On June 24, 1908, 36-year-old Lillie O'Neill died in Dr. Albert C. Davis's Chicago office from compilations of an abortion performed June 20. Davis was acquitted for reasons not given in the source document. A midwife named Cornelia Meyers was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to Joliet.
"Annie" is one of the women Life Dynamics identifies on their "Blackmun Wall" as having been killed by a safe and legal abortion. Annie traveled from New Jersey to New York for a first-trimester abortion on June 24, 1971. Shortly after she was given anesthesia, Annie went into cardiac arrest, and attempts to revive her failed. She left behind three children.
During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. As you can see in the graph below, plummeted long before legalization -- and legalization did nothing to either change this downward trend.
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