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Notes

Introduction

1. On the legal status of abortion, see James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 49-61, 402-416; Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 155-195; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom , rev. ed. (1984; reprint, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 67-138; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 217-244; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). [BACK]

2. Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood," American Quarterly 18 (summer 1966): 151-174; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs 1 (1975): 1-29. [BACK]

3. See two critiques and reviews of the field of women's history, Nancy A. Hewitt, "Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women's History in the 1980s," Social History 10 (October 1985); reprint in Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in U.S. Women's History , edited by Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz (New York: Routledge, 1990), 1-14; Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Women's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 9-39. For collections of recent scholarship on the history of women of color and working-class women, see DuBois and Ruiz, Unequal Sisters; Ava Baron, ed., Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); and the pathbreaking collection by Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Random House, 1972). [BACK]

4. The key work generating intellectual thought and debate on the public sphere is Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society , translated by Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). For a collection of recent scholarship, see Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992). For feminist thinking, see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Linda K. Kerber, "A Constitutional Right to Be Treated Like American Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship," in U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays , edited by Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 17-35. [BACK]

5. This cooperative relationship may have been particularly significant for public health and women's lives. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (New York: Viking, 1988); Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Robyn L. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Jane Lewis, The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900-1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1980); Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 190-213; Susan L. Smith, Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). [BACK]

6. For examples of earlier feminists' views of medicine, see Ann Douglas Wood, "'The Fashionable Diseases': Women's Complaints and Their Treatment in Nineteenth Century America," in Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women , edited by Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 1-22; and the critical response by Regina Morantz, "The Lady and Her Physician," in Hartman and Banner, Clio's Consciousness Raised , 38-53. See also Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976); Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978). For a different view, see Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). [BACK]

7. For other patient-focused histories, see Leavitt, Brought to Bed; Roy Porter, ed., Patients and Practitioners (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Mary E. Fissell, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). [BACK]

8. On police, see Eric H. Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Roger Lane, Policing the City: Boston 1822-1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). On prisons, see Lawrence M. Friedman and Robert V. Percival, The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 288-309; Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981); David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971).

On marriage, divorce, and women's property rights, see Kerber, "A Constitutional Right to Be Treated Like American Ladies"; Nancy F. Cott, "Giving Character to Our Whole Civil Polity: Marriage and the Public Order in the Late Nineteenth Century," in Kerber, Kessler-Harris, and Sklar, U.S. History as Women's History, 107-121; Grossberg, Governing the Hearth; Marylynne Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property, in Nineteenth-century New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982); D. Kelly Weisberg, Property, Family, and the Legal Profession , vol. z of Women and the Law: A Social Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing, 1982). On women and crime, see D. Kelly Weisberg, Women and the Criminal Law , vol. 1 of Women and the Law: A Social Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing, 1982); 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); Anna Clark, Women's Silence, Men's Violence: Sexual Assault in England, 1770-1845 (New York: Pandora Press, 1987). [BACK]

9. James C. Mohr, Doctors and the Law: Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Mohr, Abortion in America; Charles E. Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Michael Clark and Catherine Crawford, eds., Legal Medicine in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). [BACK]

10. James Willard Hurst, The Growth of American Law: The Law Makers (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1950). For overviews of American legal history, see Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law , 2d ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985); Kermit L. Hall, The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). [BACK]

11. Histories of courts in action include Stanton Wheeler et al., "Do the 'Haves' Come out Ahead? Winning and Losing in State Supreme Courts, 1870-1970," Law and Society Review 21 (1987): 403-445; Robert A. Silverman, Law and Urban Growth: Civil Litigation in the Boston Trial Courts, 1880-1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Hendrik Hartog, "The Public Law of a County Court; Judicial Government in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts," The American Journal of Legal History 20 (1976): 282-329. [BACK]

12. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , translated by Alan Sheridan (1975; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1979), III, 108. [BACK]

13. The state criminal abortion laws did not change at all or only in non-substantive ways for a century; Mohr, Abortion in America, 224-225. In Illinois, the legislature amended the law to prohibit advertising of abortion in 1919 and, in 1961, clarified that an attempted abortion, even if the woman was not pregnant, would be considered abortion. Illinois, Laws of Illinois , 1919, pp. 427-428, sec. 6; Illinois, Laws of Illinois , 1961, p. 2027. [BACK]

14. Kristin Luker argues that there was medical consensus on therapeutic abortion for a century. until about 1960 when new technology broke that consensus apart and disagreement erupted within the medical profession and, then, the public. I disagree with this interpretation. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood , 54-91. [BACK]

15. Addison Niles, ''Criminal Abortion," in Transactions of the Twenty-First Anniversary Meeting of the Illinois State Medical Society (Chicago: Fergus Printing, 1872), 99; James Foster Scott, "Criminal Abortion," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children (hereafter cited as AJO ) 35 (January 1896): 77. On the pluralism and ambiguity of American law, see Hendrik Hartog, "Pigs and Positivism," Wisconsin Law Review 1985, no. 4 (1985): 899-935. [BACK]

16. John T. Noonan Jr., "An Almost Absolute Value in History," in The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives , edited by John T. Noonan Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 1-59. [BACK]

17. A survey of the guides to religious periodicals shows this to be true. The small number of articles on abortion published in religious magazines were overwhelmed by those on birth control. The Catholic Periodicals Index , for example, lists 155 citations to articles on birth control and only 6 on abortion in 1930-1933. In 1961-1962, there were III articles on birth control and 28 on abortion. The Index to Religious Periodical Literature lists in one ten-year period, 1949-1959, only 6 articles on birth control and 3 on abortion. Not until 1971-1972 did the index cite more articles on abortion than on birth control. I am grateful to Rose Holz and Lynne Curry for collecting and tabulating this data. [BACK]

18. On religious opinion in response to the birth control movement, see David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 136-171. [BACK]

19. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 5-10; Glanville Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law (New York: Knopf, 1957), 148-152, 192-197; Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen, Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 31, 50, 87, 156-157. Most of the essays in Caring and Curing address only current attitudes toward abortion, suggesting that until recently, most sects showed little interest in abortion. [BACK]

20. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood , chap. 3. [BACK]

21. For a helpful discussion of Foucault, poststructural analysis, and feminist critiques, see Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight , 1-13. Michel Foucault, An Introduction , vol. 1 in The History of Sexuality , translated by Robert Hurley (1976; reprint, New York: Random House, 1978). Joan Wallach Scott has become known as the strongest advocate for poststructural analysis of women's history; see Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). For a debate, see Linda Gordon and Joan Scott in Signs 15 (summer 1990): 848-860. For another critique of the emphasis on linguistics, see\

bell hooks, Talking Back: thinking feminist, thinking black (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1989), 35-41. [BACK]

22. My discussion of abortion in common law and its criminalization relies most on Mohr, Abortion in America . [BACK]

22. My discussion of abortion in common law and its criminalization relies most on Mohr, Abortion in America .

23. Ibid., 10, chap. 1; Angus McLaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1984), 102-103, 108-109, 188 n. 98. [BACK]

24. McLaren, Reproductive Rituals , 188 n. 98; Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law , 149-152, 197. [BACK]

25. Mohr, Abortion in America , 3-45; Charles E. Rosenberg, "The Therapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning, and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America," in The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine , edited by Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1970), 3-26. [BACK]

26. Quotation as cited in Julia Cherry Spruill, Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies (1938; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 325-326. Mohr, Abortion in America , chap. 1, 58-66; McLaren, Reproductive Rituals , 103-105. On abortion methods worldwide, see Edward Shorter, A History of Women's Bodies (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 177-224. [BACK]

27. Cornelia Hughes Dayton uncovered this case and the phrase, "Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village," William and Mary Quarterly 48 (January 1991): 1, 24-25; McLaren, Reproductive Rituals , 106-107. [BACK]

28. Mohr, Abortion in America , 20-25; Illinois, Revised Code , 1827, sec. 46, p. 131. [BACK]

29. Mohr, Abortion in America , 22, 24. [BACK]

29. Mohr, Abortion in America , 22, 24.

30. Ibid., 47-59, 70-71; Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct , 225-227. [BACK]

31. Mohr, Abortion in America , 86-94. [BACK]

31. Mohr, Abortion in America , 86-94.

32. Ibid., 147-225. On the Jacksonian period, the status of the regular profession, and Irregulars, see Richard Harrison Shryock, Medical Licensing in America, 1650-1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967); Ronald L. Numbers, "The Fall and Rise of the Medical Profession," in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health , edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, 2d ed., rev. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 185-205; William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); Norman Gevitz, ed., Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). Regulars presented abortion as an Irregular practice, but Homeopaths essentially shared their antiabortion position. See, for example, Edwin M. Hale, The Great Crime of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: C.S. Halsey, 1867). [BACK]

33. Daniel Scott Smith, "Family Limitation, Sexual Control, and Domestic Feminism in Victorian America," Feminist Studies 1 (winter-spring 1973): 40-57; Robert V. Wells, "Family History and Demographic Transition," Journal of Social History 9 (fall 1975): 1-9. [BACK]

34. Mohr, Abortion in America , 166-168. Quotation from Horatio Robinson Storer, Why Not? A Book for Every Woman (Boston: Lee and Shepard,

1868); reprinted as A Proper Bostonian on Sex and Birth Control (New York: Arno Press, 1974), 85. [BACK]

35. Quotation from Horatio Robinson Storer, Is It I? A Book for Every Man (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1868); reprinted as A Proper Bostonian on Sex and Birth Control , 134; Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct , 224-228, 236-239; Mohr, Abortion in America , 107-108, 168-170. [BACK]

36. Mary Roth Walsh, "Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply": Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 109-118; Virginia G. Drachman, Hospital with a Heart: Women Doctors and the Paradox of Separatism at the New England Hospital, 1862-1969 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). [BACK]

37. On the anxieties about sexuality woven into the use of anesthesia and obstetrics, see Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 24-50; Martin S. Pernick, A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Professionalism, and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 6l-62. On the expectation that female physicians would care for female patients and treat them differently, see M. Walsh, Doctors Wanted , 95-95, 115-116; Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). [BACK]

38. On medical concern about the morality of obstetrics and gynecology, see M. Walsh, Doctors Wanted , 113; Virginia G. Drachman, "The Loomis Trial: Social Mores and Obstetrics in the Nineteenth Century," in Childbirth: The Beginning of Motherhood, Proceedings of the Second Motherhood Symposium (Madison, Wis.: Women's Studies Research Center, 1982), reprint in Leavitt, Women and Health in America , 166-174. [BACK]

39. On prostitution, see Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman: A Case Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America," American Quarterly 23 (1971): 562-584, reprint in Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct , 109-128; Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). On antislavery, see Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Anti-Slavery Feminists in American Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Slavery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). On temperance, see Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981). On voluntary motherhood, see Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , chap. 5. On ninteenth-century women's sense of moral superiority as a source of activism, see Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). On the women's movement as a whole, see Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978); Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States , rev. ed. (1959; reprint Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975). [BACK]

40. Storer, Why Not? , 76, 83. [BACK]

40. Storer, Why Not? , 76, 83.

41. Ibid., 32. [BACK]

40. Storer, Why Not? , 76, 83.

42. Ibid., 34-35, 69-70, 84. [BACK]

43. Mohr, Abortion in America , 200-225. [BACK]

44. On Comstockery, see Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 24, 164-166, 208-209; Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America , 257-258, 263-266, 281-288. [BACK]

45. On the state laws in general, see Mohr, Abortion in America , 29-30. Only one statement has been uncovered to explain why the state of Illinois passed this new criminal abortion law in early 1867: "Mr. Green explained that the reason for the introduction oft he bill," the Illinois State Journal reported, "was that there was now no law on this subject in this state." "Illinois Legislature, Introduction of Bills," Springfield, Illinois State Journal , February 8, 1867, p. 1; Illinois, Journal of the Senate , 1867, p. 1107; Illinois, Journal of the House of Representatives , 1867, p. 689. Quotations from Illinois, Public Laws of Illinois , 1867, p. 89, and Illinois, Public Laws of Illinois , 1872, p. 369. The Illinois State Medical Society Papers, Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Illinois, yielded no further information on the passage of this law in Illinois. [BACK]

46. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870-1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). The time it took for physicians to accept their own role in spreading infection via their hands and to change their own behavior is the classic example of the sometimes slow pace of change in medicine; Erwin H. Ackerknecht, A Short History of Medicine , rev. ed. (1955; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 187-191. [BACK]

47. Research included examining every issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association , vol. 1 (1901) to vol. 65 (1973); a survey of African American periodical literature, indexed in Index to Periodical Articles by and about Negroes , 1943-1972 and Index to Periodical Articles by and about Blacks , 1973; and research in archival collections. [BACK]

48. James Gilbert, Perfect Cities: Chicago's Utopias of 1893 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Harold M. Mayer and Richard C. Wade, with the assistance of Glen E. Holt, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Bessie Louise Pierce, The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893 , vol. 3 of A History of Chicago (New York: Knopf, 1957); Emmett Dedmon, Fabulous Chicago (New York: Random House, 1953); Thomas N. Bonner, Medicine in Chicago, 1850-1950: A Chapter in the Social and Scientific Development of a City , 2d ed. (1957; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois, 1991). [BACK]

49. Records that would give precise quantitative answers to questions about the practice of abortion do not exist. We will never know exactly how many abortions were performed or how many women died as a result of their abortions; nor will we ever be able to determine the proportion of the female population who had abortions or the proportion of practitioners who performed them. Social surveys and aggregate data that became available in medical literature in the 1930s help make it possible to estimate answers to these types of questions. Sources are discussed further in the text and in the note on sources. [BACK]

50. On the related history of pregnancy, childbirth, and contraception, see Leavitt, Brought to Bed; Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz, Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1979); Gordon,

Woman's Body, Woman's Right; Kennedy, Birth Control in America; James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992). On the centrality of reproduction to society and history, see Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884; reprint, New York: International Publishers, 1972); Mary O'Brien, The Politics of Reproduction (Boston: Routledge, 1981). [BACK]

Chapter 1 An Open Secret

1. Dr. A. S. Warner's office was at 3236 West Polk Street. Inquest on Frances Collins, May 7, 1920, case no. 161-5-20, Medical Records Department, Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, Chicago, Illinois. [BACK]

1. Dr. A. S. Warner's office was at 3236 West Polk Street. Inquest on Frances Collins, May 7, 1920, case no. 161-5-20, Medical Records Department, Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, Chicago, Illinois.

2. Ibid. [BACK]

3. I have identified In women in the Chicago area who had abortions between 1880 and 1930. Most were white and working class. Of 73 for whom there is information available on their marital status, the majority were married (45, or 63 percent). This is not based on a random sample and cannot be universalized. Other historians have also noted the importance of abortion to working-class women. Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 144; James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 243. [BACK]

4. For examples of the use of silence as a metaphor for the history of abortion, see Patricia Miller, The Worst of Times (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 6-7; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 40. On the liberatory aspects of speaking, see bell hooks, Talking Back: thinking feminist, thinking black (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1989), 10-18; Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). For a recent collection showing the fruitfulness of this theoretical conceptualization, Elaine Hedge and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, eds., Listening to Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). [BACK]

5. The focus on the past as silencing and speaking as liberatory overdraws the oppressiveness of the past, the transformations of the late 1960s, and the freedoms of the present. My critique of this silencing trope is similar to the critique made recently by queer theorists of the tendency in lesbian-gay history to present a history of progress from marginalization or invisibility to coming out. See Henry Abelove, "The Queering of Lesbian/Gay History," Radical History Review 62 (spring 1995): 44-57; Lisa Duggan, "'Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall,' New York Public Library, June 18-September 24, 1994," Radical History Review 62 (spring 1995): 193. The entire spring issue of Radical History Review is titled "The Queer Issue: New Visions of America's Lesbian and Gay Past." [BACK]

6. The bonds of womanhood" was Sarah Grimké's phrase and is the title

of Nancy F. Cott's book, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 1. See also Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs 1 (1975): 1-29; Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 4-7. For a debate and critiques of this idea see Nancy Cote, Marl Jo Buhle, Temma Kaplan, Gerda Lerner, and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "Politics and Culture in Women's History: A Symposium," Fetal-nice Studies 6: 1 (1980): 26-62; Denise Riley, " Am I That Name?" Feminism and the Category of ''Women" in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). I do not suggest that the biological experiences of being female create "natural" bonds among all women, overcoming social differences by race, class, age, and so on, but these shared female experiences helped define womanhood and could, at moments, create sympathies across social boundaries. [BACK]

7. The coroner's physician discovered during the autopsy that she had had an ectopic pregnancy, which her physicians, not surprisingly, had not discerned. The preeminent obstetrician Joseph B. DeLee reported that it was rare for a physician to diagnose ectopic pregnancy. The ectopic pregnancy was a contributing factor in Collins's death, but all of Collins's efforts were directed at aborting her pregnancy and that is what I concentrate on here. Edward H. Hutton, "Doctor's Statement Blank," Inquest on Collins; Joseph B. DeLee, The Principles and Practice of Obstetrics, 2d ed., rev. (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1916), 399. [BACK]

8. As cited in Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 493 n 23. [BACK]

9. For the estimate by Dr. C. S. Bacon, see "Chicago Medical Society. Regular Meeting, Held Nov. 23, 1904," JAMA 43 (December 17, 1904): 1889; quote from J. Henry Barbat, "Criminal Abortion," California State Journal of Medicine 9 (February 1911): 69. [BACK]

10. Marie E. Kopp, Birth Control in Practice: Analysis often Thousand Case Histories of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (1933; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972), 124; Katharine Bement Davis, Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women (1929; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972), xi-xiii, 20, 21; Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton, A Research in Marriage (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1929), 134, 133. [BACK]

11. U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, Maternal Mortality in Fifteen States , Bureau Publication No. 223 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), 108, 112-113; Calvin Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities: An Ecological and Statistical Study of Social Trends in Minneapolis and St. Paul (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Council of Social Agencies, 1937), 410-411. I am grateful to Elizabeth Lockwood for sharing the Schmid study with me. Isabella V. Granger, "Birth Control in Harlem," Birth Control Review (hereafter cited as BCR ) 22 (May 1938): 92; J. W. Walker in Val Do Turner, "Fertility of Women," Journal of the National Medical Association (hereafter cited as JNMA ) 5 (October-December 1913): 250; Caroline Hadley Robinson, Seventy Birth Control Clinics: A Survey and Analysis Including the General Effects of Control on Size and Quality of Population (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1930), 66-67. [BACK]

12. Regine K. Stix, "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," The Milbank Memorial

Fund Quarterly 13 (October 1935): 351-352. For examples of Catholic women in Chicago who had abortions, see Inquest on Frauciszka Gawlik, February 19, 1916, case no. 27-3-1916, Medical Records Department; Inquest on Mary Colbert, March 25, 1933, case no. 7-4-1933, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

13. Frederick J. Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced: Medical and Social Aspects (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1936), 26. [BACK]

14. James Foster Scott, "Criminal Abortion," AJO 33 (January 1896): 80; Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities , 410; Jerome E. Bates and Edward S. Zawadzki, Criminal Abortion: A Study in Medical Sociology (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1964), 44-45. Newspapers can be misleading. After examining abortion coverage in the New York Times and abortion case histories in the medical literature, James Mohr concluded that after 1880 abortion became the practice of unwed women. Mohr, Abortion in America , 240-244. [BACK]

