1. Joseph Taber Johnson, "Abortion and Its Effects," AJO 33 (January 1896): 86-97; James Foster Scott, "Criminal Abortion," AJO 33 (January 1896): 72-86, discussion, 118-132. [BACK]

2. The phrase is Kristin Luker's, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), chap. 3-5. [BACK]

3. On specialists, see Charlotte G. Borst, "The Professionalization of Obstetrics: Childbirth Becomes a Medical Specialty," in Women, Health, and Medicine in America: A Historical Handbook , edited by Rima D. Apple (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990), 197-216; Frances E. Kobrin, "The American Midwife Controversy: A Crisis of Professionalization," in Women and Health in America: Historical Readings , edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt (Madison: University. of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 318-326. [BACK]

4. The section was renamed several times after it was formed in 1860. Harold Speert, Obstetrics and Gynecology in America: A History (Chicago: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1980), 115-116. [BACK]

5. J. Milton Duff, "Chairman's Address," JAMA 21 (August 26, 1893): 292; C. S. Bacon, "The Legal Responsibility of the Physician for the Unborn Child," JAMA 46 (June 30, 1906): 1981-1984; Walter B. Dorsett, "Criminal Abortion in Its Broadest Sense," JAMA 51 (September 19, 1908): 957-961; H. G. Wether-ill, "Retrospection and Introspection: Our Opportunities and Obligations," Transactions of the Section on Obstetrics and Diseases of Women of the American Medical Association ( 1911 ), 17-31. [BACK]

6. See the introduction, this volume; James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 78, 147-170. [BACK]

7. Duff, "Chairman's Address," 292. [BACK]

8. James C. Mohr has also examined the attempts to suppress abortion in Chicago in the 1900s, "Patterns of Abortion and the Response of American Physicians, 1970-1930," in Leavitt, Women and Health in America , 119-120. [BACK]

9. Meeting of January 12, 1904, Council Minutes, 1903-1905, vol. 19, Chicago Medical Society Records, Archives and Manuscripts Department, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois. For biographical information, see Rudolph W. Holmes, Deceased Physician Master File, AMA; Charles Sumner Bacon, Deceased Physician Master File; C. S. Bacon, "Failures of Midwives in Asepsis," JAMA 28 (February 6, 1897): 247; Charles B. Reed, Deceased Physicians Master File. [BACK]

10. This is based on my reading of the Journal of the National Medical Association ( JNMA ) from 1909 through 1973, vol. 1-65. For black women seeking abortions from black doctors, see J. W. Walker in discussion of Val Do Turner, "Fertility of Women," JNMA 5 (October-December 1913): 250. For an antiabortion article, see Barnett M. Rhetta, "A Plea for the Lives of the Unborn," JNMA 7 (July-September 1915): 292. [BACK]

11. Charles B. Reed, "Therapeutic and Criminal Abortion," Illinois Medical Journal 7 (January 1905): 27. [BACK]

12. Mary A. Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion—Its Evils and Its Sad Consequences," WMJ 3 (August 1894): 34—38, quotation on 34.; Mary A. Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion—Its Evils and Its Sad Consequences" continued, WMJ 3 (September 1894): 61, quotation on 60; remark of A. McDermid in George J. Engelmann, "The Increasing Sterility of American Women," JAMA 37 (October 5, 1901): 896-897. [BACK]

13. E. E. Hume in C. J. Aud, "In What Per Cent, Is the Regular Profession Responsible for Criminal Abortions, and What is the Remedy.?" Kentucky Medical Journal 2 (September 1904.): 100; William McCollum called for "missionary work" in this area in "Criminal Abortion," JAMA 26 (February 8, 1896): 258. [BACK]

14. Dr. Stuver in Minnie C. T. Love, "Criminal Abortion," Colorado Medicine 1 (1903-1904.): 60. [BACK]

15. "Chicago Medical Society. Regular Meeting, Held Nov. 23, 1904. Symposium on Criminal Abortion," JAMA 43 (December 17, 1904): 1891. See also J. L. Andrews, "The Greatly Increased Frequency of the Occurrence of Abor-

tion, as Shown by Reports from Memphis Physicians: An Essay on the Causes for the Same," Transactions of the Tennessee State Medical Association 72 (1905): 136. [BACK]

