Saturday, January 16, 2010

Anniversary: A "Back Alley" Death

On January 16, 1937, Dr. Samuel Roth performed a fatal abortion on an unidentified woman in his New York office. On December 23, 1941, Roth was sentenced to a year in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter for her death.



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

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6 comments:

Tonal Bliss said...

Only a year in prison? Why was that? Doesn't make much sense. One would think he'd get more time in prison than one year.

Christina Dunigan said...

It's hard to say. Chicago, in particular, had a revolving door penal system for abortionists who killed patients.

Tonal Bliss said...

That stinks. Without any real punishment it allowed other "doctors" to participate in killing unborn children and maiming women.

If abortion ever were to become illegal again, there should be real punishment handed to the abortionists when they commit such heinous crimes.

Christina Dunigan said...

Yeah, Sega. We'll need to do a hard analysis of the old laws and why they weren't effective. Though I suspect that local attitudes toward abortion had a strong part to play.

Christina Dunigan said...

Yeah, Sega. We'll need to do a hard analysis of the old laws and why they weren't effective. Though I suspect that local attitudes toward abortion had a strong part to play.

OperationCounterstrike said...

The anti-abortion laws were never serious about stopping abortions. They were just like the alcohol-prohibition, and the war on drugs today--the purpose was to enable the providers to charge more money.