15. Press and court interest in unmarried women and men are discussed further in later chapters of this volume. [BACK]

16. Mary A. Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion—Its Evils and Its Sad Consequences," Woman's Medical Journal (hereafter cited as WMJ ) 3 (August 1894): 34; Dr. J. R. Gardner in Inquest on Ellen Matson, November 19, 1917, case 330-11-1917, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

17. Marie Hansen in Inquest on Mary Schwartz, May 21, 1934, case no. 340-5-1934, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

18. "Prevention or Abortion, Which?" BCR 7 (May 1923): 127. [BACK]

19. Dr. B. Liber, "As a Doctor Sees It," BCR 2 (February-March 1918): 10; "Prevention or Abortion—Which?" BCR 7 ( July 1923): 182. A midwife used this phrase in 1888, "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 2. [BACK]

20. Frank Mau in Inquest on Catherine Mau, March 12, 1928, case 390-3-1928, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

21. Clara Taylor, "Observations of a Nurse," BCR 2 (June 1918), 13; see also Mary A. Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion—Its Evils and Its Sad Consequences" continued, WMJ 3 (September 1894): 62, 63. [BACK]

22. "Two Pertinent Remarks," Chicago Times , December 30, 1888, p. 4; A.B.C., "Does Public Opinion in the United States Sanction Abortion?" Medical Critic and Guide 23 (1920): 71. I suspect that "A.B.C." was William J. Robinson, an advocate of birth control and early advocate for legalized abortion. He was the editor of the Medical Critic and Guide and wrote most of its articles. Entry for William J. Robinson in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography Being the History of the United States , vol. 35 (New York: James T. White and Co., 1949), 546; Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 170-176. [BACK]

23. Joseph Taber Johnson, "Abortion and its Effects," AJO 33 (January 1896): 86-97, quotation on 91. See also Scott, "Criminal Abortion," 72-86. [BACK]

24. E. S. McKee, "Abortion," AJO 24 (October 1891): 1333. [BACK]

25. Henry O. Marcy in J. H. Carstens, "Education as a Factor in the Prevention of Criminal Abortion and Illegitimacy," JAMA 47 (December 8, 1906): 1890; John G. Clark in Edward A. Schumann, "The Economic Aspects of Abortion," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (hereafter cited as A JOG ) 7 (April 1924): 485. [BACK]

26. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 36; Susan E. Cayleff, "Self-

Help and the Patent Medicine Business," in Women, Health, and Medicine in America: A Historical Handbook , edited by Rima D. Apple (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990), 311-336; Leavitt, Brought to Bed , chap. 4. On self-medication in the early twentieth century, see Ronald L. Numbers, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912-1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 2-3. [BACK]

27. Denslow Lewis, "Facts Regarding Criminal Abortion," JAMA 35 (October 13, 1900): 944. [BACK]

28. Anne Burnet, "Abortion as the Exciting Cause of Insanity, WMJ 9 (November 1899): 400. On the germ theory and antiseptic procedure, see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 137-150; Gert H. Brieger, "American Surgery and the Germ Theory of Disease," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 40 (March-April 1966): 135-145. [BACK]

29. Barbara Brookes, Abortion in England, 1900-1967 (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 23, 37; quotation in "Hard Facts," BCR 4 (June 1920): 16. Regine Stix found that one illegal abortion (of 686) was performed by a neighbor, "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," 360 n. 14. [BACK]

30. Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion" (September 1894), 60-61. [BACK]

31. Inquest on Matson. Matson's aunt remarked that she and Matson's mother had advised against an abortion. Whether this remark was true or a comment made to avoid trouble with the authorities, neither aunt nor mother abandoned her. [BACK]

32. Inquest on Colbert. [BACK]

33. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, "'Ruined Girls': Changing Community Responses to Illegitimacy in Upstate New York, 1890-1920," Journal of Social History 18 (winter 1984): 247-272, quotation on 248. [BACK]

34. Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion" (August 1894), 36. [BACK]

35. Inquest on Ester Reed, June 9, 1914, case no. 73771, Medical Records Department. Although Emma Alby denied having done anything "wrong," her parents were convinced she was pregnant and took her to a physician for an abortion. Inquest on Emma Alby, September 11, 1915, case no. 141-10-1915, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

36. Inquest on Gawlik; Brumberg, "'Ruined Girls,'" 248-249, 250, 258; John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 187, 259. On neighborhood policing of unmarried women's sexual behavior, Joanne Meyerowitz, "Sexual Geography and Gender Economy: The Furnished Room Districts of Chicago, 1890-1930," Gender and History 2 (autumn 1990): 277. [BACK]

37. "Queries and Minor Notes. Maternities for the Unmarried," JAMA 43 (July 2, 1904): 42. [BACK]

38. Dr. Henry Fitzbutler founded the Louisville National Medical College. This is from the recollections of his grandson. Case 14, "Research Projects, The Negro Family in the U.S., Documents on Higher Class Families in Chicago," folder 13, box 131-81, E. Franklin Frazier Papers, used with the permission of the Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington D.C. On black hospitals, see Vanessa Northington Gamble,

Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement, 1920-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). [BACK]

39. Brumberg, "'Ruined Girls'," 260; Elizabeth Karsen Lockwood, "The Fallen Woman, the Maternity Home, and the State: A Study of Maternal Health Care for Single Parturients, 1870-1930" (master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1987); Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). By 1904, mandatory breastfeeding was an "established policy" among Illinois charitable maternities for the unwed, "Maternities for the Unmarried,'' 42. [BACK]

40. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls , 68-69, 81. [BACK]

41. Women's wages were based on the (false) assumption that women did not support themselves or their families because they had husbands or fathers who supported them. This discussion is drawn from Joanne Meyerowitz's excellent survey of women's wages in the early twentieth century, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 33-38. See also Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 230, 258, 262-263. [BACK]

42. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1988), 92-95, 98, 107-109, 112-113. [BACK]

43. Inquest on Collins. See also Inquest on Mary Baxter Moorhead, November 29, 1926, case no. 371-11-1926, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

44. Inquest on Mary Schwartz. [BACK]

45. Inquest on Mau. See also Inquest on Rosie Kawera, June 15, 1916, case no. 152-5-1916, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

46. The second visit is recorded in the Transcript of People v. Anna Heissler , 338 Ill. 56 (1930), Case Files, vault no. 44783, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, Illinois. [BACK]

47. Inquest on Collins; Inquest on Emily Projahn, October 10, 1916, case no. 26-12-1916, Medical Records Department; Inquest on Elsie Golcher, February 15, 1932, case no. 225-2-32, Medical Records Department; Inquest on Carolina Petrovitis, March 21, 1916, case no. 234-3-1916, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

48. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Knopf, 1990). On women in immigrant neighborhoods, see Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890-1925 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985). [BACK]

49. Ellen Ross notes a sense of "community obligation" among poor London mothers who automatically helped each other with child care. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870-1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 134-135; Leavitt, Brought to Bed , 87-108, 202-203, 208. [BACK]

50. In eleven cases found through coroner's records, boyfriends helped their unmarried lovers obtain abortions. For example, Inquest on Anna Johnson, May 27, 1915, case no. 77790, Medical Records Department; Inquest on

Mary Nowakowski, April 4, 1935, case no. 8o-5-1935, Medical Records Department; Inquest on Mary L. Kissell, August 3, 1937, case no. 300-8-1937, Medical Records Department; Dorothy Dunbar Bromley and Florence Haxton Britten, Youth and Sex: A Study of 1300 College Students (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1938), 262. On dating, see Meyerowitz, Women Adrift , 101-106; Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 54-55, 108-110. [BACK]

51. Inquests on Matson, Colbert, Nowakowski, Kissell. [BACK]

52. Charley Morehouse in Inquest on Matson. [BACK]

53. See, for example, Statement of Patrick O'Connell in 1907 Inquest on Nellie Walsh included in Transcript of People v. Beuttner , 233 Ill. 272 (1908), Case Files, vault no. 30876, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

54. John Harris in Inquest on Anna Marie Dimford, September 30, 1915, case no. 75-11-1915, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

55. Testimony of Fred Corderay in Inquest on Alma Heidenway, August 21, 1918, case no. 232-8-1918, Medical Records Department. He denied having a sexual relationship with Heidenway. [BACK]

56. Testimony of Edward Dettman and Annie Cullinan in Inquest on Colbert. [BACK]

57. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift , 118-123. [BACK]

58. For example, see Joan M. Jensen, "The Death of Rosa: Sexuality in Rural America," Agricultural History 67 (fall 1993): 1-12; I am grateful to Daniel Schneider for showing me this article. See also Catharine MacKinnon, "The Male Ideology of Privacy: A Feminist Perspective on the Right to Abortion," Radical America 17 (July-August 1983): 23-35 and the responses by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, "Abortion as 'Violence against Women': A Feminist Critique," Radical America 18 (March-June 1984): 64-68; Carole Joffe, ''Comments on MacKinnon," Radical America 18 (March-June 1984): 68-69. [BACK]

59. How to assess the female experience of heterosexuality has been a source of crucial debate among feminists. The role of pornography in women's oppression and legal measures to repress it have been especially controversial. See the proposed antipornography ordinance in Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality (n.p., 1988 ) . For analyses of feminist thought on sexual pleasure and danger today and in the nineteenth century, see Carole S. Vance, ed. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984); 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. [BACK]

60. Edward A. Balloch, "Criminal Abortion," AJO 45 (February 1902): 238. [BACK]

61. Although Hoffmann may have miscarried, her abortion and death were investigated by the coroner as a criminal abortion. Inquest on Milda Hoffmann, May 29, 1916, case no., 342-5-1916, Medical Records Department. On the rape of young, unmarried women, see 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). [BACK]

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

63. Inquest on Petrovitis. [BACK]

64. Ross, Love and Toil , 112-118; Leavitt, Brought to Bed , 95. But husbands did sometimes assist; see the illustration of labor in early Virginia in Leavitt, 105. [BACK]

65. Inquest on Collins; Inquest on Mau. [BACK]

66. Burnet, "Abortion as the Exciting Cause of Insanity," 401. [BACK]

67. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 102-103, 106, 121-122. [BACK]

68. Testimony of Earnest Projahn in Inquest on Projahn. [BACK]

69. Testimony of Earnest Projahn, written statement of Emily Projahn in Inquest on Projahn. [BACK]

70. Testimony of Dr. C.W. Mercereau and Dr. Garford D.E. Haworth in Inquest on Projahn. [BACK]

71. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , chaps. 9, 4, [BACK]

72. For example, John C. Vaughan, "Birth Control Not Abortion," BCR 6 (September 1992): 183; "Birth Control and Abortion," BCR 8 (July 1924): 202; "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control," BCR 13 (January 1929), no page no. [BACK]

73. "Prevention or Abortion—Which?" (July 1923), 182. [BACK]

74. Rachelle Yarros, "Birth Control Clinics in Chicago," BCR 12 (December 1928): 354-355. I have calculated the percentage from figures provided in the article. [BACK]

75. Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 70. I am grateful to Joyce Follet for bringing Simon's book to my attention. [BACK]

76. The editor further commented, "In the case of many of the opponents of Birth Control this misapprehension is deliberately made . . . to discredit the cause. In other cases it arises out of ignorance." "Prevention or Abortion—Which?" (July 1923), 181. [BACK]

77. These were constant themes. For example, see "Hard Facts," 16; Margaret Sanger, "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" BCR 3 (May 1919): 10; "A Desperate Choice," BCR 9 (March 1925): 78; Margaret Sanger, Motherhood in Bondage (1928; reprint, Elmsford, N.Y.: Maxwell Reprint, 1958), 394-410. A political challenge to the birth control movement's perspective on abortion did not develop as it did in England nor did a movement for legalization. See Brookes, Abortion in England , 79-80, 87; and chapter 5 of this volume. [BACK]

78. "Letters from Women," Letter No. 10, BCR 2 (April 1918): 12; "How Would You Answer This Woman?" BCR 5 (March 1921): 14. [BACK]

79. "Letters from Women," Letter No. 17 and Letter No. 16, BCR 2 (June 1918): 12. [BACK]

80. Ross, Love and Toil , 99; Rima D. Apple, Mothers and Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding, 1890-1950 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), chap. 6. [BACK]

81. "A Desperate Choice," 78. [BACK]

82. Leavitt, Brought to Bed , chap. 1. [BACK]

83. "Appeals from Mothers," BCR 6 (August 1922): 150. [BACK]

84. "Appeals from Mothers," p. 151. See also "Letters from Women," Letter no. 2, BCR 2 (January 1918): 13. [BACK]

85. The Cook County Coroner's report for 1918-1919 showed that the great majority of women who died due to abortions (some of them miscarriages) were married, over 80 percent, and that over half of the women had children already. Most of the mothers had two children or more. Cook County Coroner, Biennial Report, 1918-1919 , p. 78, Municipal Reference Collection, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois. [BACK]

86. See Barbara Katz Rothman's insightful discussion of pregnancy and motherhood, Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), esp. 106-108. [BACK]

87. For example, "Letters from Women" (January 1918), 13; "Unemployment," BCR 15 (May 1931): 131. [BACK]

88. Louise Kapp Howe, Moments on Maple Avenue: The Reality of Abortion (1984; New York: Warner Books, 1986), 90-91, 117-118, 121-126. [BACK]

89. "But What Can I Do?" BCR 11 (November 1927): 296. [BACK]

90. Testimony of Lt. William P. O'Brien in Inquest on Mau. [BACK]

91. These were not all illegal abortions, Biennial Report, 1918-1919 , 78. [BACK]

92. See the video, Motherless: A Legacy of Loss from Illegal Abortions , produced by Barbara Attic, Janet Goldwater, and Diane Pontius, Filmmakers Library, New York; and interviews with orphans in Miller, The Worst of Times , 39-47, 48-57, 237-241. [BACK]

93. "Letters from Women," Letter no. 14, BCR 2 (May 1918): 12. [BACK]

94. The mother described herself as having "born and raised 6 children." This example illustrates changing norms. Women who grew up in large families themselves adopted the new smaller family norm promoted by the birth control movement. "'Why?'" BCR 2 (December 1918): 6. [BACK]

95. Hard Facts. Jennie K.," BCR 3 (November 1919): 15. [BACK]

96. Inquest on Margaret Winter, November 13, 1916, case no. 274-11-1916, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

97. Simon, Bronx Primitive , 21, 25, 73; Ross, Love and Toil , 148-154. [BACK]

98. "Letters from Women," Letter No. 17, BCR 2 (June 1918): 12. See also "Prevention or Abortion—Which?" (July 1923), 182. [BACK]

99. Stix, "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," 357-359; Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion (New York: Harper and Brothers and Paul B. Hoeber Medical Books, 1958), 114, 120, 109-110, table 54. [BACK]

100. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , chap. 8; James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 45; "A Connecticut Physician's Letter," BCR 5 (September 1921): 15. [BACK]

101. Susan J. Kleinberg, "Technology and Women's Work: The Lives of Working Class Women in Pittsburgh, 1870-1900," Labor History 17 (winter 1976): 58-72. [BACK]

102. "Letters from Women," Letter no. 1 (January 1918): 13; Ross, Love and Toil , 98-99; on wife-beating in America, Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives , 250-288. [BACK]

103. "Letters from Women," Letter no. 1 BCR 2 (January 1918), 13. [BACK]

104. "Prevention or Abortion—Which?" (July 1923), 182; "Prevention or Abortion, Which?" (May 1923), 127. See also "'A Damnably Cruel Dilemma,'" BCR 3 (July 1919): 17. [BACK]

105. Frank A. Stahl, "Some Expressions of Abortive Attempts at Instrumental Abortion," JAMA 31 (December 31, 1898): 1560-1561. [BACK]

106. Maximilian Herzog, "The Pathology of Criminal Abortion," JAMA 34 (May 26, 1900): 1310-1311; J.E. Lackner, "Serological Findings in 100 Cases, Bacteriological Findings in 50 Cases, and a Resume of 679 Cases of Abortion at the Michael Reese Hospital," Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics 20 (1915): 537; Lewis, "Facts Regarding Criminal Abortion," 945. J. L. Andrews reported the use of knitting needles, rubber catheters, and slippery elm to induce abortions, in "The Greatly Increased Frequency of the Occurrence of Abortion, as Shown by Reports from Memphis Physicians: An Essay on the Causes for the Same," Transactions of the Medical Society of Tennessee 72 (1905): 126-127. In 1928 a Cook County Hospital physician reported from patient histories that women used "catheters . . . orange sticks, hairpins, cotton ball, a substance called slippery elm.'' Dr. Gertrude Engbring in Transcript of People v. Heissler (1930); George Erety Shoemaker, "Septicemia from Self-Induced Abortion," AJO 35 (June 1897): 637; "Tetanus Follows Attempt to Abort with Chicken Feather," JAMA 84 (February 7, 1925): 470. [BACK]

107. G.D. Royston, "A Statistical Study of the Causes of Abortion," AJOG 76 (October 1917): 571-572, quotation on 573. [BACK]

108. Royston, "Statistical Study," 572-573; Dr. Gertrude Engbring in Transcript of People v. Heissler (1930). [BACK]

109. Bessie Louise Pierce, The Rise of a Modern City , vol. 3. of A History of Chicago (New York: Knopf, 1957), 188. [BACK]

110. John S. Hailer, American Medicine in Transition, 1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 267-270. [BACK]

111. Addison Niles, "Criminal Abortion," Transactions of the Twenty-First Anniversary Meeting of the Illinois State Medical Society (Chicago: Fergus Printing, 1872), 100; Calvin Schmid reported on 109 abortion deaths in Minneapolis between 1927 and 1936 and found that the catheter was used in 29 cases, slippery elm in 18, in Social Saga of Two Cities , 411. "Propaganda for Reform. Chichester's Diamond Brand Pills," JAMA 56 (May 27, 1911): 1591. [BACK]

112. Dr. Frederick D. Newbarr, Detroit, to Editor, July 21, 1920, Abortifacient File, Historical Health Fraud Collection of the AMA (hereafter cited as HHFC), AMA, Chicago, Illinois. See B. E. Ellis, M.D., Indianapolis, to JAMA , November 10, 1923, Abortifacient File, HHFC. [BACK]

113. Ling's office was at 1909 Archer Avenue in Chicago. Letter to AMA from Chicago, August 22, 1922, Abortifacient File, HHFC. [BACK]

114. Inquest on Anna P. Fazio, February 14, 1929, case no. 217-2-1929, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

115. Quotations from A.B.C., "Does Public Opinion in the United States Sanction Abortion?," 61, 64. [BACK]

Chapter 2 Private Practices

1. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 15, 1888, pp. 1, 5. [BACK]

2. Coverage related to the abortion exposé appeared in the Chicago Times through January 23, 1889. [BACK]

3. "The Evil and the Remedy," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 4. [BACK]

4. Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 79-144; William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); Thomas Neville Bonner, Medicine in Chicago: A Chapter in the Social and Scientific Development of a City, 1850-1950 , 2d ed. (1957; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois, 1991). [BACK]

5. One physician estimated in 1913 that no more than 13 percent of sick patients were treated in the hospital and not until 1938 did approximately half of all births take place in the hospital, as cited in Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 316; Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 171-195, 269, Morris J. Vogel, The Invention of the Modern Hospital: Boston, 1870-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Rosemary Stevens, American Medicine and the Public Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 80-82, 145. [BACK]