16. C.P. McNabb and others in Andrews, "The Greatly Increased Frequency oft he Occurrence of Abortion," 139-142. In the I888 investigation of abortion in Chicago, many physicians suggested that the woman marry, for example, Dr. J. Harvey, "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 2l, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

17. Meeting of January 12, 1904, Chicago Medical Society Records; "Chicago Medical Society. Regular Meeting, Held Nov. 23, 1904. Symposium on Criminal Abortion," 1889; Meeting of October 1905, Council Minutes, October 1905-July 1907, vol. 20, Chicago Medical Society Records. Apparently this event did not attract local press; neither the Chicago Tribune , November 20-26,1904, nor the Chicago Record-Herald , November 21-26, 1904, covered it. [BACK]

18. Frederick J. Taussig, The Prevention and Treatment of Abortion (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1910), 79. For discussions of the contemporary importance of the deployment of fetal images, see Rosalind Petchesky, "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction," Feminist Studies 13 (summer 1987): 263-292; Barbara Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). [BACK]

19. For example, "Little Jane's Tragedy Typical of Hundreds Who Disappear Here," Chicago Examiner , March 3, 1918; Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

20. David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 191. [BACK]

21. Phrase in Frank H. Jackson, "Criminal Abortion. Its Prevalence, Results, and Treatment," AJOG 58 (October 1908): 663; and Palmer Findley "The Slaughter of the Innocents," AJOG 3 (January-June 1922): 36. [BACK]

22. Wilmer Krusen, "The Indications for Therapeutic Abortion, with Consideration of the Rights of the Unborn Child," The Therapeutic Gazette 34. (March 15, 1910): 163. [BACK]

23. Duff, "Chairman's Address," 292. [BACK]

24. Jackson, "Criminal Abortion," 662, 663, 669. On private efforts and calls to purge the profession, see McCollum, "Criminal Abortion," 259; Aud, "In What Per Cent," 96. [BACK]

25. Edward W. Pinkham, "The Treatment of Septic Abortion, with a Few Remarks on the Ethics of Criminal Abortion," AJO 61 (March 1910): 420; Meetings of Jan 9, 1912 and March 12, 1912, Council Minutes, October 1911-June 1912, vol. 25, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

26. Meeting of January 10, 1911, Council Minutes, 1911-1912, vol. 25, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

27. "Chicago Medical Society. Regular Meeting, Held Nov. 23, 1904. Symposium on Criminal Abortion," 1891; Report of Dr. Rudolph Holmes, Meeting of October 9, 1906, Council Minutes, October 1905-July 1907, vol. 20, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

28. Report of Dr. Parkes, Meeting of January 9, 1912, 55-56, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

29. On antiabortion activities in Philadelphia and New York, see Henry W.

Cattell, "Some Medico-Legal Aspects of Abortion," Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine 8 (1907): 338-340, quotation on 339. See chapter 4 for analysis of coroner's inquests. [BACK]

30. Report of Dr. Holmes, Meeting of October 9, 1906, Chicago Medical Society Records; Meeting of December 13, 1906, Board of Trustees Minutes, May 1903-07, vol. 14, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

31. J. Henry Barbat, "Criminal Abortion," California State Journal of Medicine 9 (February 1911): 69. [BACK]

32. For numerous examples of correspondence between physicians, businesses, government agencies, and the Bureau of Investigation, see Abortifacient Files, HHFC. [BACK]

33. B.O. Hailing Report on AMA Bureau of Investigation, July 14, 1938, Bureau of Investigation File, HHFC; W. L. Taggart, Trial Attorney for Federal Trade Commission to AMA, August 24, 1937, Abortifacient Files, HHFC. The Los Angeles County Medical Association and the AMA's Bureau of Investigation worked with California district attorneys, Board of Medical Examiners, and special agents in the 1934 to 1940 investigation and prosecution of the "Pacific Coast Abortion Ring," Pacific Coast Abortion Ring File, HHFC. [BACK]

