1. "Unemployment," BCR 15 (May 1931): 131. [BACK]

2. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 213-249; Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 250-272. [BACK]

3. "'Doctor' Jailed after Raid on Abortion Mill," Chicago Daily Tribune , November 14, 1932, Abortionists Folders, HHFC; Julian Moynahan to Editor, New York Times (hereafter cited as NYT ), January 15, 1995, p. 16. [BACK]

4. Carole Joffe and I made similar arguments about the "back-alley butcher" model of abortion history in papers presented on a panel together at the 1990 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. Hers has since been published; Carole Joffe, "Portraits of Three 'Physicians of Conscience': Abortion before Legalization in the United States," Journal of the History of Sexual- ivy 2 (July 1991): 4-6-67. [BACK]

5. Lois Rita Helmbold, "Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression," Feminist Studies 13 (Fall 1987): 640-641; A. J. Rongy, Abortion: Legal or Illegal ? (New York: Vanguard Press, 1933), 111. [BACK]

6. Kessler-Harris, Out to Work , 256-257; quotations from typed letter from Charleston, IL 61920, April 20, 1985, "Silent No More" Campaign, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Chicago. [BACK]

7. The doctor, apparently a chiropractor, performed eight abortions per day. "Abortion 'Club' Exposed," BCR 4 (November 1936): 5; "Birth Control 'Club' Revealed in Newark," NYT October 13, 1936, p. 3. [BACK]

8. Eric M. Matsner, M.D., to Editor, "Differentiation Sought," NYT October 15, 1936, p. 26. [BACK]

9. Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America, rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), chap. 11; John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 244-248; David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 246-261, 214-217; James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 239-241. [BACK]

10. Frederick J. Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced: Medical and Social Aspects (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1936), quotation on 372, Cincinnati and New York on 363-364. On New Orleans, J. Thornwell Witherspoon, "An Analysis of 200 Cases of Septic Abortion Treated Conservatively," AJOG 26 (September 1933): 368. On Minneapolis, Jalmar H. Simons, "Statistical Analysis of One Thousand Abortions," AJOG 37 (May 1939): 840; Ransom S. Hooker, Maternal Mortality in New York City: A Study of All Puerperal Deaths, 1930-1932 (New York: Oxford University Press for the Commonwealth Fund, 1933), 54; Henry J. Sangmeister, "A Survey of Abortion Deaths in Philadelphia from 1931 to 1940 Inclusive," AJOG 46 (November 1943): 758. [BACK]

11. Paul H. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion (New York: Harper and Brothers and Paul B. Hoeber Medical Books, 1958). Since much of the data comes from the earlier Kinsey studies on sexuality and this report came out of his institute, hereafter I refer to this book in the text as the Kinsey report or study on abortion. [BACK]

12. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 113-114, 140, table 55. [BACK]

13. The percentage of first pregnancies aborted in this young generation was no more than 10 percent, but it was more than double the rate of earlier generations of women. Regine K. Stix, "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 13 (October 1935): 358, fig. 2, quotation on 359; Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion , 97-98. [BACK]

14. Helmbold, "Beyond the Family Economy," 642-643; Ruth Milkman, "Women's Work and the Economic Crisis: Some Lessons from the Great Depression," The Review of Radical Political Economics 8 (spring 1976): 73-91, 95-97; reprint, in A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women, edited by Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 507-541. [BACK]

15. On African Americans and the Kinsey study, see "Why Negro Women are Not in the Kinsey Report," Ebony 8 (October 1953): 109-115; quotation from Charles H. Garvin, "The Negro Doctor's Task," BCR 16 (November 1932): 270. My thanks to Susan Smith and Leslie Schwalm for giving me the Ebony and BCR articles respectively. Jessie M. Rodrique, "The Black Community and the Birth Control Movement," in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, edited by Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons with Robert A. Padgug (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 140-141. [BACK]

16. Peter Marshall Murray and L. B. Winkelstein, "Incomplete Abortion: An Evaluation of Diagnosis and Treatment of 727 Consecutive Cases of Incomplete Abortions," Harlem Hospital Bulletin 3 (June 1950): 31, 33, offprint in folder 163, box 76-9, Peter Marshall Murray Papers, used with the permission of the Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard

University. I am grateful to Susan Smith for bringing this article to my attention. [BACK]