6. Thomas Goebel, "American Medicine and the 'Organizational Synthesis': Chicago Physicians and the Business of Medicine, 1900-1920," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68 (winter 1994): 639-663; Donald E. Konold, A History of American Medical Ethics (Madison: State Historical Society for the Department of History, University of Wisconsin, 1962), 11-12, 57-67, 75. [BACK]

7. Bessie Louise Pierce, The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893 , vol. 3 of A History of Chicago (New York: Knopf, 1957), 166, 408-409, 418-419, 408 n. 47. [BACK]

8. On this idea, see Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). [BACK]

9. Emmett Dedmon, Fabulous Chicago (New York: Random House, 1953), 73-94, 135-147. [BACK]

10. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690-1940 (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 436-443; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 70-74, 86; Norma Green, Stephen Lacy, and Jean Folkerts, "Chicago Journalists at the Turn of the Century: Bohemians All?" Journalism Quarterly 66 (winter 1989): 815-816; Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 81-134. [BACK]

11. Justin E. Walsh, To Print the News and Raise Hell!, A Biography of Wilbur F. Storey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), chap. 8 and 216-217. [BACK]

12. "The Evil and the Remedy," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 4; "Doctors Who Advertise," Chicago Times , December 16, 1888, p. 4; ''Hercules and the Doctor," cartoon, Chicago Times , December 16, 1888, p. 9; "Moral Aids Needed," Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, p. 4; "A Noble Work," Chicago Times , December 23, 1888, p. 4. [BACK]

13. Text accompanying cartoon, "It Out-Herods the Days of Herod," Chicago Times , December 19, 1888, p. 4. [BACK]

14. See the cartoons, "It Out-Herods the Days of Herod," Chicago Times , December 19, 1888, p. 4; "Hercules and the Baby," Chicago Times , December 21, 1888, p. 4; Mott, American Journalism , 438-439. [BACK]

15. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 12, 1888, p. 1; "The Evil and the Remedy," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 4; "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 15, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

16. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 12, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

17. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 1; "The Evil and the Remedy," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 4. [BACK]

18. "The Sunday Times," Chicago Times , December 15, 1888, p. 4; "To the Readers of 'The Times,'" Chicago Times , December 19, 1888, p. 4; "Triple Sheet," Chicago Times , December 22, 1888, p. 4. [BACK]

19. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

20. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 15, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

21. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 14, 1888, pp. 1-2. For other examples of midwives who refused to perform abortions, see the 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), p. 225; Inquest on Mary L. Kissell, August 3, 1937, case no. 300-8-1937, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

22. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 15, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

23. See, for example, the sketch of five female portraits, "For the Doctors," which asked, "Guess which one of the above is the 'girl reporter?'" and the sketch "A Souvenir," both in Chicago Times , December 21, 1888, p. 4; Editorial from the St. Louis Republic reprinted in ''Talk About 'The Times,'" Chicago Times , December 23, 1888, p. 4. Interest in the reporters themselves was typical of the era, Schudson, Discovering the News , 65, 69. [BACK]

24. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, pp. 1-2. [BACK]

25. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 20, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

26. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 17, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

27. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 21, 1888, p. n On Clark Street, Emmett Dedmon, Fabulous Chicago (New York: Random House, 1953), 140, 144-145. [BACK]

28. "Professional Abortionists," JAMA 11:26 (December 29, 1888): 913; Wilhelm Becker, "The Medical, Ethical, and Forensic Aspects of Fatal Criminal Abortion," Wisconsin Medical Journal 7 (April 1909): 624-626. [BACK]

29. Thirty-one of the thirty-four physicians who agreed to perform abortions can be identified; of these, twenty-two were Regulars. Of the forty-eight who agreed to help in some fashion, forty-two can be identified. Thirty-three, or over two-thirds of the total, were Regulars. At least twenty-one belonged to a medical society, including some Irregular societies, and twenty-one belonged to none. I am grateful to Rose Holz and Lynne Curry for collecting and tabulating this biographical information. Biographical information located in Medical and Surgical Register of the United States (Detroit: R. L. Polk, 1886 and 1890 editions); McDonald's Illinois State Medical Directory: A Complete List of Physicians in the State (Chicago: J. Newton McDonald, 1891); Connorton's Directory of Physicians, Dentists, and Druggists of Chicago, Including Suburbs in Cook County (Chicago: J. Newton McDonald, 1889). [BACK]

30. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 16, 1888, p. 9; "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, p. 2; J. H. Etheridge to Editor, Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

31. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, p. 2; Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight , 212-214. [BACK]

32. "Awake! Arise!" Chicago Times , January 2, 1889, p. 4. I counted over sixty-five letters to the editor of the Chicago Times from doctors in the two-week period of the exposé. For example, Benjamin Miller to Editor, Chicago Times , December 21, 1888, p. 3. [BACK]

33. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 17, 1888, p. 1; "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 20, 1888, p. 1; "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 22, 1888, p. 1; "From the Girl Reporter,'' Chicago Times , December 23, 1888, p. 9. [BACK]

34. Council Minutes, December 17, 1888, vol. 1887-1892, pp. 104-105, Chicago Medical Society Records, Archives and Manuscripts Department, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois. Jacob Franks and see William T. Thackerey in "The Doctors Will Investigate," Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, p. 2. The Times reported that 250 people attended this meeting. [BACK]

35. Quotation by Etheridge in "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 18, 1888, p. 2; Council Minutes, December 17, 1888, vol. 1887-1892, p. 105, Chicago Medical Society Records. [BACK]

36. Council Minutes, January 7, 1889, vol. 1887-1892, pp. 108-112, Chicago Medical Society Records; "Thurston Is Expelled," Chicago Times , January 8, 1889, p.1. [BACK]

37. Bonner, Medicine in Chicago , 64-67, 84-103; Connorton's Directory , 31-53, 61-67. [BACK]

38. "Professional Abortionists," 913; Dr. J. W. Hervey to Editor, JAMA 12 (January 12, 1889): 69. [BACK]

39. Others have made similar observations. Norman Himes, Medical History of Contraception (1936; reprint, New York: Gamut Press, 1963), 282; Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 167-168. [BACK]

40. Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 188-189, 220; James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 161; Mary Roth Walsh, " Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply": Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 145. [BACK]

41. "Seeking the Remedy," Chicago Times , January 5, 1889, p. 8; "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 16, 1888, p. 9. Dr. Emilie Siegmund agreed to perform an abortion, "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 15, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

42. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 19, 1888, p. 7. Letters from P. Curran, M.D., and Birney Hand, M.D., confirmed that most women seeking abortions were married, in "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 22, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

43. "Infanticide. Retrospective Thoughts," Chicago Times , December 25, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

44. "Bring the Husbands to Book," Chicago Times , December 28, 1888, p. 1; "Seeking the Remedy," Chicago Times , January 5, 1889, p. 5. See also "A Vigorous Letter from a Woman Physician," Chicago Times , December 16, 1888,

p. 9. On nineteenth-century feminists' views, see Mohr, Abortion in America , 111-113; Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , chap. 5. [BACK]

45. Reprint from Galesburg, Illinois, in "Talk About 'The Times,'" Chicago Times , December 23, 1888, p. 4; partial reprint of paper by Dr. H. H. Markham, "Seeking the Remedy, Duty of the Doctors," Chicago Times , January 1, 1889, p. 3. [BACK]

46. Reprint from Chicago Medical Visitor in "Infanticide in Chicago," Chicago Times , January 23, 1889, p. 4; "The Infanticide Revelations," JAMA 12 (January 12, 1889): 55. [BACK]

47. "The Infanticide Revelations," 56. [BACK]

48. "He Did His Full Duty," Chicago Times , December 22, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

49. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 12, 1888, p. 1; "The Cream City Needs Just Such a Cleansing," Letter from Milwaukee, Chicago Times , December 12, 1888, p. 5; "The Devilish Crime Is Not Confined to Chicago," Chicago Times , December 22, 1888, p. 5; "An Adjunct to the Remedy," Letter from Monticello, Illinois, Chicago Times , December 31, 1888, p. 5. [BACK]

50. Inez C. Philbrick, "Social Causes of Criminal Abortion," Medical Record 66 (September 24, 1904): 491; Henry W. Cattell, "Some Medico-Legal Aspects of Abortion," Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine 8 (1907): 339; Earnest F. Oakley, "Legal Aspect of Abortion," A JOG 3 ( January 1922): 38. [BACK]

51. Illinois, Public Laws of Illinois , 1867, p. 89. [BACK]

52. See chapter 8 of this volume. [BACK]

53 For historical analyses of the interplay between society and disease definition and treatment, see Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); 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); Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). [BACK]

54. Peter J. O'Callaghan and Charles B. Reed in "Chicago Medical Society. Regular Meeting Held Nov. 23, 1904," JAMA 43 (December 17, 1904): 1890; Christian Johnson, "Therapeutic Abortion," St. Paul Medical Journal 9 (1907): 240, 241-242; Ronald L. Numbers, "A Note on Medical Education in Wisconsin," in Wisconsin Medicine: Historical Perspectives , edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Judith Walzer Leavitt (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 183. [BACK]

55. Indications that necessitated abortion in order to preserve the pregnant woman's life included diseases of the kidneys, chronic heart or respiratory disease, eclampsia, cancers of the rectum, uterus, and breast, severe cases of rheumatism, contracted pelvis, uterine cysts, placenta previa, and pernicious anaemia. W. C. Bowers, "Justifiable Artificial Abortion and Induced Premature Labor," JAMA 33 (September 2, 1899): 568-569; E. S. McKee, "Abortion," AJO 24 (October 1891): 1333-1334; Frank A. Higgins, "The Propriety, Indications and Methods for the Termination of Pregnancy," JAMA 43 (November 19, 1904): 1531-1533. [BACK]

56. Quotation from Bowers, "Justifiable Artificial Abortion," 569; phrase from R. C. Brown, "Vomiting," Cyclopedia of Medicine , edited by George Mor-

ris Piersol, vol. 12 (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1935), 945. On vomiting in the nineteenth century, see Joseph Taber Johnson, "The Mechanical Treatment of the Vomiting of Pregnancy," JAMA 6 (March 13, 1886): 285. On the cure for this condition, see Paul Titus, "Hyperemesis Gravidarum: Treatment by Intravenous Injections of Glucose and Carbohydrate Feedings," JAMA 85 (August 15, 1925): 488-493, as cited in Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 55, 275 n. For continuing discussion, see Henricus J. Stander, Williams Obstetrics: A Textbook for the Use of Students and Practitioners , 7th ed., a revision and enlargement of the text originally written by J. Whitridge Williams (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936), 521. The Children's Bureau found that vomiting remained an important indication for therapeutic abortions in the late 1920s, U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, Maternal Mortality in Fifteen States , Bureau publication no. 223 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), 108. [BACK]

57. Paul Titus, "A Statistical Study of a Series of Abortions Occurring in the Obstetrical Department of the Johns Hopkins Hospital," AJO 65 (June 1912): 960-961; Taussig, Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced: Medical and Social Aspects (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1936), 281-282, see table on 282; Irving K. Perlmutter, "Analysis of Therapeutic Abortions, Bellevue Hospital 1935-1945," A JOG 53 (June 1947): 1012. [BACK]

58. Joseph B. DeLee, The Principles and Practice of Obstetrics , 2d ed. (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1916), 1045; E. A. Weiss, "Some Moral and Ethical Aspects of Feticide," AJO 67 (January 1913): 76, 73; Walter B. Dorsett, "Criminal Abortion in Its Broadest Sense," JAMA 51 (September 19, 1908): 957. See also Edward P. Davis, "Therapeutic Abortion," Therapeutic Gazette 43 (June 15, 1919): 389-390. [BACK]

59. "Is Abortion Justifiable in the Insane Pregnant?" JAMA 38 (January 4, 1902): 69; Response in "Queries and Minor Notes. Is Abortion Justifiable in the Insane Pregnant?" JAMA 38 (January 18, 1902): 213. R. Finley Gayle commented that "older physicians" had aborted women for eugenic reasons in "The Psychiatric Consideration of Abortion," Southern Medicine and Surgery 91 (April 1929): 251. On eugenics, see Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 118-132; Mark H. Hailer, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 95-143. [BACK]

60. "Pregnancy from Rape Does Not Justify Abortion," JAMA 43 (August 6, 1904): 413. [BACK]

61. "Therapeutic Abortion," JAMA 92 (February 16 1929): 581. [BACK]

62. H. Douglas Singer, "Mental Disease and the Induction of Abortion," JAMA 91 (December 29, 1928): 2042-2044; Gayle, "The Psychiatric Consideration of Abortion," 252-254. [BACK]

63. "Pregnancy and Contracted Pelvis," JAMA 38 (February 8, 1902): 433. [BACK]

63. "Pregnancy and Contracted Pelvis," JAMA 38 (February 8, 1902): 433.

64. Ibid. Professor H.J. Boldt believed that the patient with contracted pelvis should decide whether to have an abortion or a cesarean section. H.J. Boldt, "The Treatment of Abortion," JAMA 46 (March 17, 1906): 791. [BACK]

65. Judith Walzer Leavitt, "The Growth of Medical Authority, Technology, and Morals in Turn-of-the-Century Obstetrics," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1 (September 1987): 230-255; Carey Culbertson, "Therapeutic Abortion

and Sterilization," The Surgical Clinics of Chicago 1 (1917): 608; Evelyn Fine, "'Belly Ripping Has Become a Mania': A History of the Cesarean Section Operation in Twentieth Century America" (master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of the History of Science, 1982), 4-6, 8-12, 42. [BACK]

66. On choosing the family physician, George Rosen, The Structure of American Medical Practice, 1875-1941 , edited by Charles E. Rosenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 22. Quotations from Becker, "Medical, Ethical, and Forensic Aspects," 624; E. F. Fish, "Criminal Abortion," Milwaukee Medical Journal 17 (April 1909): 107-108. See also Dorsett, "Criminal Abortion in Its Broadest Sense," 958. [BACK]

67. "The Case of Robert Thompson," JAMA 92 (February 16, 1929): 579. Similar networks in Chicago are analyzed further in chapter 5 of this volume. [BACK]

68. For examples, "Medicolegal. Revocation of License for Conviction of Offense Involving Moral Turpitude," JAMA 68 (February 10, 1917): 485; "Medical News. INDIANA. Sentenced for Illegal Operation," JAMA 93 (July 13, 1929): 125. [BACK]

69. Judith Walzer Leavitt has similarly argued for the importance of analyzing nineteenth-century rural medical practice in terms of its location within the domestic domain in "'A Worrying Profession': The Domestic Environment of Medical Practice in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 69 (spring 1995): 1-29. [BACK]

70. Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood (New York: Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1982), 68-70, quotation on 70. From the context, I conclude that this doctor practiced during the 1920s, perhaps into the 1930s and longer. See also B. Liber, "As a Doctor Sees It," BCR 2 (February-March 1918): 10. [BACK]

71. Becker, "The Medical, Ethical, and Forensic Aspects of Fatal Criminal Abortion," 624. [BACK]

72. In this particular case, Aiken was convicted but appealed his case to the state Supreme Court of Illinois, which reversed the conviction and remanded it back. I do not know if he was retried. Aiken v. the People , 183 Ilk 215 (1899); Transcript of Aiken v. the People , 183 Ilk 215 (1899), Case Files, vault no. 8105, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

73. Denslow Lewis, "Facts Regarding Criminal Abortion," JAMA 35 (October 13, 1900): 945; Mary Dixon-Jones, "Criminal Abortion—Its Evil and Its Sad Consequences," continued, WMJ 3 (September 1894): 66; W.W. Parker, "In Opposition to Woman Doctors in Insane Asylums," JAMA 22 (March 31, 1894): 479. [BACK]

74. Rudolph W. Holmes in "Symposium on Criminal Abortion," JAMA 43 (December 17, 1904): 1891; "Criminal Advertisements," JAMA 37 (August 10, 1901): 393. Post Office officials used classified advertisements to investigate and prosecute midwives and doctors for abortion advertising in 1912. Dr. Margaret Livingston had advertised herself as a "specialist for diseases of women." See Govt. Ex. 9 in U.S. v. Margaret Livingston , November 22, 1912, Case no. 5084, Criminal Docket Book no. 8 (Criminal Case Files), Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States, National Archives—Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. For

examples of nineteenth-century advertisements, see Mohr, Abortion in America , 51, 52, 54, 56, 57. [BACK]

75. See Charlotte G. Borst, Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). [BACK]

76. I have identified sixty-one abortionists in the Chicago area between 1890 and 1930. Thirty-eight were physicians, twenty-three midwives. [BACK]

77. Grace Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," The American Journal of Sociology 20 (March 1915): 687. Nationally, midwives had delivered half the country's babies in 1900, but only 15 percent by 1930. Leavitt, Brought to Bed , 12, graph; Judy Barrett Litoff, American Midwives: 1860 to the Present (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 141. [BACK]

78. In the St. Louis study, a large proportion of the abortions were self-induced (thirty, or 36 percent). I calculated the percentages from the data presented in table I in Royston. G. D. Royston, "A Statistical Study of the Causes of Abortion," AJOG 76 (October 1917): 573. [BACK]

79. Marie E. Kopp, Birth Control in Practice: Analysis often Thousand Case Histories of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (1933; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972), table 8. [BACK]

80. Jerome E. Bates and Edward Zawadzki, appendix C in Criminal Abortion: A Study in Medical Sociology . (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1964), 202. In the last decade of this study, it is unlikely that any midwives would still have been practicing, but, unfortunately, the authors did not break down their findings by decade. [BACK]

81. Caroline Hedger reported that 57 of 363 Chicago midwives (or 6 percent, my calculation) were "suspected of practicing abortion." F. Elisabeth Crowell investigated 500 New York midwives in 1906 and found 176 midwives who had been convicted of abortion or agreed to perform one (35 percent, my calculation) and suspected over half the midwives practiced abortion. The 1908 study of Chicago midwives found 49 out of 223 midwives who "agreed to operate" and concluded that "at least one-third should be classified as criminal." The Baltimore study found almost one third of the midwives (48 of 150) were "suspected of criminal practice." A 1912 study of Massachusetts found that 5 percent (5 of 91) of the midwives were suspected of performing abortions. Caroline Hedger, ''Investigation of 363 Midwives in Chicago," Transactions of the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality 3 (1912): 264, table 3; F. Elisabeth Crowell, "The Midwives of New York," Charities and the Commons 17 (January 1907): 667-677, reprint in Judy Barrett Litoff, The American Midwife Debate: A Sourcebook on Its Modern Origins (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 44; Rudolph W. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," JAMA 50 (April 25, 1908): 1347-1348; Mary Sherwood, "The Midwives of Baltimore," JAMA 52 (June 19, 1909): 2010; James Lincoln Huntington, "Midwives in Massachusetts," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 167 (October 17, 1912): 547. [BACK]

82. Recorded statement of Emily Projahn and testimony of Earnest Projahn, Inquest on Emily Projahn, October 10, 1916, case no. 26-12-1916, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

83. Of twenty-one cases where it can be determined where the operation

occurred, all but three took place in the physician's office (which in some cases was the doctor's home). The other three were induced in hospitals run by the doctor. [BACK]

84. Inquest on Viola Koepping, June 7, 1929, case no. 246-6-29, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

85. People v. Rongetti 331 Ill. 581 (1928), p. 584; "Woman Confesses Murder of Baby," Chicago Daily News , [July] 1928, Abortionists Files, HHFC. See also Joseph G. Stern in Chicago Tribune , January 10, 1929, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