34. Comment by R.W. Holmes in Dorsett, "Criminal Abortion in Its Broadest Sense," 960. [BACK]

35. Report of Dr. Carey Culbertson, Meeting of January 10, 1911, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

36. Report of Dr. Parkes, Meeting of January 9, 1912, p. 53, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

38. Kobrin, "The American Midwife Controversy," 318-326; Judy Barrett Litoff, American Midwives: 1860 to the Present (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978). [BACK]

39. F. Elisabeth Crowell, "The Midwives of New York," Charities and the Commons 17 (January 1907): 667-677; reprint, in Judy Barrett Litoff, ed., The American Midwife Debate: A Sourcebook on Its Modern Origins (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 45. [BACK]

40. Charles R. King, "The New York Maternal Mortality Study: A Conflict of Professionalization," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65 (winter 1991): 476-480; Speert, Obstetrics and Gynecology in America; Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), chaps. 2, 6, 7; Litoff, The American Midwife Debate , 6-7. [BACK]

41. King, "New York Maternal Mortality Study," 483-485, 495. [BACK]

42. Brickman alone noted that the charge of abortion was a way to degrade midwives; Jane Pacht Brickman, "Public Health, Midwives, and Nurses, 1880-1930," in Nursing History: New Perspectives, New Possibilities , edited by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (New York: Teacher's College, Columbia University Press, 1983), 69. For an overview of the history of midwives, see Judy Barrett Litoff, "Midwives and History," in Apple, Women, Health, and Medicine in America , 443-458. On midwife practices, see Charlotte G. Borst, Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1995); Eugene R. Declercq, "The Nature and Style of Practice of Immigrant Midwives in Early Twentieth Century Massachusetts," Journal of Social History 19 (1985): 113-129. On African American midwives, see Susan L. Smith, "White Nurses, Black Midwives, and Public Health in Mississippi, 1920-1950," Nursing History Review 2 (1994): 29-49; Ruth C. Schaffer, "The Health and Social Functions of Black Midwives on the Texas Brazos Bottom, 1920-1985," Rural Sociology 56 (spring 1992): 89-105; Molly Ladd-Taylor, "'Grannies' and 'Spinsters': Midwife Education Under the Sheppard-Towner Act," Journal of Social History 22 (1988): 255- 275; Debra Anne Susie, In the Way of Our Grandmothers: A Cultural View of Twentieth-Century Midwifery in Florida (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Sharon A. Robinson, "A Historical Development of Midwifery in the Black Community: 1600-1940,'' Journal of Nurse-Midwifery 29 (July-August 1984): 247-250. [BACK]

43. On the Progressive Era, see Alan Dawley, Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991); Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991); Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 123-292; Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). [BACK]

44. Rudolph W. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," JAMA 50 (April 25, 1908): 1347, 1346; see also Edward A. Ayers et al., "Report of the Committee on 'The Practice of Obstetrics by Midwives,'" Medical Record 44 (December 9, 1893): 767; Thomas Darlington, "The Present Status of the Midwife," AJO 63 (May 1911): 874; Ralph Waldo Lobenstine, "The Influence of the Midwife upon Infant and Maternal Morbidity and Mortality," AJO 63 (May 1911): 878; Kobrin, "The American Midwife Controversy." [BACK]

45. Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Molly Ladd-Taylor, "Hull House Goes to Washington: Women and the Children's Bureau," in Frankel and Dye, Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era , 110-126; Thomas Neville Bonner, Medicine in Chicago, 1850-1950: A Chapter in the Social and Scientific Development of a City , 2d ed. (1957; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 84-107. [BACK]

46. Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880 , expanded ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Joanne J. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), chap. 7; John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 171-235. [BACK]

47. Eliza H. Root, "The Status of Obstetrics in General Practice," in Transactions of the First Pan-American Medical Congress , part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), 901-904. I learned of this event through an entry in Women in Medicine: A Bibliography of the Literature on Women Physicians , edited by Sandra L. Chaff et al. (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1977), 293. [BACK]