17. Endre K. Brunner and Louis Newton, "Abortions in Relation to Viable Births in 10,609 Pregnancies: A Study Based on 4,500 Clinic Histories," AJOG 38 (July 1939): 82-83, 88. See also Virginia Clay Hamilton, "Some Sociologic and Psychologic Observations on Abortion," AJOG 39 (June 1940): 923, table. [BACK]

18. John Zell Gaston in George W. Kosmak, "The Responsibility of the Medical Profession in the Movement for 'Birth Control,'" JAMA 113 (October 21, 1939): 1559. [BACK]

19. The Kinsey study did not report directly on women's reproductive practices according to class, but used level of education to signify class status. The study found that, of all the women surveyed who had abortions between the 1920s and 1940s, white married women with a grade school education (therefore presumably lower income) both delivered more babies and had more abortions than did women with greater levels of education (presumably middle or upper class). Women with less education bore more children and did so earlier in life (sixteen to twenty-five years), whereas college educated women tended to abort a greater proportion of pregnancies during these same years while in college and had children later. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 114, 120, 109-110, table 54; Brunner and Newton, "Abortions in Relation to Viable Births," 83. Among clients of birth control clinics in New York and Cincinnati in the 1930s, the abortion rate also rose as income rose, although a sample of New York City women found a higher rate of abortion in only "the poorest non-relief group." Regine K. Stix and Dorothy G. Wiehl, "Abortion and the Public Health," American Journal of Public Health 28 (May 1938): 624, fig. 2. [BACK]

20. Hamilton, "Some Sociologic and Psychologic Observations on Abortion," quotations on 922, table on 923; Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 37, 65-66, 162; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, Bantam Books, 1984.), 151-152. [BACK]

21. Of the unmarried women, the Kinsey survey found that "the Negro college educated women aborted 81 per cent of their pregnancies (essentially the same percentage as for white college women), the high school educated women 25 per cent, and the grade school 19 per cent." The study found too that unwed black women with the least education (and thus from the lowest economic levels) were more likely to give birth and less likely to abort than unwed white women. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 162; D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 187, 259. Regina G. Kunzel also finds class differences among African-Americans in their use of maternity homes; Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 73. [BACK]

22. Approximately 12 percent of the Catholic women, 13 percent of the Jewish women, and 14 percent of the Protestant women in the Brunner and Newton study had had induced abortions. Brunner and Newton, "Abortions in Relation to Viable Births," 85, 90. A Minneapolis study reached similar conclusions; Simons, "Statistical Analysis of One Thousand Abortions," 840-841. But 35 percent of Stix's informants had had illegal abortions. "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," 352. [BACK]

23. The study showed that up to the age of twenty, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant women all aborted pregnancies at about the same rate, approximately 7 percent. After the age of twenty a major shift occurred. The rate of abortion for Catholic and Jewish women rose only slightly for the twenty-one to twenty-five years of age group, whereas Protestant women's rate of abortion jumped to 20 percent. At the age of thirty-one to thirty-five years, another major shift occurred. The abortion rate for Protestant women dropped dramatically from the highest to zero, whereas the abortion rates for both Jewish and Catholic women increased. Brunner and Newton, "Abortions in Relation to Viable Births," 87, fig. 4. [BACK]

24. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 64-65, 114-118. [BACK]

24. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 64-65, 114-118.

25. Ibid., 194-195, 198. [BACK]

26. You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sara Brooks, edited by Thordis Simonsen (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 176, 177. [BACK]

27. Stix, "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," 362-363; complications following abortions are summarized in a table on 362. Raymond E. Watkins, "A Five-Year Study of Abortion," AJOG 26 (August 1933): 162. See also a Tennessee study, James R. Reinberger and Percy B. Russell, "The Conservative Treatment of Abortion," J AMA 107 (November 7, 1936): 1527. [BACK]

28. The closing of numerous small hospitals, including maternity hospitals, during the 1930s contributed to the movement of all medical care, including abortion, into public hospitals. Rosemary Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 141-143, 147-148; Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 171-195. [BACK]

29. I do not know when this ward first opened. Obstetric staff records beginning in 1938 discuss the number of abortion cases in ward 41. "Staff Conference of the Obstetrics Department," 1938-1958, box 30, "Department of Obstetrics," Medical Director's Office, Cook County Hospital, Cook County Hospital Archives. [BACK]