86. There are twenty cases with information on fees paid to Chicago doctors for abortions between 1890 and 1930. The average fee stated to prospective patients would be higher than what doctors actually received. [BACK]

87. Inquest on Ester Reed, June 9, 1914, case no. 73771, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

88. McKee, "Abortion," 1334; Frank A. Higgins, "The Propriety, Indications, and Methods for the Termination of Pregnancy," JAMA 43 (November 19, 1904): 1533; Frederick J. Taussig, The Prevention and Treatment of Abortion (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1910), 91-121; Taussig, Abortion , 352-354, 322-304. [BACK]

89. Ten Chicago physicians who performed abortions used instruments of some kind, perhaps uterine sounds to open the cervix or curettes to scrape out the uterus. For illustrations of instruments, see Taussig, The Prevention and Treatment of Abortion , 78, 92, 120. [BACK]

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

91. Catherine Heidman as quoted by Harry Golcher in Inquest on Elsie Golcher, February 16, 1932, case no. 225-2-32, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

92. Of thirty-eight identified abortion providers in the Chicago area, twenty-seven are identified as Regulars. Five of these physicians had graduated from irregular schools, but each of them was identified as a Regular in the directory published by the AMA. I have therefore counted them as Regulars, but even if they were subtracted, the majority of the physician-abortionists in this sample would still be Regulars. That Homeopaths and Eclectics now considered themselves Regulars and the AMA described them as such, despite their education, demonstrates the process of consolidation of all sects into Regulars in the early twentieth century. Biographical data found in American Medical Directory 1912-1940 (Chicago: American Medical Association); Polk's Medical and Surgical Register of the United States (1896); Chicago Medical Society, History of Medicine and Surgery and Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago (Chicago: Biographical Publishing, 1922). [BACK]

93. Mary Elizabeth Fiorenza, "Midwifery and the Law in Illinois and Wisconsin, 1877 to 1917" (master's thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1985), 35-36. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1346, 1347, table 1. The African American population in Chicago before World War I was small; in 1913 African Americans made up only 2.5 percent of Chicago's population. Louise DeKoven Bowen, "The Colored People of Chicago" (Juvenile Protective Association, 1913) Jane Addams Collection, reel 54, Department of Special Collections, The University Library, University of Illinois-Chicago. [BACK]

94. Inquest on Rosie Kawera, June 15, 1916, case no. 152-5-1916, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

95. "Infanticide," Chicago Times , December 13, 1888, p. 1. [BACK]

96. On the issue of refusing male physicians during childbirth, see Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," 685. [BACK]

97. Inquest on Kawera; Inquest on Frauciszka Gawlik, February 19, 1916, case no. 27-3-1916, Medical Records Department. On this issue, see Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," 684-685; Litoff, American Midwives , 27-30; Eugene Declerq, "The Nature and Style of Practice of Immigrant Midwives in Early Twentieth-Century Massachusetts," Journal of Social History 19 (1985): 113-129. In Catching Babies , Charlotte Borst points out the preference of immigrant women for doctors who were either foreign-born themselves or children of the foreign-born and who understood their culture and language. [BACK]

98. Hedger, "Investigation of 363 Midwives in Chicago," 264, table 3; 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 Press, 1983), 71. I have calculated the average fee for an abortion charged by the midwives from the figures given in the 1910 report. The fees ranged from $10 to $50. Chicago Vice Commission, The Social Evil in Chicago , 225-227. [BACK]

99. There were twelve cases with information on fees paid to midwives for abortions between 1900 and 1930. The range was $4 to $35, and the most frequent fee was $25. [BACK]

100. Inquest on Kawera; People v. Wyherk , 347 Ill. 28 (1931), p. 30; Inquest on Matilda Olson, April 30, 1918, case no. 289-4-1918, Medical Records Department. On check-ups by midwives, see Hedger, "Investigation of 363 Midwives in Chicago," 264; Litoff, American Midwives , 28-29. [BACK]

101. Chicago Vice Commission, The Social Evil in Chicago , 225; Inquest on Esther Stark, June 12, 1917, case no. 65-6-1917, Medical Records Department. Also see Inquest on Bertha Dombrowski, February 23, 1917, case no. 223-3-1917, Medical Records Department; Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1349. [BACK]

102. Chicago Vice Commission, The Social Evil in Chicago , 225-227. [BACK]

103. First quotation is in Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," 1349. Last quotation is in testimony of Robert Crelly in Inquest on Kissell. See also Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," 691; People v. Patrick , 277 Ill. 210 (1917), p. 212; "Officials Plan Fight to Curb Abortion Evil," n.p., June 7, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

104. Quotations from Transcript of People v. Wyherk , 347 Ill. 28 (1931) Case Files, vault no. 45804, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901; Styskal in Inquest on Margaret B. Winter, November 13, 1916, case no. 274-11-1916, Medical Records Department; Haisler in Inquest on Catherine Mau, March 12, 1928, case no. 390-3-1928, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

105. Litoff, American Midwives , 139. For a table showing the national distribution of midwives, see Louis S. Reed, Midwives, Chiropodists, and Optometrists: Their Place in Medical Care (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), 5-6, 67, table 1A. [BACK]

106. Cook County Coroner's Quadrennial Report, 1908-1922 , p. 20, Municipal Reference Collection. [BACK]

107. Maternal Mortality in Fifteen States , 103. [BACK]

108. Transcript of People v. Hagenow , 236 Ill. 514 (1908), Case Files, vault no. 31202, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901; People v. Hagenow , 334 Ill. 341 (1929). I do not know how long Hagenow was in prison, but in 1907 she had been convicted and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment (a conviction upheld by the Illinois State Supreme Court). [BACK]

109. On maternal mortality see Irvine Loudon, "Maternal Mortality: 1880-1950. Some Regional and International Comparisons," Social History of Medicine 1 (August 1988): 186, figure A, 210-211; 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), 375-376, 386. For a different view of how trends in maternal mortality changed over time, see Edward Shorter, A History of Women's Bodies (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 130-138, 193-195. [BACK]

110. The 14. percent figure is the sum of abortions categorized in the study as "induced," which includes both self-induced abortions and "criminal" abortions induced by others (11 percent), and those counted as "type not reported" (3 percent) because the researchers suspected that the latter were also induced abortions. It is a mistake to assume as some scholars have that illegal abortions were responsible for the total proportion of maternal deaths assigned to abortion (25 percent), because this total includes deaths following spontaneous abortions, or miscarriages (8 percent), and deaths following therapeutic abortions (3 percent). These latter figures show the dangers of medical intervention. The report discusses the problem of physicians curetting when they should not. Furthermore, it is incorrect to assume that all septic abortion cases were illegal abortions, because physicians responding to spontaneous abortions or performing therapeutic abortions also introduced infections and caused deaths. Finally, the international classification list of maternal mortality cannot be relied upon either because of the way it assigned abortions to other causes and included cases that should not have been. The handful of "certified" criminal abortions were assigned to ''homicide." Maternal Mortality in Fifteen States , 103-115. [BACK]

111. Dorothy Reed Mendenhall, "Prenatal and Natal Conditions in Wisconsin," Wisconsin Medical Journal 15 (March 1917) : 353, as cited in Leavitt, Brought to Bed , 56-57, 231 n; Antler and Fox, "The Movement toward a Safe Maternity," 381; Charles R. King, "The New York Maternal Mortality Study: A Conflict of Professionalization," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65 (winter 1991): 482, 484, 489; Shorter concludes that midwives and doctors were "about equally septic" in attending deliveries, in A History of Women's Bodies , 137. Loudon finds that home deliveries tended to be safer, whether by M.D. or midwife, than hospital deliveries, in "Maternal Mortality," 219-221. [BACK]

112. Cook County data in "Officials Plan Fight to Curb Abortion Evil," June 7, 1915, no name of newspaper, Abortionists Files, HHFC; Becker, "The Medical, Ethical, and Forensic Aspects of Fatal Criminal Abortion," 620; Calvin Schmid, Social Saga of Two Cities: An Ecological and Statistical Study of

Social Trends in Minneapolis and St. Paul (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Council of Social Agencies, 1937), 410-411. [BACK]

113. Taussig, Abortion , 222-238, quotation on 22-226. Taussig believed nonphysicians to be more responsible for infections. Taussig summarizes the history of the debate around curetting as a treatment for miscarriage and criminal abortion cases on pages 156-158. Specialists disagreed over whether or not to intervene and whether to use the curette or other methods. Some believed too many general practitioners lacked gynecological expertise, yet actively intervened in all abortion cases with the curetee. H.J. Boldt, "The Treatment of Abortion," JAMA 46 (March 17, 1906): 792; Discussion of Frederick J. Taussig, "What Shall We Teach the General Practitioner Concerning the Treatment of Abortion?" JAMA 52 (May 8, 1909): 1530-1531. [BACK]

114. Lester C. Hall in Frank A. Higgins, "The Propriety, Indications, and Methods for the Termination of Pregnancy," 1534. The experience of abortion in the Soviet Union, which legalized abortion in 1920, showed that abortion could be safe. Paul Lublinsky, "Birth Control in Soviet Russia," BCR 12 (May 1928): 143; Frederick J. Taussig, "The Abortion Problem in Russia," AJOG 22 (July 1931): 134-139. [BACK]

115. Rosemary Stevens, American Medicine and the Public Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 78-82, 96, 127-128; Ronald L. Numbers, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912-1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 4-5; Leavitt, Brought to Bed , 163-168. [BACK]

116. Others have made this argument about attendants during childbirth; Antler and Fox, "The Movement toward a Safe Maternity," 375-392; Leavitt, Brought to Bed , chap. 6; King, "The New York Maternal Mortality Study," 484-, 489-491. Today, legal abortion is much safer than childbirth. The Centers for Disease Control reported that the risk of a woman dying as a result of childbirth was seven times higher than the risk of a woman who had an abortion. Cited in Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom , rev. ed. (1984; reprint Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 310. [BACK]

Chapter 3 Antiabortion Campaigns, Private and Public

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]

37. Resolution proposed in Dorsett, "Criminal Abortion in Its Broadest Sense," 958-959; JAMA Proceedings of the Fifty-Ninth Annual Session Held at Chicago (June 1-5, 1908): 40-41, 45, quotations on 40. [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]

Chapter 4 Interrogations and Investigations

1. She had had three children, but one died. Inquest on Carolina Petrovitis, March 21, 1916, case no. 234-3-1916, Medical Records Department. For another physician who closely questioned a woman about abortion, see the Inquest on Matilda Olson, April 30, 1918, case no. 289-4-1918, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

2. On this point, see Martha Vicinus, "Sexuality and Power: A Review of Current Work in the History of Sexuality," Feminist Studies 8 (spring 1982): 133-156. The few histories that examine the control of male heterosexuality include 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); Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880 , exp. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 61-64, 66-70; and G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Haft Known Life: Male Attitudes toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Harper and Row, 1976). For overviews of

the history of sexuality, see John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons, eds., with Robert A. Padgug, Passion and Power: Sexuality in History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989). [BACK]

3. Michael Grossberg argues that the judiciary dominated nineteenth-century family law and claimed patriarchal authority over domestic relations. Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Lava and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 289-307. On feminists, see also Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 243-244; Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), chap. 5. Joan Brumberg found that members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union acted as marriage "enforcers" in cases of unmarried pregnant women when they deemed marriage appropriate. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, "'Ruined' Girls: Changing Community Responses to Illegitimacy in Upstate New York, 1890-1920," Journal of Social History 18 (winter 1984): 254-257. Linda Gordon finds that feminists had a powerful impact on the welfare state, "particularly its regulatory organizations," at the turn of the century. That influence extended to the state's promotion of male responsibility in cases of pregnant unwed women. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Oran Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (New York: Viking, 1988), 297. On juvenile courts, see Odem, Delinquent Daughters . [BACK]

4. On the control of medicine, see Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 102-112, 118, 184-197. [BACK]

5. H.H. Hawkins in, "Symposium. Criminal Abortion. The Colorado Law on Abortion," JAMA 40 (April 18, 1903): 1099; Franz Eschweiler in Wilhelm Becker, "The Medical, Ethical, and Forensic Aspects of Fatal Criminal Abortion," Wisconsin Medical Journal 7 (April 1909): 633; James C. Mohr, "Patterns of Abortion and the Response of American Physicians, 1790-1930," in Women and Health in America: Historical Readings , edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 12l. [BACK]

6. The Illinois Supreme Court commented on dying declarations in twelve out of the thirty-seven cases concerning an abortion-related death. Dying declarations may have been introduced or discussed in additional cases without having been addressed in the Supreme Court opinions. Furthermore, many dying declarations were collected but never used in court. For examples of Illinois Supreme Court discussion of dying declarations, see Dunn v. the People , 172 Ill. 582 (1898), pp. 587-591; People v. Huff 339 Ill. 328 (1930), p. 332. For evidence of the importance of dying declarations in other states, see reports of cases in Texas, Wisconsin, and Maryland respectively in "Dying Declarations Obtained in Abortion Case as Condition to Rendering Aid," JAMA 52 (April 10, 1909): 1204; "Dying Declarations Made after Refusal of Physician to Treat Abortion Case without History," JAMA 60 (June 7, 1913): 1829-1830; "Admissibility of Evidence to Prove Criminal Abortion," JAMA 60 (January 4, 1913): 79-80. For nineteenth-century cases, see Grossberg, Governing the Hearth , 363 n. 64. On Canada, see Constance B. Backhouse, "Involuntary Motherhood: Abortion, Birth Control, and the Law in Nineteenth Century Canada," Windsor

Yearbook of Access to Justice 3 (1983): 61-130; Angus McLaren, "Birth Control and Abortion in Canada, 1870-1920," Canadian Historical Review 59, no. 3 (1978): 319-340. [BACK]

7. The clerk of the Criminal Court of Cook County reported that between 1924 and, I believe, 1934, there were thirty-two prosecutions for murder by abortion and only seven convictions; and out of six prosecutions for abortion, two convictions. [Thomas E. Harris], "A Functional Study of Existing Abortion Laws," Columbia Law Review 35 (January 1935): 91 n. 17. Frederick J. Taus-sig provided the name of the author in Abortion, Spontaneous and Induced: Medical and Social Aspects (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1936), 426. In his study of abortion indictments in early twentieth-century Philadelphia, Roger Lane also finds few prosecutions and even fewer convictions. Personal communication from Roger Lane to author, May 31, 1989. Comparable data on the number of arrests and convictions for abortion are not available after the mid-1930s because police annual reports stopped reporting this information in detail. [BACK]

8. The rise in arrests beginning in 1889 was probably the result of the abortion exposé in the Chicago Times , December 12, 1888, through January 6, 1889. On the Comstock raids, see "Fight Race Suicide in Raids All over U.S.," Chicago [ News ], November 20, 1912, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Take Chicagoans in Federal War on Race Suicide," Chicago Tribune , November 21, 1912, Abortionists Files, HHFC. The peaks in 1914 to 1917 coincided with local and state investigations of abortion and baby farms, and newspaper coverage of abortion in Chicago. Chicago Department of Health, Report , 1911-1918, vol. 1, pp. 1055-1056; Juvenile Protective Association, Baby Farms in Chicago , by Arthur Alden Guild ([Chicago], 1917). [BACK]

9. See, for example, Inquest on Milda Hoffmann, May 29, 1916, case no. 342-5-1916, Medical Records Department; Degma Felicelli, October IX, 1916, case no. 224-10-1916, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

10. Coroner Peter Hoffman reported sending 185 people to the grand jury for abortion during his fifteen year tenure between 1905 and 1919. I have calculated the average. Cook County Coroner, Biennial Report , 1918-1919, Municio pal Reference Collection. [BACK]

11. The following three paragraphs are based on my reading of coroner's inquests and transcripts of criminal abortion trials. [BACK]

l2. William Duffor English, "Evidence—Dying Declaration—Preliminary Questions of Fact—Degree of Proof," Boston University Law Review 15 (April 1935): 382. [BACK]

l2. William Duffor English, "Evidence—Dying Declaration—Preliminary Questions of Fact—Degree of Proof," Boston University Law Review 15 (April 1935): 382.

13. Ibid., 381-382. [BACK]

14. Quotation from Inquest on Petrovitis. Simon Greenleaf described the dying declaration as "declarations made in extremity, when the party is at the point of death, and when every hope of this world is gone; when every motive to falsehood is silenced, and the mind is induced, by the most powerful considerations, to speak the truth. A situation so solemn and so awful is considered by the law as creating an obligation equal to that which is imposed by a positive oath in a court of justice." Simon Greenleaf, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence , vol. 1, 16th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1899), 245. See also John Henry Wigmore, A Treatise on the System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law, In-

cluding Statutes and Judicial Decisions of All Jurisdictions of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1904), 1798-1819. [BACK]

15. "Murder by abortion" was the standard phrase used in the coroner's jury's verdicts and Grand Jury indictments. For example, Inquest on Rosie Kawera, June 15, 1916, case no. 152-5-1916, Medical Records Department; People v. Dennis 246 Ill. 559 (1910), pp. 560-561. [BACK]

16. C.S. Bacon, in "Chicago Medical Society. Regular Meeting, Held Nov. 23, 1904. Symposium on Criminal Abortion," JAMA 43 (December 17, 1904.): 1889. Roger Lane finds, from his study of indictments in Philadelphia's circuit court, that most abortion cases did not follow the death of a woman, but that women testified as a "result of the damage done." On the nineteenth century, see Roger Lane, Violent Death in the City: Suicide, Accident, and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 93; on the early twentieth century, personal communication from Roger Lane to author. [BACK]

17. Lawrence M. Friedman and Robert V. Percival, The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 111-116, 310; Sidney L. Harring, Policing a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865-1915 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983).