48. Root, "The Status of Obstetrics in General Practice," 904.-905. [BACK]

48. Root, "The Status of Obstetrics in General Practice," 904.-905.

49. Ibid., 904. On Stevenson, see Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 232-233. [BACK]

50. Ella M.S. Marble, "The First Pan-American Medical Congress—Some of the Women Who Took Part," WMJ 1 (October 1893): 199. [BACK]

51. Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science , 47-65, 216-228. [BACK]

52. Letter from Sarah Hackett Stevenson, Chicago Times , December 23, 1888, p. 11; Elizabeth Jarrett, "The Midwife or the Woman Doctor," Medical Record 54. (October 22 1898): 610-611. See also Georgina Grothan, "Evil Pratrices of the So-Called Midwife," Omaha Clinic 7 (1895-1896): 175-180. A handful of physicians, female and male, defended midwives or advocated their training. Comments of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi as recorded in "Special Meeting, January 31, 1898. Discussion on Proposed Legislation against Midwives," Medical Record 53 (February 5, 1898 210; Litoff, American Midwives , 34-37. [BACK]

53. Litoff notes that few historians of midwifery ever suggested that the campaign to control midwives was a plot of male physicians against women, though others have summarized the history in this way. Litoff, "Midwives and History," 446-447, 451. Robyn Muncy and Molly Ladd-Taylor discuss the relationship between reformers and midwives at later dates; Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion , 115-119; Ladd-Taylor, ^"'Grannies' and 'Spinsters,'" 255-275. [BACK]

54. Mohr, Abortion in America , 94-95, 102-118, 168-169, 188, 216; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom , rev. ed. (1984.; Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 82-83. While middle-class married women still pressed physicians for abortions (often successfully), the new campaign paid little attention to these women or their doctors. [BACK]

55. C.S. Bacon, "The Midwife Question in America," JAMA 29 (November 27, 1897): 1091. The last quotation is in C. S. Bacon, "Failures of Midwives in Asepsis," 247. [BACK]

56. When New York regulated midwives in 1906, it was not "the first" to do so, as claimed by the New York doctors cited in Joyce Antler and Daniel M. Fox, "The Movement toward a Safe Maternity: Physician Accountability in New York City, 1915-1940," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 50 (1976): 569-595; reprint in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health , edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 379. Litoff suggests that the debates began in about 1910 and, also, that by 1910 the debate had become "fierce" and that it was at its "height . . . between 1910 and 1920." My reading of the medical literature suggests that the latter assessment is correct, but that the debates began in the 1890s. Litoff, American Midwives , 64, 137, 138, 140. [BACK]

57. Bacon, "Failures of Midwives in Asepsis," 247-248. [BACK]

58. All quotations from Bacon, "The Midwife Question," 1091; see also Kobrin, "The American Midwife Controversy." [BACK]

59. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346. [BACK]

59. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346.

60. Ibid. On the public-health work of women physicians, see Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science , 296-302. On the public-health activism of organized women, see Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes (1910; reprint, New York: The New American Library, 1938); Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), chap. 6; Suellen M. Hoy, ^"'Municipal Housekeeping': The Role of Women in Improving Urban Sanitation Practices, 1880-1917," in Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930 , edited by Martin Melosi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 173-198. [BACK]

61. On Herbert Stowe, see Entry for Herbert Marion Stowe, American Medical Directory 1918 , 6th ed. (Chicago: Press oft he American Medical Association, 1918), 473. On Alice Hamilton, see Entry for Alice Hamilton by Barbara Sicherman in Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary , edited by Barbara Sicherman et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), 303-306. On Caroline Hedger, see entry for Caroline Hedger, American Medical Directory 1918 , 448; Mary Riggs Noble, "The Women Doctors of the Children's Bureau," Medical Woman's Journal 40 (January 1933): 5-10, cited in Chaff et al, Women in Medicine . In 1918, perhaps earlier, Drs. Hedger and Stowe shared an office in downtown Chicago. I am grateful to Lynne Curry for informing me that Hedger worked primarily with the University of Chicago Settlement House. [BACK]