30. Dr. Gertrude Engbring in Transcript of People v. Heissler, 338 Ill. 596 (1930), Case Files, vault no. 44783, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901; Augusta Weber, "Confidential Material Compiled for Joint Commission on Accreditation, June 1964," box 5, "Obstetrics Department—Accreditation 1964," Office of the Administrator, Cook County Hospital Archives. An "Abortion Service" was opened at Harlem Hospital in 1935. Murray and Winkelstein, "Incomplete Abortion," 31. [BACK]

31. The Children's Bureau study was reported on before publication by Fred J. Taussig, "Abortion in Relation to Fetal and Maternal Welfare," AJOG 22 (November 1931): 729-738 and AJOG 22 (December 1931): 868-878; and Fred J. Taussig, "Abortion in Relation to Fetal and Maternal Welfare," in Fetal, Newborn, and Maternal Morbidity and Mortality (New York: D. Appleton-Century by the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, 1933), 446-472; U.S. Dept. of Labor, Children's Bureau, Maternal Mortality in Fifteen States, Bureau publication no. 223 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), 100-115, 133. [BACK]

32. Hooker, Maternal Mortality in New York City, 51, 54; Taussig, "Abortion in Relation to Fetal and Maternal Welfare" (December 1931), 872. [BACK]

33. William J. Robinson, The Law against Abortion: Its Perniciousness Demonstrated and Its Repeal Demanded (New York: Eugenics Publishing, 1933); A. J. Rongy, Abortion: Legal or Illegal? (New York: Vanguard Press, 1933). See also Alan F. Guttmacher, "The Genesis of Liberalized Abortion in New York: A Personal Insight," update by Irwin H. Kaiser, in Abortion, Medicine, and the Law, 3d ed., rev., edited by J. Douglas Butler and David F. Walbert (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1986), 231. [BACK]

34. On Rongy, see "Abraham Rongy, Obstetrician, 71," NYT , October 11, 1949. On Robinson, see Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right, 173-178; "Dr. W.J. Robinson, Urologist, Is Dead," NYT , January 7, 1936, p. 22; entry for William Josephus Robinson in The National Cyclopaedia of Biography, Being the History of the United States, vol. 35 (New York: James T. White and Co., 1949), 545-546. For early support for legal abortion, see W. Robinson, The Law against Abortion, 26; M. Rabinovitz, "End Results of Criminal Abortion: With Comments on Its Present Status," New York Medical Journal 100 (October 24, 1914): 808-811; William J. Robinson, "The Ethics of Abortion," New York Medical Journal 100 (October 31, 1914): 897. [BACK]

35. W. Robinson, The Law against Abortion, remark on 26. [BACK]

36. Rongy, Abortion, 39, 90, 146, 200-204, 206-209. [BACK]

37. "Abraham Rongy, Obstetrician, 71." [BACK]

38. A.J. Rongy, "Abortion: The $100,000,000 Racket," American Mercury 40 (February 1937): 145. [BACK]

39. Gretta Palmer, "Not to Be Born," Pictorial Review 38 (February 1937): 24, 37, 45. [BACK]

40. B. B. Tolnai, "The Abortion Racket," Forum 94 (September 1935): 177. [BACK]

41. "Book Notices," JAMA 102 (January 6, 1934): 71-72. [BACK]

42. On England, see Barbara Brookes, Abortion in England, 1900-1967 (London: Croom Helm, 1988); Sheila Rowbotham, "A New World for Women": Stella Browne, Socialist Feminist (London: Pluto Press, 1977). On the Soviet Union, see Taussig, Abortion, chap. 26. On Germany, see Atina Grossmann, "Abortion and Economic Crisis: The 1931 Campaign against 218 in Germany," New German Critique 14 (spring 1978): 119-137; "Demand of the Independent Social Democrats that the Penalties for Abortion Be Removed," JAMA 75 (November 6, 1920): 1283; "Attack on the Law Concerning Abortion," JAMA 96 (February 14, 1931): 541-542; "The Attitude of Women Physicians toward the Abortion Question,'' JAMA 98 (April 30, 1932): 1580. On Switzerland, see "Bill to Legalize Abortion in Basel," JAMA 73 (October 4, 1919): 1095; "Abolishing Penalties for Abortion," JAMA 74 (June 12, 1920): 1656. On Vienna, see "Proposed New Legislation Concerning Abortion," JAMA 78 (January 21, 1922): 208. [BACK]