In my discussion of the state, I am interested in the broad array of people, institutions, and officials involved in the enforcement of the criminal abortion laws. I do not regard the state as completely unified or consistent in its policies, for certainly there were conflicts between various state agents. The judiciary scrutinized police actions and criticized them, for example, but the differences among the different levels and officers of the state are not my primary focus. For a critical discussion on historians' use of the term the state , see Michael Ig-natieff, "State, Civil Society, and Total Institution: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Legality, Ideology, and the State , edited by David Sugarman (London: Academic Press, 1983), 183-211. [BACK]

18. This chapter is based on my examination of forty-four Cook County Coroner's Inquests into abortion deaths between 1907 and 1937, held in the Medical Records Department, Cook County Medical Examiner's Office. Two were found in transcripts of criminal abortion trials. [BACK]

19. Mohr, "Patterns of Abortion," 122; Paul H. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion (New York: Harper and Brothers and Paul B. Hoeber Medical Books, 1958), 194-195, 198. On delay in seeking medical treatment, see James R. Reinberger and Percy B. Russell, "The Conservative Treatment of Abortion," JAMA 107 (November 7, 1936): 1530; J. D. Dowling, "Points of Interest in a Survey of Maternal Mortality," American Journal of Public Health 27 (August 1937): 804. On the high level of complications and fatalities associated with self-induced abortions, see Regine K. Stix, "A Study of Pregnancy Wastage," Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 13 (October 1935): 362-363; Raymond E. Watkins, "A Five-Year Study of Abortion,'' AJOG 26 (August 1933), 162. [BACK]

20. Taussig, Abortion , 24.; William J. Robinson, The Law against Abortion: Its Perniciousness Demonstrated and Its Repeal Demanded (New York: Eugenics Publishing, 1933), 38-39. See also U.S. Dept. of Labor, Children's Bureau, Ma-

ternal Mortality in Fifteen States , Bureau publication no. 223 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), 103-104. I have not found an incident of families bribing officials, but on the corruption of police and coroners, see Mark H. Hailer, "Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago, 1890-1925," Law and Society Review 10 (winter 1976), 306-307, 311, 316-317; Julie Johnson, "Coroners, Corruption, and the Politics of Death: Forensic Pathology in the United States," in Legal Medicine in History , edited by Michael Clark and Catherine Crawford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 268-289. [BACK]

21. I requested the Inquest on Flossie Emerson, who died February 28, 1916, but the Cook County Coroner's Office has no record of her death. Personal communication with Cathy Kurnyta, Director of Medical Records Department, Cook Count), Medical Examiner's Office. Emerson's abortion-related death was one of the cases for which Dr. Schultz-Knighten was prosecuted, People v. Schultz-Knighten , 277 Ill. 238 (1917). I did not find any records from the 1920s or 1930s of black women who had abortions. The paucity of information on the abortion-related deaths of black women may be an artifact of bias in the sources or may reflect the relatively small size of Chicago's African American population. Although World War I migration of African Americans from the South increased Chicago's black population by 148 percent, African Americans still made up only 4 percent of Chicago's population in 1920. Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 140-146,223. On black women's use of abortion, see Rod-rique, "The Black Community and the Birth Control Movement," 140-141. [BACK]

22. Dr. Anna B. Schultz-Knighten complained that the coroner's physician, Dr. Springer, had "sneered" at her and called her a "nigger." Abstract of Record, p. 117, People v. Schultz-Knighten , 277 Ill. 238 (1917), Case Files, no vault no., Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

23. Taussig, Abortion , 156-158,185-222. [BACK]

24. Mortality reached 60 to 70 percent when septiccmia or peritonitis had occurred, according to Report of Fred J. Taussig, White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, Fetal, Newborn, and Maternal Morbidity and Mortality (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1933), 466-467. Almuth C. Van-diver, "The Legal Status of Criminal Abortion, with Especial Reference to the Duty and Protection of the Consultant," AJO 61 (March 1910): 434-435, quotation on 497. [BACK]

25. O.B. Will, "The Medico-Legal Status of Abortion," Illinois Medical Journal 2 (1900-1901): 506, 508. Edward W. Pinkham, "The Treatment of Septic Abortion, with a Few Remarks on the Ethics of Criminal Abortion," AJO 61 (March 1910): 420. Illinois, All the Laws of Illinois , 1899, sec. 10, p. 216. In Nebraska and New Jersey, revocation of a physician's license for abortion did not require a criminal conviction. "Procedure before State Board of Health and Revocation of License for Criminal Abortion,'' JAMA 51 (August 29, 1908): 788; "Revocation of License for 'Practice' of Criminal Abortion on Single Occasion," JAMA 78 (June 24, 1922): 1988. [BACK]

26. Inquest on Mary L. Kissell, August 3, 1937, case no. 300-8-1937, Medical Records Department. See also Inquests on Edna M. Lamb, February 19,

1917, case no. 43-3-1917 and Anna P. Fazio, February 14, 1929, case no. 217-2-1929, both held by Medical Records Department. [BACK]

27. Verdict of Coroner's Jury,, Superintendent of Rhodes Avenue Hospital (name illegible) to Coroner Peter M. Hoffman, March 17, 1916 in the Inquest on Annie Marie Dimford, September 30, 1915, case no. 75-11-1915, Medical Records Department. See also Inquest on Ellen Matson, November 19, 1917, case no. 330-11-1917, Medical Records Department; Doctors D.S.J. Meyers and W.W. Richmond commenting on 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): 98, 99. [BACK]

28. This "agreement" is discussed in the Inquest on Matson. It may have been made in 1915 during the abortion scandal following Anna Johnson's death. See chapter 3, this volume. [BACK]

29. Dr. Marion S. Swiont in Transcript of People v. Zwienczak , 338, Ill. 237 (1929), Case Files, vault no. 44701, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

30. Dr. Coe and others in Vandiver, "Legal Status of Criminal Abortion," 496-501, quotation on 500; "Transactions of the New York Academy of Medicine. Section on Obstetrics and Gynecology. Meeting, of March 23, 1911. Criminal Abortion from the Practitioner's Viewpoint. Paper read by Walter B. Jennings," AJO 63 (June 1911): 1094-1096. [BACK]

31. Meeting of January. 9, 1912, Council Minutes, October 1911-June 1912, pp. 53-54, 56-57, Chicago Medical Society Records. The New Orleans Parish Medical Society published a letter to be sent to every physician in New Orleans, which included a model dying declaration. N.F. Thiberge, "Report of Committee on Criminal Abortion," New, Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 70 (1917-1918): 802, 807-808. [BACK]

32. Meeting of January 9, 1912, Council Minutes, p. 57, Chicago Medical Society Records. For examples of dying declarations and judicial discussions on their validity, see Hagenow v. People , 188 Ill. 545 (1901), pp. 550-551, 553; People v. Cheney , 368 Ill. 131 (1938), pp. 132-135. [BACK]

33. "Criminal Abortion," JAMA 39 (September 20, 1902): 706; Palmer Findley, "The Slaughter of the Innocents," AJOG 3 (January 1922): 37. [BACK]

34. Inquest on Emily Projahn, October 10, 1916, case no. 26-12-1916, Medical Records Department. Abortion convictions appealed to higher courts in Texas and Wisconsin revealed that dying declarations were obtained from women under threats by physicians to refuse medical care. "Dying Declarations Obtained in Abortion Case as Condition to Rendering Aid"; "Dying Declarations Made after Refusal of Physician to Treat Abortion Case without History." [BACK]

35. John Ross in Inquest on Mathilde C. Kleinschmidt, September 22, 1930, case no. 255-9-30, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

36. Vandiver, "Legal Status of Criminal Abortion," 435; Furniss commenting on Jennings, "Criminal Abortion from the Practitioner's Viewpoint," 1096. [BACK]

37. See comments of Louise Hagenow as quoted in Hagenow v. the People , 188 Ill. 545 (1901), p. 552. [BACK]

38. Ernest F. Oakley in discussion of "Legal Aspects of Abortion," AJOG 3 (January 1922): 84.; "Abortion 'Club' Exposed," BCR 4 (November 1936): 5.

See also "Dying Girl Runaway Hides Name of Slayer," Chicago Examiner , March 8, 1918, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

39. "End Murders by Abortions," Chicago Tribune , June 2, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC; Transcript of People v. Anna Heissler , 338 Ill. 596 (1930), Case Files, vault no. 44783, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

40. Quotation from an unnamed physician in Hawkins, "Symposium. Criminal Abortion. The Colorado Law on Abortion," 1099. See also Will, "The Medico-Legal Status of Abortion," 508; Simon Marx and George Kos-mak in Jennings, "Criminal Abortion from the Practitioner's Viewpoint," 1095-1096. [BACK]

41. Parkes in Meeting of January 9, 1912, Council Minutes, October 11-June 1912, p. 55, Chicago Medical Society Records; W. Robinson, The Law against Abortion , 105-111. [BACK]

42. Inquest on Lamb; Jennings, "Criminal Abortion from the Practitioner's Viewpoint," 1094. [BACK]

43. Frank commenting on Aud, "In What Per Cent," 100. See comments of A. C. Morgan and Richard C. Norris in "Society Proceedings. North Branch Philadelphia County Medical Society. Regular Meeting, held April 14, 1904," JAMA 42 (May 21, 1904.): 1375-1376. Attorneys disagreed about whether or not physicians should act as informers in abortion cases. Allen H. Seaman and Charles R. Brock in "Symposium. Criminal Abortion. The Colorado Law on Abortion," 1097, 1098. Illinois law did not privilege communications between doctors and patients. C. S. Bacon, "The Duty of the Medical Profession in Relation to Criminal Abortion," Illinois Medical Journal 7 (January 1905): 22. [BACK]

44. "Girl's Letters Blame Dr. Mason in Death Case," Chicago Tribune , [April] 9, 1916, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Voice from Grave Calls to Dr. Mason during Trial as His Fiancee's Betrayer," Denver Post , April 5, 1916. See also chapter 3, this volume. [BACK]

45. Quotation from "Dying Girl Runaway Hides Name of Slayer" (emphasis in original). See also "Girl Slain Here Gives Life to Hide Her Tragedy," Chicago Examiner , March 5, 1918; "Slain Girl Dies Holding Her Tragedy from Kin," Chicago Examiner , March 9, 1918. Both clippings in Abortionists Files, HHFC. All of these stories mention fathers. [BACK]

46. "Mrs. Ruth Conn," Chicago Herald , December 19, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

47. "Death Arrest Bares List of 1,500 Women," Chicago Examiner [1916], Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

48. Inquest on Mary Shelley, October 30, 1915, case no. 352-10-1915, Medical Records Department. Bacon, "The Duty of the Medical Profession," 21-22. The Crowell family tried to prevent an investigation into Mamie Ethel Crowell's abortion by lying to physicians and the coroner, Inquest on Crowell, April 16, 1930, case no. 305-4-30, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

49. For family members who wanted the state to investigate an abortion, see People v. Hotz , 261 Ill. 239 (1914.). Quotation from "Medical News. A Maryland Abortionist Gets No Pardon," JAMA 43 (November 12, 1904.): 1476. [BACK]

50. Edward Flanigan in Inquest on Frances Collins, May 7, 1920, case no. 161-5-20, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

51. Comments of "Esther E.," BCR 4 (September 1920): 15. See also, W. Robinson, The Law against Abortion , 106-107. [BACK]

52. Hagenow v. People (1901), p. 551; People v. Hagenow 236 Ill. 514. (1908), p. 527; People v. Heissler (1930), p. 599. The coroner told Dr. Kruse to "make it a rule" at his hospital to call police in abortion cases so that they could bring the suspect in for identification; Inquest on Lamb. [BACK]

53. Sgt. O'Connor in Inquest on Petrovitis. [BACK]

54. Inquest on Petrovitis. [BACK]

55. Mable Matson in Transcript of People v. Hobbs , 297 Ill. 399 (1921), Case Files, vault no. 38773, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

56. Rosie Kronowitz in abstract of People v. Heisler , 300 Ill. 98 (1921), p. 38, Case Files, vault no. 39077, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901 [BACK]

57. The following account is drawn from the Inquest on Eunice McElroy, November 14, 1928, case no. 486-11-28, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

58. John Harris in Inquest on Dimford. See also Robert Patrick Crelly in Inquest on Kissell. One man married his lover two days after her abortion; she died three weeks later (see Inquest of Esther Stark, June 12, 1917, case no. 65-6-1917). Quotation in People v. Rongetti , 344 Ill. 278 (1931), p. 284. [BACK]

59. Inquest on Anna Johnson, May 27, 1915, case no. 77790, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

60. Inquest on Matson. [BACK]

61. "Death Threat to Hostetler," Chicago Tribune , June 5, 1915, Abortionists Files, HHFC. Police and press often called the men in these cases "the sweetheart"; see "Doctor Faces Manslaughter Charge in Girl's Death," Chicago Tribune , April 18, 1930, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

62. Inquest on Alma Bromps, April 27, 1931, case no. 35-5-1931, Medical Records Department; People v. Ney , 349 Ill. 172 (1932), pp. 173-174. For other lovers who testified against the abortionist, see Cochran v. The People , 175 Ill. 28 (1898); People v. Hobbs , 297 Ill. 399 (1921). [BACK]

63. Walter Beisse in Inquest on Rose Siebenmann, April 16, 1920, case no. 266-4-20, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

64. Charles Morehouse's name is spelled as "Moorehouse" in Transcript of People v. Hobbs , 297 Ill. 399 (1921), Case Files, vault no. 38773, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901; O'connell in Transcript of People v. Buettner 233 Ill. 272 (1908), Case Files, vault no. 30876, ibid. For convictions of boyfriends, see Dunn v. the People; People v. Patrick , 277 Ill. 210 (1917). Grace and Edith Abbott found that many foreigners languished in jail because they could not pay their fines; see Lela B. Costin, Two Sisters for Social Justice: A Biography of Grace and Edith Abbott (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 77. [BACK]

65. I know of only one case where the husband was charged. Bertis Dougherty pied guilty to abortion and testified as a state witness against the abortionist in People v. Schneider , 370 Ill. 612 (1939), pp. 613-614. [BACK]

66. Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, A Study of Bastardy Cases, taken from The Court of Domestic Relations in Chicago , text by Louise DeKoven Bowen [Chicago, 1914] (History of Women, 1977) microfilm, item 9921, pp. 18, 19, 22. [BACK]

67. Young men and women understood how the juvenile courts worked

and how statutory rape cases proceeded; young men probably also knew how bastardy and abortion investigations proceeded. Odem, Delinquent Daughters . [BACK]

68. Transcript of Dunn v. the People , 172 Ill. 582 (1898), Case Files, vault no. 7876, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. On the ways in which women could use the state's regulation for their own ends, see Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives , 289-299. [BACK]

69. Abortionists sometimes offered to cover funeral and other expenses as in the unsuccessful cover-up participated in and described by Emil Winter in the Inquest on Margaret B. Winter, November 13, 1916, case no. 274-11-1916, Medical Records Department. In the Winter case the abortionist was a midwife. For an unsuccessful attempt to keep abortion quiet by a physician, see Testimony of Walter F. Heidenway and Elizabeth Heidenway in the Inquest on Alma Heidenway, August 21, 1918, case no. 232-8-1918, Medical Records Department. [BACK]

70. On false death certificates, see Earll v. the People , 73 Ill. 329 (1874), p. 336; Rudolph W. Holmes et al., "The Midwives of Chicago," JAMA 50 (April 25, 1908), 1348. [BACK]

71. See Inquest on Fazio; Pinkham, "Treatment of Septic Abortion," 420. [BACK]

Chapter 5 Expansion and Specialization

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]

100. Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 263. [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]

Chapter 6 Raids and Rules

1. Duffy quotation in George Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1941, p. 1. This brief summary of events and the quotations of Ada Martin's are drawn from the Transcript of People v. Martin, 382 Ill. 192 (1943) Case Files, vault no. 51699, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. [BACK]

2. Testimony of Martin in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

3. "Seize Physician and Two Nurses in Abortion Raid," Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1942, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

4. Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," p. 1. [BACK]

5. The term professional abortionist was widely used. See William J. Robinson, The Law against Abortion: Its Perniciousness Demonstrated and Its Repeal Demanded (New York: Eugenics Publishing, 1933), 75; Paul H. Gebhard et al., Pregnancy, Birth, and Abortion (New York: Harper and Brothers and Paul B. Hoeber Medical Books, 1958), 198-199. [BACK]

6. Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 194, 268, 184, graph; Henry J. Olson et al., "The Problem of Abortion," AJOG 45 (March 1943): 677; Augusta Webster, "Management of Abortion at the Cook County Hospital," AJOG 62 (December 1951): 1327, 1331; W. Nicholson Jones and Eugene H. Howe, "The Role of Antibiotics in the Management of Incomplete Abortions," AJOG 67 (April 1954): 825-831; Irvine Loudon, "Maternal Mortality: 1880-1950. Some Regional and International Comparisons," Social History of Medicine 1 (August 1988): 196-200. [BACK]

7. Quotation in People v. Stanko, 402 Ill. 558 (1949), p. 560. See also Rolla J. Crick, "Portland 'Abortion Capital' of Northwest," Portland Oregon Journal [July 1951], Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

8. One "law-breaking midwi[fe]" reportedly said, "There's an abortion boom. . . . I had forty-five patients on Saturday. . . . They come here straight from the factory, in slacks and overalls." Gretta Palmer, "Your Baby or Your Job," Woman's Home Companion 70 (October 1943): quotation on 137, 137-138; "Abortionist Convicted," Time 43 (March 6, 1944): 62. [BACK]

9. Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 273-299. [BACK]

10. The "feminine mystique" is Betty Friedan's phrase; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1963). Mary P. Ryan shows the emphasis on domesticity in the early 1940s, but suggests that "the partisans of domesticity . . . won cultural hegemony after World War II" in Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: New Viewpoints, a division of Franklin Watts, 1975), 199; Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982); Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (New York: Viking, 1988); Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America, rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), chap. 12. [BACK]

11. Anna Kross, "The Abortion Problems Seen in Criminal Courts," in The Abortion Problem: Proceedings of the Conference Held Under the Auspices of the National Committee on Maternal Health, Inc. at the New York Academy of Medicine, June 19th and 20th, 1942 (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, for the National Committee on Maternal Health, 1944), 110, 107; Ladies Home Journal quotation as cited in Ryan, Womanhood in America, 199, 167-168, 198-209, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom, rev. ed. (1984; reprint, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 106, 111, 114; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1984), 250-258. [BACK]

12. McCarthyism is a convenient label used for the anticommunist hysteria

of the 1940s and 1950s even though Senator Joseph McCarthy himself did not steal the limelight until 1950. [BACK]

13. Mary Jezer, The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945-1960 (Boston: South End Press, 1982); David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978); Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1994); Deborah A. Gerson, "'Is Family Devotion Now Subversive?' Familialism against McCarthyism," in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, edited by Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 151-172. [BACK]

14. John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Community, 1940-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 41-43, 49-51, 91, quotation on 49. As I find about abortion, George Chauncey finds that prior to this period, the gay male world was much more visible and tolerated than previously realized, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994). [BACK]

15. "The Abortion Menace," Ebony 6 (January 1951): 24. I am grateful to Susan Smith for bringing this article to my attention. [BACK]

16. "Sin No More," Time 38 (July 28, 1941): 60; "$500,000 Mill," Time 50 (September 15 1947): 49-50; "Six Are Arrested in Abortion Raid," NYT, July 17, 1941, p. 20; "3 Held in Abortion Case," NYT, February 4, 1944, p. 17. The available evidence suggests that Chicago and New York may have led the way in establishing raids as the method for enforcing the abortion laws, but this could be an artifact of the sources. [BACK]

17. Morton Sontheimer, "Abortion in America Today," Woman's Home Companion 82 (October 1955): 96. [BACK]

18. "Local Doctor Admits Illegal Operations 'To Help Out Needy,'" Covington Kentucky Post, February 25, 1952, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

19. Ohio: "One Doctor's Choice," Time 67 (March 12, 1956): 46-47; Detroit: "Abortion Raid Nets 2 Medics," Detroit Free Press, August 29, 1956; Baltimore: Lawrence Lader, Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 42-48; Los Angeles: "Nab 4 in Beach Mansion as Illegal Operation Ring," Los Angeles, California, Herald and Express, February 4, 1956; Portland: "Grand Jury Indicts 19," Portland Oregon Journal, July 6, 1951, p. 1. Portland and Los Angeles clips are in Abortionists Files, HHFC. No doubt further investigation into the newspapers and records of every state would uncover similar practices elsewhere. [BACK]

20. As cited in David J. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (New York: Macmillan 1994), 279. [BACK]

21. "Bronx Doctor Indicted on Abortion Rap," New York Home News, October 20, 1951; "Woman, 3 Men Seized in Abortion Blackmail," New York Evening Post, September 28, 1951, both clips in Abortionists Files, HHFC; Jerome E. Bates and Edward S. Zawadzki, Criminal Abortion: A Study in Medical Sociology (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1964), 68-70. Ex-patients sometimes tried to blackmail their abortionists, see Rolla J. Crick, "The Abortion Racket," Portland, Oregon Journal, July 9, 1951, Abortionists Files, HHFC; Lader, Abortion, 48. [BACK]

22. There were twenty-three cases reviewed dealing with abortions performed between 1940 and 1960. [BACK]

23. This description of the investigation led by Papanek is based on the testimony of Martin's patients as well as letters from people responding to Papanek's letter in the Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

24. See the humble responses in letters to Papanek, presented as Defendants' exhibits in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

25. In this particular trial there was no jury. [BACK]

26. Georgina W., Madeline D., and Evelyn K. in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

27. Defendant's exhibit 15-a in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

28. Evelyn K., Helen B., and Stella P. described the state's attorney's office in these words in Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

29. John Harlan Amen, "Some Obstacles to Effective Legal Control of Criminal Abortions," in The Abortion Problem, 137; "Abortion Trial Witness Balks; Gets 6 Months," Chicago Daily Tribune, November 22, 1949, p. 6; "Convict z in Abortion Trial," Chicago Daily News, December 1, 1949. Both newspaper clips are in Abortionists Files, HHFC.