62. I have calculated the percentage from the figures provided by Crowell. Because of the difficulty of winning convictions for abortion, the New York County Medical Society's attorney pursued midwives suspected of abortion by initiating legal actions against them for "practicing medicine illegally." Seventy-one midwives had been convicted on this charge in five years of work. Crowell, "The Midwives of New York," 44. (Crowell's first name is spelled differently in "The Midwives of New York" and Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago.") J. Milton Mabbott, ''The Regulation of Midwives in New York," AJO 55 (April 1907): 516-517. [BACK]

63. Mary Sherwood, "The Midwives of Baltimore: A Report to the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland," JAMA 52 (June 19, 1909): 2009-2010. [BACK]

64. Two hundred twenty-three Chicago midwives were investigated. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346-1349, quotations, in order,on 1346, 1348, 1347, 1349. [BACK]

64. Two hundred twenty-three Chicago midwives were investigated. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346-1349, quotations, in order,on 1346, 1348, 1347, 1349.

65. Ibid., 1348, 1349. [BACK]

64. Two hundred twenty-three Chicago midwives were investigated. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346-1349, quotations, in order,on 1346, 1348, 1347, 1349.

66. Ibid., 1349. [BACK]

64. Two hundred twenty-three Chicago midwives were investigated. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346-1349, quotations, in order,on 1346, 1348, 1347, 1349.

67. Ibid., 1346. [BACK]

64. Two hundred twenty-three Chicago midwives were investigated. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346-1349, quotations, in order,on 1346, 1348, 1347, 1349.

68. Ibid., 1350. [BACK]

69. Illinois Medicine and Surgery Act, in Illinois, All the Laws of Illinois , 1899, sec. 10, p. 216. This is not to say that physicians had nothing to fear when they got involved in illegal abortion; see chapter 4, this volume. [BACK]

70. S. Josephine Baker, Fighting For Life (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 114-115; Leavitt, Brought to Bed , 63, chap. 4. Some physicians thought that the birthing women seen by midwives rightfully belonged to medical students and might be the solution to the poor obstetrical education of physicians. Dr. S. Josephine Baker criticized this idea in "The Function of the Midwife," WMJ 23 (September 1913): 197. [BACK]

71. "Seeks New Nurse Law," Chicago Record-Herald , April 25, 1908, p. 16. The hospital ordinance was revised June 1, 1908. Report of the Department of Health, 1907-1910 , pp. 193-196, Municipal Reference Collection, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois. On private hospitals, see Morris J. Vogel, The Invention of the Modern Hospital, Boston, 1870-1930 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 102-103. [BACK]

72. "Women Press Charges against an Attorney," Chicago Record-Herald , September 3, 1910, p. 9; "Boy in 'Hobble' Skirt Spies upon Midwives," Chicago Record-Herald , September 17, 1910, p. 18. I have not been able to locate these affidavits. [BACK]

73. "Boy in 'Hobble' Skirt Spies upon Midwives." [BACK]

73. "Boy in 'Hobble' Skirt Spies upon Midwives."

74. Ibid. [BACK]

75. Historians have discovered only one other instance of turn-of-the-century midwife organization: St. Louis midwives formed the Scientific Association of Midwives; Litoff, American Midwives , 39-41. [BACK]

76. Litoff, American Midwives , 106-107, 140; Litoff, The American Midwife Debate , 7, 9. Although midwives may have sporadically organized in their own interest, as in Chicago, they did not turn their calling into a profession. On this point, see Borst, Catching Babies . James R. Barrett makes a similar critique of historians' assumptions about divisions within the working class and shows how workers of different ethnic groups sometimes organized together in "Unity and Fragmentation: Class, Race, and Ethnicity on Chicago's South Side, 1900-1922," Journal of Social History 18 (September 1984): 37-55. [BACK]

77. Vice Commission of Chicago, The Social Evil in Chicago. A Study of Existing Conditions with Recommendations by the Vice Commission of Chicago (1911; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1970), 225, 223. The Commission investigated midwives in November 1910. [BACK]

77. Vice Commission of Chicago, The Social Evil in Chicago. A Study of Existing Conditions with Recommendations by the Vice Commission of Chicago (1911; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1970), 225, 223. The Commission investigated midwives in November 1910.

