Friday, January 23, 2009

1929: Homemaker kills women in botched abortion

On January 23, 1929, 22-year-old Edna Vargo died in Chicago from an abortion performed that day by Katherine Bajda. Bajda was identified as a homemaker. She was held by the Coroner on February 14. On March 15, she was indicted for felony murder in Edna's death.

Edna's abortion was unusual in that it was performed by an amateur, rather than by a doctor, as was the case with perhaps 90% of criminal abortions.



For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

To email this post to a friend, use the icon below.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can't be forced to donate your body parts to keep another person alive. A father was taken to court over failure to donate his kidney to his dying son.
So WHY should women be forced to be life support for an unwanted person?
Thank goodness abortion is safe and legal.

Christina Dunigan said...

1. The woman isn't donating body parts when she's nurturing her unborn baby. She's not doing any violence against her body, but is respecting its natural function. It's in abortion that one is doing violence not only against the unborn child, but against the mother's body, which is handing onto that child and attempting to protect and nurture it.

2. The woman brought that child into existence through her choice to engage in sexual intercourse. She is responsible for the fact that the child is there. If she wants the choice to engage in sexual activity, she also must accept that this means accepting responsibility for the awesome power of sexuality -- that it produces new little people.

3. Since you're the one who brought up religion: Try reaching for your goddess when you go to meet your Maker. God's gonna have a bit of a beef with you about creating your own goddess in your own image, in order to justify your own choices. There is no goddess to thank for abortion being legal. It's legal because of a combination of human stupidity and human evil. These are not worthy of worship. As for safe -- it's certainly not safe for the human beings you choose to destroy with it. And it's not safe for your soul when you're choosing to turn the awesome capacity to nurture new life into a goddess of death. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're jeopardizing your soul. Is what you're buying worth the price?