The federal government prosecuted abortionists for income tax invasion, which may have been easier than prosecuting for abortion per se. At these trials too the government forced women to speak of their abortions. "Ten Women Tell Abortion Fees at U.S. Tax Trial," New York Daily News, October 16, 1952, cited in Bates and Zawadzki, Criminal Abortion, 63-64. [BACK]

30. Compare Evelyn K. and Martha K.; other women also were asked to name their physicians and did so in court. For examples of physicians' names, see the patient records of Helen N., Beatrice S., and Charlotte J. in the Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

31. Transcript of People v. Martin. [BACK]

32. It was particularly important during war, the Court continued, that care be taken against violating people's rights. Furthermore, "These promises are to be construed liberally in favor of the people." People v. Martin, 196, 202. [BACK]

33. The court's opinion in People v. Martin referred to both state and U.S. supreme court decisions, pp. 196-203. People v. Martin was not the first such case in Illinois, but it was part of a movement coming from the states to apply the U.S. Constitution to criminal procedure in the states. Friedman suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court opinions in the 1950s and 1960s that applied the Bill of Rights to the states and required the states to conform to the same rules of fairness in the criminal process arose from changes developing in the states, but elaborates only slightly on this point. Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 303.

Applying the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution to the states through the fourteenth amendment, which guaranteed due process, is called "incorporation." Applying the fourth amendment to the states meant that state prosecutors, like federal officials, could not use evidence obtained illegally against the defendant at trial. This is called the "exclusionary rule" and is meant to protect all citizens (not criminals as conservatives claim) from abuses by police and other state authorities. The case that applied the exclusionary rule to the states is Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). John E. Nowak, "Criminal

Procedure. Constitutional Aspects,'' and James B. White, "Search and Seizure," in Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, vol. 2, edited by Sanford H. Kadish (New York: Free Press, 1983), 527-536, 1415-1421; Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History, chap. 14. [BACK]

34. People v. Martin. I have been unable to determine whether the state prosecuted the pair again or dropped the case. [BACK]

35. Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," 1; George Wright, "Fires Assistant Prosecutor," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1941, p. 1. [BACK]

36. "Doctor Bares Abortion Ring, Then Kills Self," Chicago Daily Tribune, April 18, 1941, p. 1; "Millstone's Widow Kills Self in Abortion Probe," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 1, 1941, p. 1; "Offices of Loop Doctor Raided in Abortion Quiz," Chicago Sunday Tribune, May 11, 1941, p. 21. [BACK]

37. Photos in "Doubts Are Cast on Motive Given in Girl Slaying," Chicago Daily Tribune, April 30, 1941, p. 9; "Millstone's Widow Kills Self in Abortion Probe," 12. [BACK]

38. For good examples of critical analysis of this type of journalism, see Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Lisa Duggan, "The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Turn-of-the-Century America," Signs 18 (summer 1993): 791-814. [BACK]

39. As Lawrence Friedman has suggested, the notion of a syndicate proved fruitful for the FBI; organized crime gave the FBI reason to expand and conduct far-reaching domestic investigations. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History, 266-267, 272-273, quotation on 273. [BACK]

40. Rolla J. Crick, "Portland 'Abortion Capital' of Northwest." Assessing the accuracy of this image is difficult. The press and state authorities regularly described illegal abortion practices as "rings," which could mean merely that several people were involved: an abortionist, often a physician, a nurse, a receptionist, an attorney—people one would expect to find connected to most medical practices—as well as physicians and others who referred patients to the practitioner. To the extent that "the mafia" did take up abortion after the end of Prohibition (which I have often been told but cannot document), this was of course due to the illegality of abortion. [BACK]

41. For police kicking down doors, see "Seize Physician and Two Nurses in Abortion Raid," Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1942, Abortionists Files, HHFC. For quotations and patient record, see Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," 1. [BACK]

42. "Nab Ex-Doctor and 2 in Loop Abortion Raid," Chicago Tribune, September 4, 1947, Abortionists Files, HHFC; "Report 3 True Bills in Abortions," Chicago Daily News, August 21, 1951, p. 8, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

43. Compare "Abortion Trial Witness Balks" and "Identifies Doctor in Abortion," Chicago Daily News, November 28, 1949, p. 2. [BACK]

44. Clara L. in the Transcript of People v. Stanko, 402 Ill. 558 (1949), Case Files, vault no. 55590, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901. Other women rounded up by Chicago police gave similar testimony about that day. Stanko was tried twice and the case appealed twice, People v. Stanko, 402 Ill. 558 (1949); People v. Stanko, 407 I11. 624 (1951). [BACK]

45. James P. Hackett in Transcript of People v. Stanko (1949). [BACK]

46. Opening statement by James A. Brown in Transcript of People v. Stanko (1949). [BACK]

47. For a Pennsylvania case, see Patricia G. Miller, The Worn of Times (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 215-216. In a Detroit raid, police picked up sixteen women. "Three of the women," the paper reported, "were taken to Receiving Hospital for treatment." Most likely they were examined there and the state planned to use those examinations for evidence. ''Abortion Raid Nets 2 Medics," Detroit Free Press, August 29, 1956. [BACK]

48. People v. Stanko (1949), p. 560. [BACK]

49. Dr. Towne, an obstetrician-gynecologist, was a graduate of Loyola University Medical School in Chicago and an assistant clinical professor there. Dr. Janet Towne in Transcript of People v. Stanko (1949); American Medical Directory, 18th ed. (Chicago: American Medical Association, 1950), 735. Given her connections, she may have been Catholic and motivated to help the local prosecutor in light of both her religious and her medical beliefs. [BACK]

50 . People v. Stanko (1949), p. 559. [BACK]

51. Clara L. in Transcript of People v. Stanko (1949). [BACK]

52. People v. Stanko (1949) and People v. Stanko (1951). [BACK]

53. Affidavits of Helen Stanko, January 14, 1948; questions to Clara L., and closing argument by Edward C. Dufficy in Transcript of People v. Stanko (1949). [BACK]

54. People v. Stanko (1949), pp. 558-562; People v. Stanko (1951), p. 626. [BACK]

55. For arrests in Pennsylvania and New Jersey respectively, see Miller, The Worst of Times, 215; news clipping, no rifle, Union City, New Jersey Dispatch, July 13, 1951, Abortionists Files, HHFC. For threats, see Sontheimer, "Abortion in America Today," 101. [BACK]

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

57. "State Tax Delay Granted Soldiers," NYT, May 9, 1942, p. 6; "Credit Lady Cops in Abortion Drive," New York Worm Telegraph, June 1955, Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

58."Charges Doctors Aid Abortions," Chicago Daily News, March 9, 1954. See also "Cops Crack Down on Illegal Surgery," San Francisco Call Bulletin, May 1, 1957. Both clips are in Abortionists Files, HHFC. [BACK]

59. Gerson, "'Is Family Devotion Now Subversive?'" [BACK]

60. "Abortionist Convicted," Time, 43 (March 6, 1944): 60. Ellen Schrecker finds that communist women were stigmatized as bad mothers and consistently associated with sexual deviance. Ellen Schrecker, "The Bride of Stalin: Gender and Anticommunism during the McCarthy Era" (paper delivered to the Berkshire Conference on Women's History, Vassar College, June 11, 1993), 9-13, 15-17. [BACK]

61. Maxine Davis, "Have Your Baby," Good Housekeeping 118 (June 1944): 45; "Soviet Legalizes Abortions Again," NYT, December 1, 1955, p. 9. [BACK]

62. Students at Rutgers University quickly learned that publishing their views on abortion was unacceptable when the Knights of Columbus, Catholic War Veterans, and Catholic Holy Name Societies protested to the state legislature. The students resigned under pressure. "More Quit at Rutgers," December 8, 1950, p. 34; "Rutgers Inquiry Sought," NYT , December 13, 1950;

"Rutgers Names Inquiry Board," NYT , December 16, 1950, p. 20; "Driscoll Starts Rutgers Inquiry," NYT , December 20, 1950. [BACK]

63. Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 1-94; Caute, The Great Fear, 403-486 on the professions; Jezer, The Dark Ages, 78-106. [BACK]

64. J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 171-175; Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 279-288. [BACK]

65. "Grand Jury to Scan Brooklyn Abortions," NYT , December 11, 1953, p. 26; Sontheimer, "Abortion in America Today," 101. Anti-Semitism was a component of McCarthyism, especially in New York; Caute, The Great Fear, 21 , 115, 224-225, 434-438. [BACK]

66. Comments of Dr. Albert E. Catherwood in discussion of H. Close Hesseltine, F. L. Adair, and M. W. Boynton, "Limitation of Human Reproduction. Therapeutic Abortion," AJOG 39 (April 1940): 561. Sterilization will be discussed further in chapter 7, this volume. [BACK]

67. Remarks in Hesseltine, Adair, and Boynton, "Limitation of Human Reproduction," 561. [BACK]

68. Harry A. Pearse and Harold A. Ott, "Hospital Control of Sterilization and Therapeutic Abortion," AJOG 60 (August 1950): 290. [BACK]

69. "The Right Thing," Newsweek 12 (August 1, 1938): 29; "Great Britain. Test Case," Time 32 (August 1, 1938): 17; "Tests Motherhood Law," NYT , June 29, 1938, p. 8; "Briton Held in Test on Birth Prevention,'' NYT , July 2, 1938, p. 5; "Aide of King Backs Illegal Operation," NYT , July 19, 1938, p. 11; "Foreign Letter. London. The Induction of Abortion in a Case of Rape," JAMA 111 (August 20, 1938): 731; Barbara Brookes, Abortion in England, 1900-1967 (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 40, 133. [BACK]

70. Hesseltine, Adair, and Boynton, "Limitation of Human Reproduction," 561. [BACK]

71. Pearse and Ott, "Hospital Control of Sterilization and Therapeutic Abortion," 297, Rudolph W. Holmes comment in discussion on 299. [BACK]

71. Pearse and Ott, "Hospital Control of Sterilization and Therapeutic Abortion," 297, Rudolph W. Holmes comment in discussion on 299.

72. Ibid., 290. [BACK]

71. Pearse and Ott, "Hospital Control of Sterilization and Therapeutic Abortion," 297, Rudolph W. Holmes comment in discussion on 299.

73. Ibid., 291, 293, 294, 296. [BACK]

74. A study of therapeutic abortion committee members in twenty-six hospitals in San Francisco and Los Angeles learned that the majority agreed that "the committee functions to police the activities of a physician whose procedures might otherwise bring himself and his colleagues into disrepute. . . . And several responses indicated agreement with the view that the committee serves as a curb on the perfectly scrupulous but somewhat 'liberal' obstetrician." Herbert L. Packer and Ralph J. Gampell, "Therapeutic Abortion: A Problem in Law and Medicine," Stanford Law Review 11 (May 1959): 429. [BACK]

75. Charles M. McLane 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), 101-102. [BACK]

76. On Monmouth Memorial Hospital: comments of Dr. Robert A. MacKenzie in discussion of Walter T. Dannreuther, "Therapeutic Abortion in a General Hospital," AJOG 52 (July 1946): 63-64. On California Hospital: Keith

P. Russell, "Therapeutic Abortion in a General Hospital," AJOG 62 (August 1951): 435, 437, 438. I have calculated an approximate number of abortions for the five years prior to the formation of the committee from figures provided by Russell. On University of Virginia Hospital: David C. Wilson, "Psychiatric Implications in Abortions," Virginia Medical Monthly 79 (August 1952): 448. On Sloan Hospital: Robert E. Hall, "Therapeutic Abortion, Sterilization, and Contraception," AJOG 91 (February 15, 1965): 518, 520-521, table 2. On Mt. Sinai Hospital: ''Abortion Rates Said Unaffected by Regulations," Scope Weekly 5 (August 31, 1960), no page no., in "Abortion, 1960-1964," Vertical File, American Hospital Association (hereafter cited as AHA), Chicago, Illinois. [BACK]

77. MacKenzie in Dannreuther, "Therapeutic Abortion in a General Hospital," 64; Alan F. Guttmacher, "Therapeutic Abortion: The Doctor's Dilemma," Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York 21 (May-June 1954): 118. [BACK]

78. MacKenzie in Dannreuther, "Therapeutic Abortion in a General Hospital," 64. [BACK]

79. The physician reporting on the hospital's policy, believed that "the patients have felt that they have had a fair hearing," but some women must have been annoyed by the repeated prying into their emotional health. Wilson, "Psychiatric Implications in Abortions," 449. [BACK]

80. S. A. Cosgrove and Patricia A. Carter, "A Consideration of Therapeutic Abortion," AJOG 48 (September 1944): 299-304, 305, table 1, quotations on 304, 305. Emphasis in original. [BACK]

81. Cosgrove and Carter, "A Consideration of Therapeutic Abortion," quotations on 308, 305; "Correspondence. Reply by Dr. Cosgrove," AJOG 48 (December 1944): 894. [BACK]

82. Dr. Nicholson J. Eastman of Johns Hopkins defended the frequency of therapeutic abortion in his hospital, but he first pointed out that the incidence of therapeutic abortion was almost half of what had been reported—an argument that essentially granted the evil of therapeutic abortion. Nicholson J. Eastman, "Correspondence; Therapeutic Abortion," AJOG 48 (December 1944): 892-893; and "Reply by Dr. Cosgrove," AJOG 48 (December 1944): 893-895. The therapeutic abortion to delivery ratio became a standard way of presenting data and comparing hospitals. See Dannreuther, "Therapeutic Abortion in a General Hospital," 54-65; J. G. Moore and J. H. Randall, "Trends in Therapeutic Abortions. A Review of 137 Cases," AJOG 63 (January 1952): 28-29, 31; Roy J. Heffernan and William A. Lynch, "What is the Status of Therapeutic Abortion in Modern Obstetrics?" AJOG 66 (August 1953): 337-338; Christopher Tietze in Calderone, Abortion in the United States, 85 . [BACK]

83. Comments of Drs. Guttmacher, Rosen, and Lidz, in Calderone, Abortion in the United States, 92, 95-96. [BACK]

84. A Yale medical professor had been attacked as a communist, and Catholic hospitals revoked the admitting privileges of physicians who had spoken in favor of birth control in the Connecticut state legislature. Public support for reproductive control was politically dangerous. Garrow, Liberty and Sexual ity, 149-150, 113-116, chaps. 1-2. [BACK]

85. Remarks of Dr. George H. Ryder, Dr. Edward A. Schumann, and Dr. Charles A. Poindexter in Dannreuther, "Therapeutic Abortion in a General

Hospital," 62-64. See also Dr. Raymond Squier, who called for a liberalization of the law, in The Abortion Problem, 170-171; and Dr. Sophia J. Kleegman in Calderone, Abortion in the United States, 113-116. [BACK]

86. Bessie E. Nelson in Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State 200 Md. 133 (1951), pp. 474-476, Maryland Court of Appeals (transcripts), October 1951 [MSA S434; MdHR 12,281-24; 1/67/13/34], Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, Maryland. Lawrence Lader also discusses the raid and prosecution of Timanus in Abortion, 48-51; Ed Keemer, Confessions of a Pro-Life Abortionist (Detroit: Vinco Press, 1980), 163-164. [BACK]

87. The situation would be different in cases where defendants had no lawyers. [BACK]

88. Not every lawyer is successful at this, but the best work to keep out extraneous and unanticipated information. [BACK]

89. A transcript of Keemer's trial and other materials are not available because the records are sealed. Keemer, Confessions, 233. My analysis of the Timanus case is based on both the published court opinion, Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, 200 Md. 133 (1951), and the trial Transcript. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

91. Ibid., 222. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

92. Ibid., 219-221, 255. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

93. Ibid., 219, 222. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

94. Ibid., 277, 290. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

95. Ibid., 576; see also 570, 577. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

96. Ibid., 565. [BACK]

90. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, quotation on p. 217.

97. Ibid., 579. [BACK]

98. Nurses referred patients to the Gabler-Martin clinic, but there is no information about them. See Grace E. patient record in Transcript of People v. Martin; George Wright, "Tells Bribe behind Killing," 1. For examples of nurses arrested with abortionists, see "Abortion Charges Are Continued Until March 3," Chicago South End Reporter, February 17, 1954, Abortionists Files, HHFC; ''Credit Lady Cops in Abortion Drive," New York World Telegraph, June 1955, Abortionists Files, HHFC. Nurses may appear less often because the state dropped cases against them since many were not actually doing abortions or because nurses did not have the resources to appeal. On the history of nursing, see Barbara Melosh, "The Physician's Hand": Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Susan M. Reverby, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). [BACK]

99. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, pp. 334-335. [BACK]

100. Testimony of Nancy Lee B., Jerome Goodman, Bessie E. Nelson respectively in ibid., pp. 231-232, 324-332, 463-472; Calderone, Abortion in the United States, 63; G. L. Timanus to Alan, March 15, 1962, Alan F. Guttmacher Papers, used with permission of the Countway Library, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts. I am grateful to David Garrow for alerting me to the Guttmacher collection. [BACK]

101. Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, pp. 376-377. [BACK]

102. On nineteenth-century doctors in court, see James C. Mohr, Doctors and the Law: Medical Jurisprudence in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 94-108. [BACK]

103. Christopher Tietze, "Therapeutic Abortions in New York City, 1943-1947," AJOG 60 (July 1950): 149, 152; Wilson, "Psychiatric Implications in Abortion," 448. This indication is discussed further in chapter 7, this volume. [BACK]

104. Timanus in Calderone, Abortion in the United States, 62-63; Lader, Abortion, 49-51. [BACK]

105. "Women Tell of Abortions," The Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1951. Timanus was not the only one abandoned by his colleagues. When police arrested an Ohio physician-abortionist who had been relied upon by area doctors for years, the medical society kicked him out. "One Doctor's Choice," Time 67 (March 12, 1956): 46-47. [BACK]

106. Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, p. 141; Lader, Abortion, 51; Transcript of Adams, Nelson, and Timanus v. State, p. 2. [BACK]

107. Most of the description of the investigation and trial comes from Keemer's autobiography. Keemer, Confessions, 169-174, quotations on 164, 171. [BACK]

107. Most of the description of the investigation and trial comes from Keemer's autobiography. Keemer, Confessions, 169-174, quotations on 164, 171.

