1922: One dead patient, two implicated doctors

On August 13, 1922, 21-year-old Beulah Pickerill died at Chicago's Mid West Hospital from complications of a criminal abortion performed there that day.

Two physicians, Vincent Filletti and Michale Galgano, were held by the coroner and indicted for felony murder.

Floy L. Butler and P.J. Owens were held as accessories.

Beulah's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.



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

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