78. Ibid., quotations in order on 226, 225, 223. Judith R. Walkowitz analyzes how Victorians connected prostitution, abortion, and same-sex relationships in "Dangerous Sexualities," in A History of Women in the West: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War , vol. 4, edited by Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 369-398. [BACK]

79. Grace Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," American Journal of Sociology 20 (March 1915: 685-686. Dr. Rudolph W. Holmes later commented that the 1896 rules for midwives were "the best system for the control of midwife practice ever devised in this country," but only a few midwives ever registered. The regulations "were never rescinded—they merely fell by the wayside." Rudolph W. Holmes, "Midwife Practice—An Anachronism,'' Illinois Medical Journal 38 (January 1920): 30. On Grace Abbott, see the entry by Jill Ker Conway in Notable American Women 1607-1950, A Biographical Dictionary , vol. 1,

edited by Edward T James (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 2-4; Lela B. Costin, Two Sisters for Social Justice: A Biography of Grace and Edith Abbott (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983). [BACK]

80. Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," 684—686, 692-694, quotations on 684, 694. [BACK]

80. Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," 684—686, 692-694, quotations on 684, 694.

81. Ibid., 689-699, quotation on 699; Mary Elizabeth Fiorenza, "Midwifery and the Law in Illinois and Wisconsin, 1877-1917" (master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1985), 45-46. On medical education in obstetrics, see Virginia G. Drachman, "The Loomis Trial: Social Mores and Obstetrics in the Mid-Nineteenth Century," Health Care in America , edited by Susan Reverby and David Rosner (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 67-83; reprint, in Leavitt, Women and Health in America , 166-174. [BACK]

82. "Jurors Hold Shavers for Girl Murder," Chicago Daily Tribune , May 29, 1915, pp. 1, 4, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Raid," [1915], n.p., Abortionists Files, HHFC; "End Baby Murder, Cry from Public," Herald , May 31, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

83. Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science , 188-189; Mohr, Abortion in America , 161. [BACK]

84. On the city and sexual danger for women, see Meyerowitz, Women Adrift; Peiss, Cheap Amusements , chap. 7; Odem, Delinquent Daughters; Ellen Carol Dubois and Linda Gordon, "Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in Nineteenth-Century Feminist Sexual Thought," Feminist Studies 9 (spring 1983): 7-25; Walkowitz, "Dangerous Sexualities;" Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). On sexuality and the city, see Jean-Christophe Agnew, "Times Square: Secularization and Sacralization," in Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World , edited by William R. Taylor (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991), 2-13; Timothy J. Gilfoyle, ''Policing of Sexuality," in Taylor, Inventing Times Square , 297-314; George Chauncey Jr., "The Policed: Gay Men's Strategies of Everyday Resistance," in Taylor, Inventing Times Square , 315-328; Laurence Senelick, "Private Parts in Public Places," in Taylor, Inventing Times Square , 329-353. [BACK]

85. "End Murders by Abortion, Council Order," Chicago Tribune , June 2, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Jurors Hold Shavers for Girl Murder," Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

86. In 1913, for example, of one hundred abortion deaths investigated by the Cook County Coroner, the coroner listed twelve as "criminal" cases, eight "accidental," five "spontaneous" (miscarriages), thirty-three "self-induced," and forty-two "undetermined." Many of the undetermined may have been criminal abortions as well, but the point is that the press coverage of abortion overemphasized the fatalities of criminal abortion by including miscarriages and other abortions. Cook County. Coroner, Biennial Report , 1918-1919, p. 79, Municipal Reference Collection; Cook County Coroner, Biennial Report , 1912-1913, p. 80, Municipal Reference Collection. On the marital status of women who had abortions, see Cook County Coroner, Biennial Report , 1918-1919, p. 78; and chapter I of this volume. [BACK]