43. Brookes, Abortion in England, chap. 4. [BACK]

44. For examples of coverage of the European movements in medical journals, see note 42. Numerous articles appeared in the Birth Control Review. See, for example, Paul Lublinsky, "Birth Control in Soviet Russia," BCR 12 (May 1928): 142-143; Margaret Sanger, "Women in Germany," BCR 4 (December 1920): 8-9. See also "Sweden Considers a Proposal to Legalize Abortion," Nation 140 (March 20, 1935): 318; B. B. Tolnai, "Abortions and the Law," Nation 148 (April 15, 1939): 424-427. [BACK]

45. Tess Slesinger, "Missis Flinders," part 4 of The Unpossessed; A Novel of the Thirties (1934; reprint, New York: Feminist Press, 1984). This chapter was first published in 1932 as a short story and "was the first fiction dealing with abortion to appear in a magazine of general circulation," as Janet Sharistanian notes in the afterword to The Unpossessed, 377, 385 n. 38. See also Agnes Smedley, Daughter of Earth (1929 reprint, New York: Feminist Press, 1973), 197-200, and Meridel Le Sueur, The Girl (Minneapolis: West End Press and MEP Publications, 1978), which was written in 1939 but not published until the 1970s. Josephine Herbst wrote autobiographically of abortion in "Unmarried" but did not publish the story. On Herbst, see Elinor Langer, Josephine Herbst, An Atlantic Monthly Press Book (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1983), 71-72. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for alerting me to Langer. That Le Sueur and Langer's stories were left unpublished shows the difficulty for women of publicly discussing this topic. [BACK]

46. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right, 377-378; Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 300-303. [BACK]

47. Colorado State Senator George A. Glenn, M.D. to Dr. Sanger, December 26, 1938; Florence Rose to Glenn, January 3, 1939; "A Bill for an Act Relating to the Legalization of Birth Control by Artificial or Natural Methods"; telegram from Rose to Glenn, January 16, 1939; Rose to Glenn, January 16, 1939, all letters in folder 10, box 2, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Calderone Papers used with the permission of the Schlesinger Library. The Colorado State Archives has no material of Senator Glenn's or the Medical Affairs Committee; personal communication from Terry Ketelsen, Colorado State Archivist. [BACK]

48. Linda Gordon discusses why the birth control movement moved away from the left in Woman's Body, Woman's Right, chap. 9, 245-247. See also J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 209-227; Carole R. McCann, Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 26-53; Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 60-61. [BACK]

49. On the U.S. birth control movement's antiabortion position, see, for example, the response of Mary Knoblauch to letter from Herman Dekker, BCR 4 (July 1920): 16 "Here Is an Illogical Situation," BCR 14 (March 1930): 73; "The Curse of Abortion," BCR 13 (November 1929): 307. On the English movement, see Brookes, Abortion in England, 80, 87, 90. [BACK]

50. Taussig, Abortion. On the National Committee on Maternal Health, a committee of doctors that disassociated itself from the radicalism of the birth control movement, see Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right, 258-259 Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue, 168-191. [BACK]

51. Fred J. Taussig, review of Abortion: Legal or Illegal? by A. J. Rongy, BCR 17 (June 1933): 153. [BACK]

52. Taussig, Abortion, 443-444. [BACK]

52. Taussig, Abortion, 443-444.

53. Ibid., 444. [BACK]

52. Taussig, Abortion, 443-444.

54. Ibid., 443. [BACK]

55. Norman R. Fielder, "Study of Attitudes, Personality, Social Fitness, Adaptability, Character, and Motivations of Medical Students," JAMA 113 (November 25, 1939): 2005. [BACK]

56. Taussig, Abortion, 292-297. [BACK]

57. Quotations in ibid., 296, 292; see also Gerald B. Webb, "Clinical Aspects of Tuberculosis," in The Cyclopedia of Medicine, edited by George Morris, vol. 12 (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1935), 244-268. [BACK]

58. Taussig, Abortion, 296. [BACK]

58. Taussig, Abortion, 296.

59. Ibid., 320-321, 297. [BACK]

58. Taussig, Abortion, 296.

60. Ibid., 277-321. [BACK]

58. Taussig, Abortion, 296.

61. Ibid., 278-279. For a more conservative view, see Hugo Ehrenfest, book review of Der Kuenstliche Abort. Indikationen und Methoden (Indications and methods of artificial abortion), 2d ed., by Georg Winter and Hans Naujoks, AJOG 25 (March 1933): 463. [BACK]