108. Ibid., 171-172, 178; Isaac Jones, "Physicians Get 2-5 Jail Term," Detroit Michigan Chronicle, February 8, 1958, p. 1. [BACK]

109. "Physicians Issue Final Statement," Detroit Michigan Chronicle, February 8, 1958, p. 1. Keemer quotation italicized in original; Keemer, Confessions, 176-177. [BACK]

110. Bill Matney, "Views of the News," Detroit Michigan Chronicle, January 18, 1958, p. 1; Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality, 361. [BACK]

111. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right, 217-232. On the birth control movement's work leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which legalized birth control, see Garrow, Liberty, and Sexuality, 1-269. On the civil rights movement and the NAACP, see Genna Rae McNeil, "Charles Hamilton Houston: Social Engineer for Civil Rights," in Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meier (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 221-232; Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 1976); Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961 (New York: Oxford University Press 1994); Vicki L. Crawford et al., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). [BACK]

112. On the Timanus case, see "Women Tell of Abortions"; "Dr. Timanus Convicted in Abortion Case," Baltimore Sun, April 12, 1951, pp. 38, 26; "Doctor Gets 6 Months for Illegal Operation," Baltimore Sun, November 8, 1951. On the Keemer case, see "Conspiracy Charges Aired in Recorder's,'' Detroit Michigan Chronicle, January 18, 1958, p. l; "Two Medics Guilty in Conspiracy Case," Detroit Michigan Chronicle, January 25, 1958, p. 1; "Physicians Get 2-5 Jail Terms," 1, 4. [BACK]

113. Brookes, Abortion in England, 40, 133, 69-70, 79-104, Bourne quotation on 69. [BACK]

114. Keemer himself returned to practicing abortion, became active in the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), and invited arrest. "4 Arraigned for Illegal Abortions," Detroit Free Press, October 28, 1972, P. 3, sec. A. [BACK]

115. Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 402-403, 421; Rosemary Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 341-344. On the power of the medical profession and the struggles between hospitals and physicians earlier in the twentieth century, see Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth, 231, 241-246; Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 161. In scattered instances, a few nineteenth-century hospitals required consultation or staff approval before performing potentially fatal surgery in hospitals. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System (Philadelphia: Basic Books, 1987), 145, 257. [BACK]

116. Sister M. Patricia, Asa S. Bacon, Fred G. Carter, "The Hospital Administrator: An Analysis of His Duties, Responsibilities, Relationships and Obligations," by the 1934-1935 Study Committee of the American College of Hospital Administrators, p. 13, AHA. See also American Hospital Association, Manual on Obstetrical Practice in Hospitals (Chicago: American Hospital Association, 1936), 6, 5, AHA; Malcolm T. MacEachern, Manual on Obstetric Practice in Hospitals, American Hospital Association Official Bulletin No. 209 (Chicago: American Hospital Association, 1940), 35, AHA; Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals, Standards for Hospital Accreditation (December 1954), AHA. There was no evidence of concern about coercive sterilization practices; the issue of concern was patient control. Some expected that these standards would be applied in biased ways. See Mary Steichen Calderone, M.D. to Howard C. Taylor Jr., M.D., June 4, 1957, folder 15, box 2, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, Schlesinger Library. [BACK]

117. Calderone, Abortion in the United States, 63. [BACK]

Chapter 7 Repercussions

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]

Chapter 8 Radicalization of Reform

1. Gerald N. Grob, From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 20, 41-43, 274-278. [BACK]

2. 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), 285, 295. [BACK]

3. Remarks 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), 163, 164, 167. [BACK]

4. Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 6-13. [BACK]

5. Winfield Best to Mary Calderone, April 19, 1955, folder 3, box 2, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, Schlesinger Library; Winfield Best to Public Relations Department, February 16, 1955, folder 13, box 2, Calderone Papers. [BACK]

6. Quotation in Dr. W. Vogt to Dr. Mary Calderone, February 17, 1955, folder 13, box 2, Calderone Papers. [BACK]

7. Calderone, Abortion in the United States , statement on 181-184, quotations on 181, 183. [BACK]

8. Calderone, Abortion in the United States , 193-195. [BACK]

9. Proceedings of the American Law Institute , 1959 (Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1960), 252-283, quotation on 257-258. On the American Law Institute, see Solon N. Blackmer, "Medical and Legal Foundations for Justifiable Abortions—An Abstract," Illinois Medical Journal 121 (January 1962): 59; Herbert F. Goodrich and Paul A. Wolkin, The Story of the American Law Institute, 1923-1961 (St. Paul: American Law Institute Publishers, 1961), 5-7. The model law was slightly revised in 1962; American Law Institute, Model Penal Code: Official Draft and Explanatory Notes; Complete Text of Model Penal Code as Adopted at the 1962 Annual Meeting of The American Law Institute at Washington, D.C., May 24, 1962 (Philadelphia: The American Law Institute, 1985), Section 230.3, pp. 165-166. [BACK]

10. Proceedings of the American Law Institute , 258; Leonard Dubin, "The Antiquated Abortion Laws," Temple Law Quarterly 34 (winter 1961): 151. [BACK]

11. Proceedings of the American Law Institute , 274-275,279-281, quotations on 279, 281. [BACK]

11. Proceedings of the American Law Institute , 274-275,279-281, quotations on 279, 281.

12. Ibid., 259-262, 264. [BACK]

13. Eugene Quay, "Justifiable Abortion—Medical and Legal Foundations," (in two parts) Georgetown Law Journal 49 (winter 1960 and spring 1961): 173-241; 395-443. On the Catholic Church's role in battling birth control, see David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 96-98, 144-145, 222-223,232-234;

David J. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 113-116, 118. [BACK]

14. "Attorneys Urge Legal Abortions," AMA News 3 (July 11, 1960): 8, Vertical Files, AHA; Dubin, "The Antiquated Abortion Laws," 151. [BACK]

15. Doug Lindgren, "Abortion: State Control or a Woman's Right?" The Brief (February 1970): 3. The states that passed reform laws were Colorado, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia. Judith Hole and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of Feminism (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 284. [BACK]

16. Alan F. Guttmacher, "The Law That Doctors Often Break," Reader's Digest 76 ( January 1960): 51 -54. [BACK]

17. Jerome M. Kummer and Zad Leavy, "Therapeutic Abortion Law Confusion," JAMA 195 (January 10, 1966): 143, 144. [BACK]

18. Maginnis's organization was first named Citizens' Committee for Humane Abortion Laws. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality , 290; Miss. Pat Maginnis to Dr. Alan Guttmacher, March 28, 1962, Correspondence, Guttmacher Papers, Countway Library, Harvard University. Ninia Baehr, Abortion without Apology: A Radical History for the 1990s (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 7-18. [BACK]

19. "Pregnant Women and Self-Determination," Society for Humane Abortion Newsletter (hereafter cited as SHA Newsletter) 1 (August 1965): 1; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 95-102. [BACK]

20. Cartoon by Robert N. Bick in Patricia T. Maginnis, The Abortees' Songbook , 1969, Position Papers Part z folder, Women's Ephemera Folders (hereafter cited as WEF), Special Collections, Northwestern University Library, Evanston, Illinois. In the 1940s and 1950s, psychiatrists took enlightened views of sexual "deviants" and tried to alleviate the situation for homosexuals, unwed mothers, and sexually unhappy women, but psychiatrists were later considered judgmental, homophobic, and sexist. To its credit, the psychiatric profession heard its clients and revised its views. Allan Bérubé makes this point about homosexuality in Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in Worm War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), 149-174. For examples of the psychiatric interpretation of these issues, see Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: Birth Control in America , rev. and updated (1976; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 360-361, 366-369; Regina Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). [BACK]

21. Quotations from Society for Humane Abortion Statement, SHA Newsletter 1 (August 1965), no page no. See also "Abortion vs. Contraception," SHA Newsletter 2:1 (February/March 1966); Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality , 301, 304. For another early feminist critique of reform, see Alice S. Rossi, "Public Views on Abortion," (February 1966) [reprint] n.p., Abortion—National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws folder, WEF. [BACK]

22. The group had male support, but had originated among women and formulated its arguments from the perspective of women who wanted abortions, not potential providers. For male participants, see "SHA Incorporation," SHA Newsletter 2 (April/May 1966). [BACK]

23. This organization was named the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (ARAL). Different sources suggest that it started in 1964 or 1966. "Classes in Abortion," flyer, [September 15, 1966], Correspondence, Guttmacher Papers; "Are You Pregnant," flyer, Correspondence, Guttmacher Papers; "Law, Police and Patricia Maginnis," SHA Newsletter 3 (January/February 1967): 1; Baehr, Abortion without Apology , 10. [BACK]

24. Report from Juarez, Folder 86 and Evaluations, July 1967, folder 125, box 5, Records of the Society for Humane Abortion and the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws, Schlesinger Library. [BACK]

25. Interview of Heather Booth by Paula Kamen, September 1, 1992, Paula Kamen Collection, C.D. McCormick Library of Special Collections Department, Northwestern University Library; Lindsey Van Gelder, "The Jane Collective: Seizing Control," Ms . (September/October 1991): 83. [BACK]

26. Different dates are given for the start of the Service. I conclude from the Booth interview that the first collective effort began in 1967 when she contacted Jody Parsons. Interview of Booth, 7; Van Gelder, "The Jane Collective," 83-84; Pauline Bart, "Seizing the Means of Reproduction: An Illegal Feminist Abortion Collective—How and Why it Worked," Qualitative Sociology 10 (winter 1987): 339-357. [BACK]

27. Diane Elze, "Underground Abortion Remembered: Part 2," Sojourner: The Women's Forum 13 (May 1988): 12, Abortion—Jane folder, WEF; Bart, "Seizing the Means of Reproduction," 339-357; Interview of Judith Arcana, September 1992, pp. 3-5, Paula Kamen Collection; Jane, "Jane," Voices , June-November 1973, typescript, pp. 1-23. Last quotation from "Just Call 'Jane,''' The Fight For Reproductive Freedom: A Newsletter for Student Activists 4 (winter 1990): 4. I am grateful to Suzanne Poirier and Bonnie Blustein for giving me copies of the "Jane" typescript and to Anne Champagne for the newsletter. [BACK]

28. Interview of Arcana, 5; Interview of Anonymous Jane and Husband, September 1992, pp. 1-2, 9, Paula Kamen Collection; Elze, "Underground Abortion Remembered," 12; "Just Call 'Jane,'" 4. [BACK]

29. Interview, of Lorry, November 26, 1992, pp. 2-7, Paula Kamen Collection. [BACK]

30. "Aborted Women and Silence," SHA Newsletter 1 (August 1965): 2; Jane, "Jane," 8. [BACK]

31. "Law, Enforcement," SHA Newsletter 1 (August 1965): 2; "Civil Rights are a Part of Good Medical Care," Abortion '68-'73 folder, box 23, Chicago Women's Liberation Union Papers, Chicago Historical Society. [BACK]

32. Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement and its Relation to the Policy Process (New York: David McKay, 1975); Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Random House, 1979; Vintage Books, 1980); 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), 299-324; Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism . [BACK]

33. Women in the United Auto Workers (UAW) got NOW off the ground and the union provided the organization's first funds. Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation , 50-56, 71 - 102, 80. [BACK]

34. Johnnie Tillmon, who "organized the nation's first welfare rights group in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1963," argued that, "Welfare is a Woman's Issue," reprint in The First Ms. Reader (New York: Warner Paperback, 1973), 51-55; Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation , 73-74; Giddings, When and Where I Enter , 312-313; Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Random House, 1977), 264-280. [BACK]

35. Women's liberation groups arose in Detroit, Seattle, Gainesville, Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation , 50-51, 56-62, 103-111; Evans, Personal Politics . [BACK]

36. Voices , August 30, 1971, p. 7, Abortion—Ephemera #2 folder, WEF; Palante , March 19, 1971, p. 12, Abortion—Ephemera #4 folder, WEF; Loretta J. Ross, "African-American Women and Abortion, 1800-1970," in Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women , edited by Stanlie M. James and Abena P. A. Busia (London: Routledge, 1993), 156. [BACK]

37. John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 301-325, 350-354; Anne Koedt, "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm," New England Free Press pamphlet, 1970; 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. [BACK]

38. Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation , 80-81, 153, 171. [BACK]

39. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , chap. 5. [BACK]

40. Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism , 296-299; Lucinda Cisler, "Unfinished Business: Birth Control and Women's Liberation," in Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology. of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement , edited by Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 311-312. For a photo of a theatrical skit at a New, York City speak-out, see 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), 11. [BACK]

41. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 337-345. [BACK]

41. Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right , 337-345.

42. Ibid., 386-396; Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968); Garrett Hardin, Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle (New York: Viking Press, 1968). Barry Commoner, however, criticized this kind of thinking among environmentalists and described Ehrlich and Hardin's horrific plans for coercive sterilization and birth control programs as "political repression" in The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology . (1971; reprint, New York: Bantam Books, 1972), 212. I am grateful to Daniel Schneider for these last citations. [BACK]

43. Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism , 285. [BACK]

44. Mary. Smith, "Birth Control and the Negro Woman," Ebony 23 (March 1968): 29-30. [BACK]

45. Michael Kilian, "Kill Welfare Sterilizing Measure," Chicago Tribune , May 20, 1971, Birth Control—Sterilization folder, WEF. [BACK]

46. "Blacks View Limitations on Number in Family as Genocide Effort by U.S.," Jet 40 (August 5, 1971): 20-21; Smith, "Birth Control and the Negro Woman," 29. [BACK]

47. 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), 138-154; D.C. Star , Aug. 28, 1971, Birth Control—Newspaper Articles folder, WEF. [BACK]

48. Smith, "Birth Control and the Negro Woman," 29. [BACK]

48. Smith, "Birth Control and the Negro Woman," 29.

49. Ibid., 30-31; Ross, "African-American Women and Abortion," 153-154. [BACK]

50. Elaine Brown has written of her life in the Black Panther Party and her realization of the party's devaluation of women in A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992). The Panthers, however, supported abortion and birth control on demand; see Ross, "African-American Women and Abortion," 153-154. [BACK]

51. Kennedy quotation in Maxine Williams, "Why Black Women Support the Abortion Struggle," [1971], Minority Women (Black) folder, Newspaper Ephemera (Undated Only), WEF; Representative Shirley Chisolm, "Facing the Abortion Question," excerpt from Unbought and Unbossed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), reprint in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History , edited by Gerda Lerner (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 602-607, quotation on 604; Ross, "African-American Women and Abortion,'' 154-156. [BACK]

52. March 8th Movement, "Abortion-Birth Control—A Liberation for Women or Population Control?" in Position Papers folder, box 7, Jenny Knauss Collection, C.D. McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library; Davis, Women Under Attack , 28-29; Ross, "African-American Women and Abortion," 156. [BACK]

53. NYT February 17, 1969, p. 32; "Black MD Hits Abortion Laws," American Medical News , October 18, 1971, Abortion—Ephemera #2 folder, WEF. [BACK]

54. Arlene Carmen and Howard Moody, Abortion Counseling and Social Change from Illegal Act to Medical Practice: The Story of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1973). [BACK]

55. Kathy Christensen, speaker at Pro-Choice Rally, January 22, 1985, Madison, Wisconsin. [BACK]

56. "WONAAC Affiliation Formed at Catholic College," [1972], Abortion—WONAAC #1 folder, WEF. See also Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey with Jane O'Reilly, No Turning Back: Two Nuns' Battle with the Vatican over Women's Right to Choose (New York: Ivy Books, 1990). [BACK]

57. Letterhead, October 12, 1970, Abortion—Total Repeal of Abortion Laws (TRIAL) folder, WEF. The WONAAC Newsletter and the SHA Newsletter , both held in the Serials Collection at Northwestern University Library, document many organizations and activities. [BACK]

58. Keith Monroe, "How California's Abortion Law Isn't Working," The New York Times Magazine , December 29, 1968, pp. l0-11, 17-20; People v. Belous , 80 Cal. Rptr. 354; 458 P. 2d, (1969), pp. 195-196. [BACK]

59. See R. Bolle to Dr. Guttmacher, February 7, 1966; Alan F. Guttmacher to R. Bolle, February 15, 1966; F. Thomas to Dr. Alan Guttmacher, July 31, 1968; AFG to F. Thomas, September 17, 1968 in Correspondence, Guttmacher Papers; Alan F. Guttmacher, "The Genesis of Liberalized Abortion in New York: A Personal Insight," Abortion, Medicine, and the Law , 3d ed., completely

revised, edited by J. Douglas Butler and David F. Walbert (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1986), 229-234. [BACK]

60. Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982); John C. Burnham, "American Medicine's Golden Age: What Happened to It?" Science 215 (March 19, 1982): 1474-1479, 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, 2d ed., rev. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 248-258. [BACK]

61. "ISMS Symposium on Medical Implications of the Current Abortion Law in Illinois," Illinois Medical Journal 131 (May 1967): 666-695. [BACK]

62. Robert E. Hall, "New York Abortion Law Survey," AJOG 93 (December 15, 1965): 1182; "Obstetricians Support Liberal Abortion Policy," JNMA 61 (May 1969): 245. [BACK]

63. On the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, see Cisler, "Unfinished Business," 309. On the (African American) Detroit Medical Society, see Edgar B. Keemer, "Update on Abortion in Michigan," JNMA 64 (November 1972): 518; also see Era L. Hill and Johan W. Eliot, "Black Physicians' Experience with Abortion Requests and Opinion about Abortion Law Change in Michigan,'' JNMA 64 (January 1972): 52-58. On the American Public Health Association, "APHA Resolutions. 98th Annual Meeting, Oct. 28, 1970. Standards for Abortion Services," AJPH 61 (January 1971): 195. [BACK]

64. "APHA Resolutions," 195. [BACK]

65. Cisler, "Unfinished Business," 310-311; "Changing Morality: The Two Americas, A Time-Louis Harris Poll," Time 93 (June 6, 1969): 27. [BACK]

66. The case is Doe v. Scott , 321 F. Supp. 1385 (1971). My analysis of this legal challenge is based on the original briefs and other materials presented to the federal court, the published opinion, and interviews with the two cooperating attorneys, Sybille Fritzsche and Susan Grossman Alexander. In the text I have used the name that Susan Alexander used at the time, Susan Grossman. I conducted a joint interview with Alexander and Fritzsche, March 8, 1994, Chicago, Illinois, tape in Reagan's possession. This interview is referred to as Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. Additional interviews with Fritzsche, in Chicago on April 6, 1995, and Alexander, by telephone on June 28, 1995, and November 27, 1995, clarified certain points. [BACK]

67. Roy Lucas came up with a nearly identical plan in 1967, published in 1968; see Garrow, Liberty and Sexually , 338, 351-354, 356-357. Doe v. Scott (1971) was started and filed earlier than the Texas and Georgia cases. Alexander and Fritzsche sent copies of their work to Sara Weddington in Texas, Margie Pitts Hames in Georgia, and others; Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. Lawyers around the country shared their strategies, motions, and briefs. See Eva R. Rubin, Abortion, Politics, and the Courts , rev. ed. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 54; Sarah Weddington, A Question of Choice (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1992), 25-29. The woman who was "Roe" in Roe v. Wade has recently told her life story and of her experience as a subject in the case; see Norma McCorvey, with Andy Meisler, I Am Roe: My Life, Roe v. Wade, and Freedom of Choice (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). [BACK]

68. Alexander in Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

69. As one of the few women in the legal profession, Fritzsche probably would have identified with the feminists in NOW who focused more on workplace issues and less on domestic arrangements. Fritzsche interview with author, April 6, 1995, Chicago. [BACK]