87. "Coroner Starts War on Wildcat 'Homes,'" Chicago News , May 29, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Abortion Lairs Facing Clean-Up by Authorities," Chicago Herald , May 30, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Court Denies Divorce to Woman Aborter," Chicago Daily Tribune , June 1, 1915, p. 6, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

88. "Hostetter's [sic] Last Letter to Girl Who Was Quack Victim," n.p., May 28, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Jurors Hold Shavers for Girl Murder"; "Body of Slain Gift Robbed, Fiance Claims," Chicago Post , May 29, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; ''Death Threat to Hostetler," Chicago Tribune , June 5, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

89. "Officials Plan Fight to Curb Abortion Evil," n.p., June 7, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

90. "Abortion Lairs Facing Clean-Up by Authorities." [BACK]

91. "Officials Plan Fight to Curb Abortion Evil?' [BACK]

92. "Abortion Lairs Facing Clean-up by Authorities;" "End Baby Murder," Chicago Herald , May 31, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

93. The first mention that I have seen of any group supporting the exposure of abortion in Chicago mentions the city's "women's organizations" only, in "Death of Girl Perils Schools for Abortions," n.p., May 28, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

94. "End Baby Murder." See also "Alderman to Ask Probe of Quack Homes," Chicago Tribune , May 30, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

95. "Body of Slain Girl Robbed, Fiance Claims." [BACK]

96. "End Baby Murder." [BACK]

97. "Letters to 'Tribune' Expose Abortion Crimes," Chicago Daily Tribune , June 3, 1915, p. 4, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

98. All quotations in "Abortion Lairs Facing Clean-Up by Authorities." [BACK]

99. "Crusade against Infant Murders Grows Rapidly," Chicago Herald , June 2, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

99. "Crusade against Infant Murders Grows Rapidly," Chicago Herald , June 2, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC.

100. Ibid.; Chicago City Council, Proceedings, 1916-1917 , vol. 1, p. 459, Municipal Reference Collection. [BACK]

101. "Officials Unite to End Practice of Baby Murder," Chicago Herald , June 6, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "End Murders by Abortions." [BACK]

102. Quotations in "Officials Plan Fight to Curb Abortion Evil," "End Murders by Abortion." [BACK]

103. "Officials Plan Fight to Curb Abortion Evil;" Abbott's report was summarized in "End Baby Murder;" Fiorenza, "Midwifery and the Law in Illinois and Wisconsin," 45-46. [BACK]

104. "Practice of Medicine-Act of 1899 Amended," in Illinois, Laws of Illinois 1915, p. 504. I am grateful to Elaine Shemoney Evans of the Illinois State Archives for finding this for me. Chicago Department of Police, Annual Report , 1878-1916, Municipal Reference Collection. Who fired the gun at Johnson's head and why was never clarified. "Fears Public Opinion in Abortion Cases," Chicago Sunday Herald , June 6, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Woman Doctor is Convicted," Chicago News , March 10, 1916, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

105. Inquest on Edna M. Lamb, February 19, 1917, case no. 43-3-1917, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

106. Frank Alby in Inquest on Emma Alby, September 11, 1915, case no. 141-10-1915, Medical Records Department. By 1918, Dr. Windmueller was listed as a specialist in laryngology and rhinology. Entry for Charles R. A. Windmueller, American Medical Directory, 1918 , 479. [BACK]

107. My thanks to Robert E. Bailey and Elaine Evans at the Illinois State Archives who searched the Chicago City Council files for 1915 and found no reports or investigations on midwives. Chicago Department of Police, Annual Report , 1916, Municipal Reference Collection. [BACK]

108. "'Dr.' Benn Put on Trial as Woman's Slayer," Chicago Examiner , March 5, 1918, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