62. "Queries and Minor Notes. Abortion or Removal of Pregnant Uterus," JAMA 96 (April 4, 1931): 1169. [BACK]

63. Quotation from Rongy, Abortion, 170-171; Guttmacher, "The Genesis of Liberalized Abortion in New York," 229-230. [BACK]

64. Ed Keemer, Confessions of a Pro-Life Abortionist (Detroit: Vinco Press, 1980), 63. [BACK]

65. Rongy, Abortion, 134. [BACK]

66. On specialization, see Rosemary Stevens, American Medicine and the Public Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); 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. [BACK]

67. Lawrence Lader, Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 46; Keemer, Confessions, 65-68; "Abortaria," Time 28 (October 19, 1936): 71. [BACK]

68. Rongy, Abortion, 134-135. [BACK]

69. Tolnai, "The Abortion Racket," 176. [BACK]

70. See "Pacific Coast Abortion Ring" File, HHFC; "Abortaria," 70-71. Dr. Robert Douglas Spencer performed abortions for women from all over the East Coast in his office in Ashland, Pennsylvania; see Lader, Abortion, 42-47, and Ellen Messer and Kathryn E. May, eds., Back Rooms: Voices from the Illegal Abortion Era (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 218-224. On a nonphysician abortionist who practiced for decades in Portland, Oregon, see Ruth Barnett, as told to Doug Baker, They Weep on My Doorstep ([Oregon]: Halo Publishers, 1969) and a recent biography of Barnett by Rickie Solinger, The Abortionist: A Woman against the Law (New York: Free Press, 1994). [BACK]

71. This case study is based on patient records and other legal documents discovered in the Transcript of People v. Martin, 382 Ill. 192 (1943), Case Files, vault no. 51699, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

72. Gabler went to Dearborn Medical College. In 1921, she gained a second medical license in West Virginia, where she spent part of each year. Perhaps she ran an abortion practice there also. All biographical information on Dr. Josephine Gabler is from the Deceased Physician Master File, AMA. [BACK]

73. Supplemental Report, Statement of Gordon B. Nash, Assistant State's Attorney, April 23, 1942, in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

74. A business card of Gabler's introduced into evidence in the Martin trial suggests that the clinic was open every day. The card lists the hours as "8 to 8." Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

75. Supplemental Report, Statement of Gordon B. Nash. [BACK]

76. Martin estimated that she had worked as a receptionist for Gabler for "about 12 or 15 years." Supplemental Report, Statement of Gordon B. Nash. On Martin's management of the practice, see Ada Martin in the Transcript of People v. Martin. On Dr. Millstone's involvement, see "Doctor Bares Abortion Ring, Then Kills Self," Chicago Daily Tribune, April 18, 1941, pp. 1-2. Dr. E. D. Howe was also arrested, though it is unclear whether he performed abortions; "Offices of Loop Doctor Raided in Abortion Quiz," Chicago Sunday Tribune, May 11, 1941, p. 21. [BACK]

77. Kristin Luker has assumed that women did not seek illegal abortions from doctors and that doctors did not assist women. Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 50, 51. [BACK]

78. Supplemental Report, Statement of Gordon B. Nash; "Millstone's Widow Kills Self in Abortion Probe," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 1, 1941, p. 1. Of the eighteen doctors named in the patient records, eleven could be identified. (Sometimes only a last name was included on the record). All eleven were AMA members and eight were specialists of various types. Biographical data found in American Medical Directory: A Register of Legally Qualified Physicians of the United States, 16th ed. (Chicago: Press of the AMA, 1940). I am grateful to Rose Holz for collecting this information. [BACK]

79. Of seventy patient records and seven additional witnesses, the referring individual was identifiable in thirty-eight cases. Eighteen were referred by doctors, or 47 percent. On the process of seeking and finding an abortionist in a later period, see Nancy Howell Lee, The Search for an Abortionist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). [BACK]

80. Mrs. Helen B. in Transcript of People v. Martin. I have used initials rather than surnames of women who testified in abortion cases and may still be living. [BACK]

