin, ''Abortion," 19, 21. [BACK]

15. Two collections of oral histories are Messer and May, Back Rooms; Miller, The Worst of Times . The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) solicited letters telling of women's abortion histories during its "Silent No More Campaign" in 1985 and kindly allowed me to read their files. [BACK]

16. Miller, The Worst of Times , 34., 245; Letter from Madison, WI to NARAL, April 19, 1985, Silent No More Campaign, Wisconsin File, NARAL,

Washington D.C. See also "3 Are Seized in Midtown Hotel as Members of Abortion Ring," NYT, January 26, 1969, p. 44. [BACK]

17. Letter to NARAL from Chicago zip code 60640, May 6, 1985; Letter to NARAL from Detroit, April 30, 1985, Michigan File, Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Washington, D.C. [BACK]

18. Miller finds that black women in this period seemed to talk about and locate abortionists with greater ease than did white women. Miller, The Worst of Times , 4-5, 110-114. [BACK]

19. Letter to NARAL from Milwaukee, April 24, 1985, Wisconsin File; Letter to President Regan [ sic ] from Chicago, zip code 60639, Chicago File; both letters are in Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Washington, D.C. Miller, The Worst of Times , 62. [BACK]

20. Letter to President Reagan from "Jane Roe," Peoria, IL, zip code 61603, April 17, 1985; Letter to NARAL from Rochelle, IL, zip code 61068, November 25, 1985. Both letters are in Illinois File, Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Washington, D.C. [BACK]

21. Miller, The Worst of Times , 274-280; Martin, "Abortion," 52; Jerome E. Bates and Edward S. Zawadzki, Criminal Abortion: A Study in Medical Sociol ogy (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1964.), 124. [BACK]

22. Arthur J. Mandy, "Reflections of a Gynecologist," in Abortion in America: Medical, Psychiatric, Legal, Anthropological, and Religious Considerations , edited by Harold Rosen (1954.; reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 289. See also comments of Dr. Howard C. Taylor Jr. in Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 108. [BACK]

23. For example, see Rickie Solinger, "'A Complete Disaster': Abortion and the Politics of Hospital Abortion Committees, 1950- 1970," Feminist Studies 19 (summer 1993): 241-259. [BACK]

24. "Pregnancy and Contracted Pelvis," JAMA 38 (February 8, 1902): 433; R. Finley Gayle Jr., "The Psychiatric Consideration of Abortion," Southern Medicine and Surgery 91 (April 1929): 251-254. [BACK]

25. Christopher Tietze, "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City, 1943-1947," AJOG 60 (July 1950): 149; Edwin M. Gold et al., "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City: A 20-Year Review," American Journal of Public Health (hereafter cited as AJPH ) 55 (July 1965): 969. [BACK]

26. Psychiatric indications accounted for 43 percent of all therapeutic abortions. I have calculated this percentage from the data provided in the article. Robert E. Hall, "Therapeutic abortion, sterilization, and contraception," AJOG 91 (February 15, 1965): 520-521, table 2. [BACK]

27. Some of the indications for abortion that had been the most frequent in the 1940s—heart disease, fibroids, toxemia of pregnancy, and tuberculosis—almost completely disappeared as indications by the end of the 1950s. Alan F. Guttmacher, "The Shrinking Non-Psychiatric Indications for Therapeutic Abortion," in Rosen, Abortion in America , 12-20; David C. Wilson, "The Abortion Problem in the General Hospital," in Rosen, Abortion in America , 191-193; Gold et al., ''Therapeutic Abortions in New York City," 969, table 8. On the status of psychiatry, see Gerald N. Grob, From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 273. [BACK]

28. For example, Miriam C., 1970 letter, box 3, Women's National Abortion Action Coalition Papers, Historical Society of the State of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. [BACK]

29. Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher in Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 139; Nancy Howell Lee, The Search for an Abortionist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 89-90. [BACK]

30. Oral interview by author with Dr. Jack R. [pseud.], November 1987. [BACK]

31. Miller, The Worst of Times , 37-38. [BACK]

32. I calculated the proportion of unmarried patients from data presented in table 4, p. 1141 in Kenneth R. Niswander, Morton Klein, and Clyde L. Randall, "Changing Attitudes toward Therapeutic Abortion," JAMA 1 96 (June 27, 1966): 1141-1143, quotation on 1142-1143. [BACK]