70. In 1969-1970, cases were started in Washington, D.C., Colorado, North Carolina, Washington, Iowa, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Connecticut, Ohio, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Louisiana, Arizona, and perhaps other states as well. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality , 377-378, 381-388, 424-428, 432-433. On physicians' attempts to be arrested, see "Black MD Hits Abortion Laws"; Eileen Shanahan, "Doctor Leads Group's Challenge to Michigan Anti-Abortion Law," NYT October 5, 1971, p. 28; "Defend Dr. Munson, Dr. Koome, Dr. Keemer,'' WONAAC Newsletter , December 1972, p. 7, Northwestern University Library. On Keemer's activism, see Ed Keemer, Confessions of a Pro-Life Abortionist (Detroit: Vinco Press, 1980), 215-217, 220-224. [BACK]

71. Alexander in Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

72. Martha F. Davis discusses both the activism of poor women themselves and the lawyers inspired to work on their behalf in Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). [BACK]

73. "Complaint to Declare the Illinois Abortion Statute Unconstitutional and to Enjoin Its Enforcement," n.d., p. 8, Doe v. Scott , 70 C. 395 (Civil Case Files), Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Chicago), Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States, National Archives—Great Lakes Region, Chicago, Illinois. [BACK]

74. Sybille Fritzsche, Susan Grossman, and Marshall Patner, "Memorandum of Law of Plaintiffs in Support of Motions for Preliminary Injunction and Summary Judgment and in Opposition to Counterclaim and Motion to Dismiss," pp. 15-16, Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). [BACK]

75. Grossman, Transcript of Proceedings, September 19, 1970, p. 36, Doe v. Scott , (Civil Case Files). [BACK]

76. Fritzsche, Grossman, and Patner, "Memorandum of Law of Plaintiffs," 6-13, quotation on 11; Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) 381 U.S. 479, phrase at p. 485; Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality . [BACK]

77. Fritzsche, Grossman, and Patner, "Memorandum of Law of Plaintiffs," 7-9. David Garrow argues in Liberty and Sexuality that activists in the 1930s began developing the idea of a right to privacy in reference to the use of birth control, which eventually shaped both Griswold and Roe . Linda Przybyszewski argues that the right to privacy has deeper roots in American history and culture and is part of Americans' long-held fear of government intrusion and abuse. Linda Przybyszewski, "The Right to Privacy: A Historical Perspective," in Abortion, Medicine, and the Law , edited by J. Douglas Butler and David F. Walbert, 4th ed. (New York: Facts on File, 1992), 667-692. [BACK]

78. Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

79. Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

80. "Complaint to Declare the Illinois Abortion Statute Unconstitutional and to Enjoin Its Enforcement," 3-5; physician affidavits and vitas in "Plaintiffs' Exhibits," Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). The lawyers did not contact any-

one at Loyola, the Catholic medical school, knowing it would be futile. Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

81. David S. Tatel, "Brief of Amici Curiae, Medical School Deans and Others, in Support of Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment," August l0, 1970, Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). California lawyers had similarly collected a long list of prestigious medical names in support of the Belous case. [BACK]

82. Brief Amicus Curiae of Committee of Concerned Doctors, August 10, 1970, Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). [BACK]

83. In order, quotations by Alexander and Fritzsche in Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

84. Fritzsche, Grossman, and Patner, "Memorandum of Law of Plaintiffs," 64-71; emphasis added to quotation from Affidavit of David N. Danforth, M.D., pp. 2-3, July 27, 1970, Exhibit D, "Plaintiffs' Exhibits," Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). [BACK]

85. Affidavit of Charles Fields, M.D., August 6, 1970, pp. 2-3, Exhibit E, "Plaintiffs' Exhibits," Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). See also Affidavit of Frederick P. Zuspan, M.D., August 5,1970, p. 3, Doe v. Scott (Civil Case Files). [BACK]

86. Doe v. Scott , p. 1389. [BACK]

86. Doe v. Scott , p. 1389.

87. Ibid., 1386-1389, 1391. [BACK]

88. "Abortion Suit Waiting Supreme Court Decision," The Brief (March 1971), no page no.; Kenan Heise, "Marvin Rosner, Physician and Local Activist," Chicago Tribune , October 17, 1995. I thank Susan Alexander for giving me a copy of this obituary. Alexander and Fritzsche Interview; Heffernan v. Doe , appeal filed, 40 USLW 3018 (U.S. March 29, 1971) (no. 70-l06). [BACK]

89. Testimony of Mrs. Anne Andich in "Memorandum in Opposition to State's Attorney of Cook County's Petition For a Writ of Mandamus or Prohibition," filed January 26, 1972, p. 6, Transcript of People ex. rel. Edward v. Hanrahan v. William S. White , 52 Ill. 2d 71, (March 1972), Case Files, vault no. 68793, Supreme Court of Illinois, Record Series 901; Peter Broeman and Jeannette Meier, "Therapeutic Abortion Practices in Chicago Hospitals—Vagueness, Variation, and Violation of the Law," Law and Social Order 4. (1971): 762; Planned Parenthood "Alert," May 1971, folder 1, box 134., accession number 76-116, Chicago Urban League Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. [BACK]

90. Broeman and Meier, "Therapeutic Abortion Practices in Chicago Hospitals," 757-775. The hypotheticals were first used in a survey of California hospitals by Herbert L. Packer and Ralph J. Gampell, "Therapeutic Abortion: A Problem in Law and Medicine," Stanford Law Review 2 (May 1959): 417-445. [BACK]

91. "Free and Voluntary Abortion Is Every Woman's Right," Abortion, 1968-73 folder, Chicago Women's Liberation Union Papers; Hole and Levine, Rebirth of Feminism , 285-291. [BACK]

92. Letter to Congressman Rostenkowski from Chicago, IL, zip code 60647, [1985], Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Chicago. [BACK]

93. Jean Pakter et al., "Two Years Experience in New York City with the Liberalized Abortion Law—Progress and Problems," AJPH 63 (June 1973): 524-525. [BACK]

94. Interview of Spencer Parsons, October 9, 1992, pp. 1, 4, Paula Kamen Collection. [BACK]

95. Phillip J. O'Connor, "UC Minister to Again Resist Abortion Quiz," Chicago Daily News , April 22, 1971, Abortion—Ephemera #3 folder, WEF; Sheila Wolfe, "Agencies Combine Abortion Referrals," Chicago Tribune , July 1, 1971, Abortion—Ephemera #2 folder, WEF; Carmen and Moody, Abortion Counseling and Social Change . [BACK]

96. Report of the Executive Director, Planned Parenthood Association, Chicago Area, April 1972, folder 9, box 134, Chicago Urban League Collection; Report of the Executive Director, Planned Parenthood Association, Chicago Area, June 1972, folder 10, box 134, Chicago Urban League Collection. [BACK]

97. Letter to Senator Dixon from "Jane Roe," March 30, 1985, Chicago, IL, zip code 60615, Silent No More Campaign, NARAL, Chicago. [BACK]

98. Fritzsche and Grossman knew that many of their opponents, including State's Attorney Hanrahan, were Catholic, but did not consider the opposition to be organized by any church since religious leaders like Rev. Parsons were on their side. Fritzsche in Alexander and Fritzsche Interview. [BACK]

99. Willard Lassers, "Chicago: Police City," The Brief (March-April 1970): 2. [BACK]

100. O'Connor, "UC Minister to Again Resist Abortion Quiz." [BACK]

101. People ex. rel. Edward v. Hanrahan v. William S. White ; "Motion in Opposition to People's Motion for Stay of the Order of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Juvenile Division," January 24, 1972, in Transcript of People ex. rel. Edward v. Hanrahan v. William S. White . [BACK]

102. "Excerpts from Daily News Article, May 4, 1972 by Phil Blake," box 23, Chicago Women's Liberation Union Papers; Arcana Interview, 7, 12; Elze, "Underground Abortion Remembered," 12. On police harassment at peace rallies and so on, see Lassers, "Chicago: Police City." [BACK]

103. "Is Shirley Wheeler Really Free?" WONAAC Newsletter , June 26, 1972, pp. 1, 3; Sherry Smith, "Support Shirley Wheeler," WONAAC Newsletter , October 21, 1971, pp. 1-2, 15, Abortion—WONAAC (1972) folder 2, WEF. [BACK]

104. Keemer, Confessions , 224-228. [BACK]

105. Arcana Interview, 12, 13, 19; Elze, "Underground Abortion Remembered." [BACK]

106. Keemer, Confessions , 233. [BACK]

l07. Roe v. Wade , 410 US 113, 35 L Ed 2d 147 (1973); Doe v. Bolton , 410 US 179, 35 L Ed 2d 201 (1973). [BACK]

108. Roe v. Wade , quotations on 177, 183. [BACK]

109. Doe v. Bolton; People v. Frey , nos. 43729, 45882, Cons. Illinois S. Ct., (1973); People v. Bell , 10 Ill. App. 3d 533 (1973). [BACK]

110. Doe v. Bolton , p. 201. [BACK]

111. Public-health organizations and welfare recipients submitted an amicus brief that focused on the race and class inequality in access to abortion. Susan Alexander telephone interview, June 28, 1995. See Alan Charles and Susan Alexander, "Abortions for Poor and Nonwhite Women: A Denial of Equal Protection?" Hastings Law Journal 23 (November 1971): 147-169. [BACK]

Epilogue: Post-Roe , Post-Casey

1. Most hospitals failed to provide abortions: Catholic hospitals did not allow abortions; less than 30 percent of other voluntary hospitals and only 15 percent of municipal hospitals provided abortions by 1974. Harold Speert, Obstetrics and Gynecology in America: A History (Chicago: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists), 170; Robert E. Hall, "Abortion: Physician and Hospital Attitudes," AJPH 61 (March 1971): 517-519. [BACK]

2. Chicago Reader , April 6, 1973, p. 1. However, the problem of limited availability of abortion was foreshadowed by the Chicago Women's Liberation Union's observation that the number of abortion providers was small.

3. Institute of Medicine, Legalized Abortion and the Public Health (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, May 1975), 79-80. [BACK]

3. Institute of Medicine, Legalized Abortion and the Public Health (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, May 1975), 79-80. [BACK]

4. In 1971, the maternal mortality rate (pregnancy associated deaths per l0,000 live births) was 2.9 compared to 5.3 in 1969, the last year abortion was illegal in New York. (During 1970, abortion was illegal part of the year and the new system of legal abortion was being worked out.) I have calculated the decline from figures provided in table 17 in David Harris et al., "Legal Abortion 1970-1971—The New York City Experience," AJPH 63 (May 1973): 417; Speert, Obstetrics and Gynecology in America , 170; Robert E. Meyer and Paul A. Buescher, "Maternal Mortality Related to Induced Abortion in North Carolina: A Historical Study," Family Planning Perspectives 26 (July/August 1994): 179-180; Institute of Medicine, Legalized Abortion and the Public Health , 65 -68. [BACK]

5. Irvine Loudon identifies two previous major advances in controlling maternal mortality: the first decline in maternal mortality resulted from the introduction of antiseptic and aseptic procedures in the 1880-1900/1910 period; the "profound fall" in maternal mortality followed the introduction of sulfonamides, and then blood transfusions and penicillin, in the late 1930s and 1940s. Loudon finds that soon after the development of sulfa drugs in 1935-1936, the drugs were quickly manufactured and widely available in England, and maternal mortality soon fell. "Early trials of the sulphonamides showed that they reduced the death rate from puerperal fever by 50 to 60 per cent. . .. The reduction in mortality from puerperal fever in England and Wales from 1936 to 1937 was 35 per cent for total sepsis." However, for a variety of social reasons, the sulfa drugs did not produce as rapid a decline in maternal mortality in the United States as in England. Irvine Loudon, "Maternal Mortality: 1880-1950. Some Regional and International Comparisons," Social History of Medicine 1 (August 1988): 183-228, figure A on 186, quotations on 189, 199. [BACK]

6. Irene Figa-Talamanca et al., "Illegal Abortion: An Attempt to Assess Its Cost to the Health Services and Its Incidence in the Community," International Journal of Health Services 16 (1986): 375-376; Mexico City News , May 15, 1992, p. 3. [BACK]

7. In the first two years of legal abortion (1970-1972), "nonwhite" residents had 44.9 percent of the abortions, Puerto Ricans 11.3 percent, and whites, 42.0 percent. Jean Pakter et al., "Two Years Experience in New York City with the Liberalized Abortion Law—Progress and Problems," AJPH 63 (June 1973):

528. On mortality rates and abortion use, see Meyer and Buescher, "Maternal Mortality Related to Induced Abortion in North Carolina," 180, table 1; Institute of Medicine, Legalized Abortion and Public Health , 3, 34—37. [BACK]

8. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom , rev. ed. (1984; reprint, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), 241-299; Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, "Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction," Feminist Studies 13 (summer 1987): 263-292. [BACK]

9. Samuel A. Mills, "Abortion and Religious Freedom: The Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) and the Pro-Choice Movement, 1973-1989," Journal of Church and State 3 (summer 1991): 569-594; Adele M. Stan, "Frances Kissling: Making the Vatican Sweat," Ms . (September/October 1995): 40-43. [BACK]

10. Stanley K. Henshaw, "Factors Hindering Access to Abortion Services," Family Planning Perspectives 27 (March/April 1995): 58-59; Terry Sollom, "State Actions on Reproductive Health Issues in 1994," Family Planning Perspectives 27 (March/April 1995): 84; NYT , March 11, 1993. [BACK]

11. Pctchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice , chaps. 7-8. [BACK]

11. Pctchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice , chaps. 7-8.

12. Ibid., 205-238. [BACK]

13. As Linda Gordon points out, all of us receive welfare benefits (in the form of funding for education and highways, unemployment and social security benefits, and so on), but only state aid to mothers of dependent children (through AFDC) is labeled "welfare" and stigmatized. See Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York: Free Press, 1994). [BACK]

14. This type of private policing has already begun. In a recent Nebraska case, local antiabortionist activists and state authorities—police, prosecutors, and judge—acted in concert to prevent a .young woman from having an abortion and forced her to bear a child. NYT , September 25, 1995, p. A8. [BACK]

15. The only known prosecutions occurred in the 1970s and were political responses to the movement to decriminalize abortion. [BACK]

16. Patricia Stephenson et al., "Commentary: The Public Health Consequences of Restricted Induced Abortion—Lessons from Romania," AJPH 82 (October 1992): 1328-1331. [BACK]

17. NYT , January 31, 1992; NYT , November 23, 1987, pp. 1, 12. Barbara Katz Rothman, Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 87, 159-168. The American College of Obstetrician-Gynecologists has opposed the use of court orders to force c-sections upon women; "Patient Choice: Maternal-Fetal Conflict," ACOG Committee Opinion , no. 55 (October 1987). [BACK]

18. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services , 492 U.S. 490 (1989); Planned Parenthood v. Casey , 112 S. Ct. 2791 (1992). [BACK]

19. The exception for rape exposes the sexual politics of abortion opponents: if the pregnancy resulted from presumably voluntary sexual activity, then it is deserved punishment. Women who are victims, according to this line of thinking, may be permitted to have abortions. [BACK]

20. Almost all insurance plans cover maternity care, about two-thirds cover

induced abortions, and a minority cover contraceptive services. Alan Gutt-macher Institute, Uneven and Unequal: Insurance Coverage and Reproductive Health Services (New York: AGI, 1994), 12-19. [BACK]

21. This is a misnomer; pregnant women are not yet "mothers." Pregnant women looking forward to a child, however, may start relating to the fetus as a child and begin to feel themselves mothers. Barbara Rothman discusses motherhood as a relationship in Recreating Motherhood . [BACK]

22. Sollom, "State Actions on Reproductive Health Issues in 1994," 83; Rachel Benson Gold and Daniel Daley, "Public Funding of Contraceptive, Sterilization, and Abortion Services, Fiscal Year 1990," Family Planning Perspectives 23 (September/October 1991): 210. [BACK]

23. Stanley K. Henshaw and Jennifer Van Vort, "Abortion Services in the United States, 1991 and 1992," Family Planning Perspectives 26 (May/June 1994): 103-112. [BACK]

24. H. Trent MacKay and Andrea Phillips MacKay, "Abortion Training in Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency. Programs in the United States, 1991-1992," Family Planning Perspectives 27 (May/June 1995): 112-115, quotation on I12. [BACK]

25. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services; Planned Parenthood v. Casey . On Webster , see Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice , 314-322. In 1994, nine states had instituted waiting periods and twenty-six enforced parental notification or consent laws. Sollom, "State Actions," 84; Frances A. Althaus and Stanley K. Henshaw, "The Effects of Mandatory Delay Laws on Abortion Patients and Providers," Family Planning Perspectives 26 (September/October 1994): 228-233. [BACK]

26. Richard Phelan, President Cook County Board of Commissioners, public lecture, Urbana, Illinois, fall 1992; Chicago Tribune , January 28, 1995. My thanks to Rose Holz for giving me this clipping. [BACK]

27. Linda Gordon reminds radicals to see the backlash as an indicator of how much society has changed in the past thirty years. [BACK]

28. According to 1993 polls, 83 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal. Of these, 32 percent think it should be legal "under any circumstances" and 51 percent think it should be legal "only under certain circumstances." Only 13 percent think it should be "illegal in all circumstances." Also interesting is the pro-choice sentiment within the Catholic Church: the majority of Catholics think that a Catholic can have an abortion and still be a "good Catholic" and that the Church should ease its position on abortion. George Gallup Jr., The Gallup Poll, Public Opinion 1993 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 73-74, 145-147. [BACK]

29. "Vermont Physician Assistants Perform Abortions, Train Residents," Family Planning Perspectives 24 (September/October 1992): 225; Melanie Bush, "The Doctor Is Out," Voice (June 22, 1993): 18; Katherine McKee and Eleanor Adams, "Nurse Midwives' Attitudes toward Abortion Performance and Related Procedures," Journal of Nurse-Midwifery 39 (September/October 1994): 300-311. [BACK]

30. MacKay and MacKay, "Abortion Training in Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency Programs in the United States, 1991-1992," 112-115. [BACK]

31. Richard Phelan lecture. [BACK]

32. Richard U. Hausknecht, "Methotrexate and Misoprostol to Terminate Early Pregnancy," New England Journal of Medicine 333 (August 31, 1995): 537-540; Etienne-Emile Baulieu, "Contragestion and Other Clinical Applications of RU 486, an Antiprogesterone at the Receptor, Science 245 (September 1989): 1351-1357; James Trussell et al., "Emergency Contraceptive Pills: A Simple Proposal to Reduce Unintended Pregnancies," Family Planning Perspectives 24 (November/December 1992): 269-273. [BACK]

33. Sollom, "State Actions," 84-85. [BACK]

34. Bylle Y. Avery, "Breathing Life into Ourselves: The Evolution of the National Black Women's Health Project," and Faye Wattleton, "Teenage Pregnancy: A Case for National Action," both in The Black Women's Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves , edited by Evelyn C. White (Seattle, Wash.: Seal Press, 1990), 4-10, 107-111. Though African Americans strongly support legal abortion, they are less active in the reproductive rights movement. See Julianne Malveaux, "Black America's Abortion Ambivalence," Emerge 4 (February 1993): 33-34. I am grateful to Vanessa Gamble for sharing the last article with me. [BACK]


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