81. Supplemental Report, Statement of Gordon B. Nash. For a referring nurse, see the patient record for Grace E. in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

82. George Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1941, p. 1. The average fee charged for an abortion is my estimate based on records in the transcript of the trial; see the discussion of fees later in this chapter. [BACK]

83. Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth, 54, 114; Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 136, 358. [BACK]

84. Twelve of thirty-eight identifiable referrals found their way to the clinic through friends. [BACK]

85. While the newspapers covered the Martin story, they reported the deaths of two women due to criminal abortions; "Orders Arrest of Midwife in Woman's Death," Daily Tribune, May 7, 1941, p. 17; "Charge Doctor with Murder in Abortion Death," Daily Tribune, November 20, 1942, p. 9. [BACK]

86. Each of the women who testified described the same procedure; this paragraph summarizes their testimony in the Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

87. Quotations from testimony of Helen Z., Gordon Nash, Julia M., Violet S. in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

88. On standard medical procedures in abortion cases, see Taussig, Abortion, 328-340. As one physician noted, "a clean curettage by a skilled abortionist is obviously no more liable to infection than a therapeutic abortion performed in our own operating room"; Virginia Clay Hamilton, "The Clinical and Laboratory Differentiation of Spontaneous and Induced Abortion," AJOG 41 (January 1941): 62. [BACK]

89. A study of working-class New York women found that of the 1,497 women who reported induced abortions, only 33, or 2 percent, were unmarried at the time. Brunner and Newton, "Abortion in Relation to Viable Births," 88. [BACK]

90. All of the figures are based on my calculations from the seventy patient records included in the Transcript of People v. Martin. I have compared the testimony of the witnesses to their medical records. Of twenty-four witnesses, seventeen appeared in the patient records. Fifteen of the records showed the correct information; one patient record had no information on marital status, but she was unmarried; and one woman lied and said she was married when she was not. If other unmarried women lied too, the proportion of unmarried women would be higher. [BACK]

91. Most of the women with children had one or two. Fourteen had one child, twelve had two, five had three, and one had four. All of these figures are my own calculations from the patient record data. [BACK]

92. Victoria M. in patient record in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

93. This is based on comparing the testimony of Helen N., Helen Z., and Helen B. to the information on their patient records in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

94. Two modal ages, however, were younger, twenty-one and twenty-three years old. Of the women in this sample, 55 percent were under twenty-five; 45 percent were twenty-five or more years old. [BACK]

95. "Abortion Surveillance: Preliminary Data—United States, 1992," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: CDC Surveillance Summaries 43 (December 23, 1994): 930, 932, table 1. [BACK]

96. Rosalind Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom, rev. ed. (1984; reprint, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), quotation on 145, and 141-167. Recent abortion data show the trend to delaying childbearing. Teenagers make up a smaller proportion of the women having abortions than in the past: in 1972, 33 percent of the women who had abortions were nineteen years old or less; in 1992, teenagers were only 20 percent of the women having abortions, and women twenty-five or older made up 45 percent of the women having abortions. "Abortion Surveillance," 932, table 1. [BACK]

97. "Millstone's Widow Kills Self," 12. [BACK]

98. Based on the information in the patient records under "date" of coming into the office at 190 North State Street and "mstd.," which refers to the last menstrual date, I have calculated at what point in their pregnancies these women came in for abortions. The most frequent length of pregnancy at the time of abortion was two months (thirty cases). Sixty of the women (86 per-

cent) aborted pregnancies that had progressed eight weeks or less. In 1992, 53 percent of abortions were in the first eight weeks. Nearly 90 percent of all abortions are performed in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. "Abortion Surveillance," 930-933, table 1. [BACK]

99. I have calculated these figures from the data in the patient records in the Transcript of People v. Martin. The Kinsey study was based on 304 cases. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion, 203, table 73. [BACK]

101. A study of births in 1928 found that the most frequent physician fee for delivery of a baby was $50, the fee most frequently charged for abortion at Martin's office. The total cost of an average obstetric case was approximately $200. Richard Arthur Bolt, "The Cost of Obstetric Service to Berkeley Mothers," JAMA 94 (May 17, 1930): 1561, 1563. [BACK]

102. Gordon Nash in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

103. Patient records for Alice F., Millicent M., Dorothy P., Margaret C., and Marguarita H. and record and testimony of Clara S. in Transcript of People v. Martin. One woman's pregnancy was two months, two were three months, and three were four to four and a half months along. [BACK]