33. Comment of Dr. Lawrence C. Kolb in Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 141-142, and see Dr. Robert W. Laidlaw on 138-139. [BACK]

34. However, Lidz favored liberalization of the law. Theodore Lidz, "Reflections of a Psychiatrist," in Rosen, Abortion in America , 277. See also Sidney Bolter, "The Psychiatrist's Role in Therapeutic Abortion: The Unwitting Accomplice," American Journal of Psychiatry 119 (October 1962): 313; Harold Rosen, "A Case Study in Social Hypocrisy," in Rosen, Abortion in America , 306. [BACK]

35. Bolter, "The Psychiatrist's Role in Therapeutic Abortion," 314, 312, 314-315. See also Robert B. McGraw, "Legal Aspects of Termination of Pregnancy on Psychiatric Grounds," New York State Journal of Medicine 56 (May 15, 1956): 1605-1607. [BACK]

36. By 1963, 87.5 percent of the therapeutic abortions performed in Buffalo hospitals had been induced for psychiatric indications. Niswander, Klein, and Randall, "Changing Attitudes toward Therapeutic Abortion," 1141. [BACK]

37. Guttmacher, "The Shrinking Non-Psychiatric Indications for Therapeutic Abortion," 20-21; Gold et al., "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City," 969. For a small debate on this indication, see "Questions and Answers. Pregnancy and Rubella," JAMA 166 (February 22, 1958): 991-992. [BACK]

38. "Abortion: Mercy—or Murder? Newsweek 60 (August 13, 1962): 54; "Abortion Possible for Thalidomide Takers," Science Newsletter 82 (August 18, 1962 ): 99. Not everyone supported abortion for these reasons, but many did; see Sherri Finkbine, as told to Joseph Stocker, "The Baby We Didn't Dare to Have," Redbook 120 (January 1963): 102. [BACK]

39. For helpful discussions of these issues, see Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice , 351-354, quotation on 353, emphasis in original; Michael Bérubé, "Life as We Know It," Harper's 289 (December 1994): 41-43. [BACK]

40. Barbara Katz Rothman, The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and the Future of Motherhood (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986). [BACK]

41. Tietze, "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City, 1943-1947"; Gold et al., "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City," 965-966. [BACK]

42. Gold et al., "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City," 965-966, 971. This article broke down the data into three "ethnic groups": "white," "nonwhite,'' and "Puerto Rican." I have combined the data for the "nonwhites" and Puerto Ricans so that minority women and majority, white women can be compared in the figures. The decline was 90 percent among Puerto Ricans, 65 percent among "nonwhites," and 40 percent among whites. [BACK]

43. Hall, "Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Contraception," 518-519, 522, 524-527, quotation on 519. See also Niswander, Klein, and Randall, "Changing Attitudes toward Therapeutic Abortion," 1143. [BACK]

44. Gold et al., "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City," 968, table 7. The therapeutic abortion to delivery ratios reported in California hospitals in 1950 ranged from 1:52 deliveries at a private hospital to 1:8,196 deliveries at Los Angeles County Hospital, as reported in Keith P. Russell, "Therapeutic Abortions in California in 1950," Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics, and Gynecol ogy 60 (October 1952): 497. [BACK]

45. Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 78-80, 90, 100-101, 111; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.), 260-262, table 2; J.G. Moore and J.H. Randall, "Trends in Therapeutic Abortions: A Review of 137 Cases," AJOG 63 (January 1952): 35; Hall, "Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Contraception," 519-522, 527. [BACK]

46. G.K. Folger in Harry A. Pearse and Harold A. Ott, "Hospital Control of Sterilization and Therapeutic Abortion," AJOG 60 (August 1950): 299-300. [BACK]

47. In 1967, Harold Rosen estimated that five thousand to eight thousand therapeutic abortions were performed every year, but this seems high. Sixty hospitals reported little more than one thousand therapeutic abortions over a several year period to Robert Hall. Rosen, Abortion in America , 307; Hall, "Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Contraception," 524-525, table 6. [BACK]

48. Hall, "Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Contraception," 518-519, 522, 526-527. [BACK]

49. "Illegitimacy Rise Alarms Agencies," NYT August 9, 1959; this article was brought to my attention by a student, Meghan McCloskey. Henry J. Myers, "The Problem of Sterilization: Sociologic, Eugenic, and Individual Considerations," in Rosen, Abortion in America , 93; Julius Paul, "The Return of Punitive Sterilization Proposals: Current Attacks on Illegitimacy and the AFDC Program," Law and Society Review 3 (August 1968): 77-106; Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie , 52-57. [BACK]