109. Findley, "The Slaughter of the Innocents," 35-36. [BACK]

109. Findley, "The Slaughter of the Innocents," 35-36.

110. Ibid., 36. [BACK]

111. Brickman makes a slightly different but complementary argument about the relationship between the medical profession's attack on midwifery and the Sheppard-Towner Act and public-health efforts in general in her excellent article, "Public Health, Midwives, and Nurses," 66-67, 76-77. On the Sheppard-Towner Act, see J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), chap 6; Rosemary Stevens, American Medicine and the Public Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 143-144, 200; Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work; Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science , 296-303. On the medical profession and national health insurance, see Ronald L. Numbers, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912-1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1978). [BACK]

112. Kobrin and Litoff have divided the people in the midwife debate as either opponents of midwives who favored their abolition or proponents who, as Kobrin described it, took "the public health approach." Kobrin, "The American Midwife Controversy," 320; Litoff, American Midwives , chaps. 5, 6. I have found it difficult to determine to which side various doctors and commentators belonged; they often seem to fall in both camps. Individuals' positions could change over time from a negative view of midwives to a more positive view, a change that seems to have been true for female and male physicians most dedicated to public-health work. For example, Dr. S. Josephine Baker's attitude was transformed as she worked to improve maternal and infant health in New York City. S. Josephine Baker, "The Function of the Midwife," 196-197. Nancy Schrom Dye finds a similar change in attitude among dispensary physicians who came to know midwives in New York City in the 1890s. "But,'' she observes, "obstetricians' professional identity and prestige . . . depended upon the attainment and exercise of unilateral authority. To cooperate with a midwife, or to share responsibility with her, was professionally untenable." "Modem Obstetrics and Working-Class Women: The New York Midwifery Dispensary, 1890-1920," Journal of Social History 20 (spring 1987): 554. [BACK]

113. Lemons, The Woman Citizen , 169; Costin, Two Sisters for Social Justice , 142; Bonner, Medicine in Chicago , 140-141, 218-220, 222; Lynne Elizabeth Curry, "Modem Mothers in the Heartland: Maternal and Child Health Reform in Illinois, 1900-1930" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995). I am grateful to Lynne Curry for sharing with me the names of physicians who supported the Sheppard-Towner Act. [BACK]

114. Margaret Sanger, "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" BCR 3 (May 1919): 10. [BACK]

115. Rudolph W. Holmes, chair of the Chicago Medical Society Criminal Abortion Committee, worked with a committee of the Chicago Gynecological Society to oppose birth control clinics and the provision of birth control to the general public. See letter from Rudolph W. Holmes, Joseph L. Haer, and N. Sproat Heaney, "Correspondence. The Regulation of Conception," Illinois Medical Journal 43 (March 1923): 193. Dr. Henry W. Cattell of Philadelphia, an antiabortion activist early in the century, testified at a Congressional Hearing in 1931 against a bill granting doctors the right to dispense birth control. Cattell, "Some Medico-Legal Aspects of Abortion," 334-341; Statement of Dr. Henry W. Cattell in U.S. Congress, Senate, Birth Control Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office: 1931), 59-60. On the relationship between the medical profession and the birth control movement, see Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 255-269; Kennedy, Birth Control in America , 172-217; James Reed, "Doctors, Birth Control, and Social Values, 1830-1970," in Leavitt, Women and Health , 124-139. [BACK]

116. "Birth Controllists and Maternity Legislation," Illinois Medical Journal 43 (May 1923): 344; "Birth Control a Corollary of the Sheppard-Towner Bill," Illinois Medical Journal 50 ( December 1926): 448-449. [BACK]

117. In 1910, at the peak of the campaign against midwives, midwives still delivered half of the nation's babies, but twenty years later they delivered only 15 percent. The nation's midwives had become concentrated in the South, where most of the midwives and the women they assisted were African American. Louis S. Reed, Midwives, Chiropodists, and Optometrists: Their Place in Medical Care (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), 4-7, 67, table 1A; Kobrin, "The American Midwife Controversy," 318, 324-325; Ladd-Taylor, "'Grannies' and 'Spinsters,'" 269-270. [BACK]