104. Georgina W. in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

105. Paula F. in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

106. Ronald L. Numbers, "The Third Party: Health Insurance in America," 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), 139. Rosemary Stevens discusses how hospital charges varied with the class of the patient and, more recently, the "cost-shifting" in hospital budgets to make up for any "charity care." Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth, 10-11, 112-113, 135, 270. [BACK]

107. Thirteen of the seventy patient records showed that women owed money for their operations. Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

108. Nine of twenty-four witnesses (37.5 percent) described in Transcript of People v. Martin how they suggested or bargained for a lower price. Several of the patient records also show that an initial fee was changed. See the records of Anita P., Bernice M., Pearl G., and Pauline G. in the Transcript. [BACK]

109. Testimony of Helen N. and Charlotte B. in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

110. George Wright, "Fires Assistant Prosecutor," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1941, p. 1. [BACK]

111. As a police officer, Moriarity received a little less than $2,500 per year. Quotations in Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," 1. [BACK]

112. Letter to Leslie Reagan from Rose S. [pseud.], Maryland, October 3, 1987. [BACK]

113. Other doctors who appear to have specialized in abortion in Chicago include Dr. William E. Shelton, who may have been involved with Martin ("Dr. William Eugene Shelton," Daily Tribune, September 27, 1928; "Loop Physician Held in Abortion Conspiracy Case," Daily Tribune, November 21, 1940); Dr. Joseph A. Khamis ("Doctor Accused Second Time as an Abortionist," Tribune, August 18, 1942); Dr. Justin L. Mitchell ( People v. Mitchell, 368 Ill.

399); and Dr. Edward Peyser ( People v. Peyser, 380 Ill. 404). All newspaper clippings in Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

114. Virginia Clay Hamilton, "Abortion," JAMA 117 (July 19, 1941): 216. [BACK]

115. Keemer, Confessions, 13, 18, 27, 29, 89-93. I am grateful to Dr. Walter Lear for alerting me to Keemer's autobiography. [BACK]

115. Keemer, Confessions, 13, 18, 27, 29, 89-93. I am grateful to Dr. Walter Lear for alerting me to Keemer's autobiography.

116. Ibid., 12, 23-24, 31, 61-65, quotation on 63. [BACK]

117. Keemer never identified his wife by her full name. My guess is she did abortions as well because he wrote "we were performing more than a dozen [abortions] a month." Ibid., 25-26, 29-31, quotation on 100. [BACK]

117. Keemer never identified his wife by her full name. My guess is she did abortions as well because he wrote "we were performing more than a dozen [abortions] a month." Ibid., 25-26, 29-31, quotation on 100.

118. Ibid., 65-69, quotations on 65, 68. Feminists also reported that this was a relatively painless method; Jane, "Jane," Voices, June-November 1973, type-script, pp. 8-9. [BACK]

119. "Abortifacient Pastes: The Exploitation and Dangers of Pastes Sold for Producing Therapeutic Abortion," JAMA 98 (June 11, 1932): 2155. See also Taussig, Abortion, 273, 323-324. [BACK]

120. Keemer, Confessions, 100-101, quotation on 101. On federal efforts to eradicate abortifacients pastes in the late 1930s and early 1940s, see "Two Abortifacients Barred," JAMA 113 (October 21, 1939): 1583. [BACK]

121. Keemer, Confessions, 70, 131, 138-142, 144. [BACK]

122. Lader, Abortion, 46; 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), 59; Patricia G. Miller, The Worst of Times (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 32-33. [BACK]

123. On Timanus's practice, see testimony of Bessie E. Nelson and Anne Elizabeth Adams in Transcript, Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, 200 Md. 133 (1951), pp. 456-583, Maryland Court of Appeals (transcripts), October 1951 [MSA S434; MdHR 12, 281-24; 1/67/13/34], Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD; Lader, Abortion, 42-44, 47-48. [BACK]

124. Lader, Abortion, 46. [BACK]

124. Lader, Abortion, 46.

125. Ibid., 43-47; Joffe, "Portraits of Three 'Physicians of Conscience,'" 46-67; Keemer, Confessions, 12-14, 33-34. [BACK]

126. Bessie E. Nelson in Transcript, Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, pp. 485, 488. [BACK]