50. See Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1981), 215-221; Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice , 84-89, 159-160, 178-181; Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, Women under Attack: Victories, Backlash, and the Fight for Reproductive Freedom , edited by Susan E. Davis (Boston: South End Press, 1988). On the history of the movement for sterilization of mental "defectives," criminals and others, see Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 307; Mark H. Hailer, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 130-141. [BACK]

51. H. Close Hesseltine, F.L. Adair, and M.W. Boynton, "Limitation of Human Reproduction," AJOG 39 (April 1940): 551. Robert E. Hall's study of sixty hospitals showed that a third of the women who had therapeutic abortions were sterilized at the same time; "Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Contraception," 522, table 3. [BACK]

52. Dr. Laidlaw in Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 136. [BACK]

53. Mandy, "Reflections of a Gynecologist," 289-290. [BACK]

54. The committee at Florence Crittenton allowed sterilizations on narrow medical grounds and rejected operations primarily justified as desired by the patient. Comments of Albert E. Catherwood in discussion of Hesseltine, Adair and Boynton, "Limitation of Human Reproduction," 561; Pearse and Ott, "Hospital Control of Sterilization and Therapeutic Abortion," 290-296. [BACK]

55. Miller, The Worst of Times , 80-91. [BACK]

56. Lawrence Lader, Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 68-69; Recollection about Chicago Lying-In in Letter to NARAL from Ginny Foxx [pseud.], Haslett, MI, zip code 48840, Michigan File, Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Washington, D.C.; Sherry Matulis, "Abortion, 1954.—Never Again," Madison, WI Feminist Voices , September 1989, p. 8. [BACK]

57. "Vaginal Hemorrhage from Potassium Permanganate Burns," JAMA I55 (June 12, 1954): 699. [BACK]

58. On Los Angeles County, Hospital, see Don Harper Mills, "A Medicolegal Analysis of Abortion Statutes," Southern California Law Review 31 (February 1958): 182-183, n. 11. On D.C. General Hospital, see Miller, The Worst of Times , 72-74, 285-287; "The Abortion Racket." [BACK]

59. Vital statistics cannot be used to track mortality, due to illegal abortions for a variety of reasons; see Christopher Tietze, "Abortion as a Cause of Death," AJPH 38 (October 1948): 1434-1437. Abortion-related deaths are presumed to be undercounted because physicians protected their patients (and themselves) by assigning other causes of death on death certificates. These New York City, data are the best we have. [BACK]

60. Gold et al., "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City," 965-966. The percentages of puerperal deaths due to abortion in 1960 to 1962 were 25.2 percent for whites, 49.4 percent for "nonwhites," and 55.6 percent for Puerto Ricans. [BACK]

61. All of these inequalities continue. Although both infant and maternal mortality, have dropped, the racial differences persist. Infant mortality for black children is still twice that of white children and maternal mortality is over three times as high. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 , Bicentennial ed., part 1 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), Series b 136-147, p. 57; U.S. Bureau of the Cen sus, Statistical Abstract of t he United States: 1994 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), 91, table 120. On life expectancy., see Historical Statistics of the United States , Series B 107-115, pp. 55-56; Wornie L. Reed et al, Health and Medical Care of African-Americans (Westport, Conn.: Auburn House, 1993). 1984.-1992 data show that more than twice as much money is spent per white American as per black American for health care. See Statistical Abstract of the U.S.: 1994 , 117, table 164. I am grateful to Rose Holz for collecting these data. For 1987, U.S. infant mortality, rates ranked twenty-first in the world, but if those figures are divided by race, white America would rank between twelfth and thirteenth, while black America would rank between twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth; see Christine B. Hale, "Infant Mortality: An American Tragedy," Black Scholar 21 (January-February-March 1990): 18, table. [BACK]

62. Therapeutic abortions in hospitals were extremely safe. Russell S.

Fisher, "Criminal Abortion," in Rosen, Abortion in America , 9; Christopher Tietze, "Mortality with Contraception and Induced Abortion," Studies in Family Planning I (September 1969): 6. [BACK]