From The Bad Old Days to Our Enlightened Era

On March 2, 1906, Lola Madison, a stenographer from Salt Lake City, Utah, died from an abortion at Passavant Hospital in Chicago. She was 28 years old. In her dying declaration, Lola named notorious abortionist Dr. Lucy Hagenow (pictured) as the person who perpetrated the fatal abortion. Hagenow was also implicated in the Chicago-area abortion deaths of Marie Hecht, Annie Horvatich, Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce, Jean Cohen, Bridget Masterson, Elizabeth Welter, and Mary Moorehead. I am also researching two San Francisco abortion deaths charged to Hagenow, who fled to the Chicago area to avoid going to prison. She certainly found a welcoming home there.

On March 2, 1914, 32-year-old Hannah Olson, a homemaker, died in Chicago, on the scene of an abortion performed that day by an unknown perpetrator.

On March 2, 1918, 26-year-old homemaker Mary Wojnovich died at South Side Hospital in Pittsburgh. The coroner found that she had died of double pneumonia and peritonitis following a self-induced abortion performed with a stick. This made her case unusual, since the vast majority of illegal abortions were done by doctors or midwives.


Now we'll move forward from the Dark Ages into our enlightened post-Roe era.

Sixteen-year-old Erica Richardson was brought to Dr. Gene Crawford by her aunt for a secret abortion on March 1, 1989. Erica's aunt reported that Crawford left the girl unattended for four hours after her abortion, then at 11 PM carried her to the car and instructed her aunt to take her home.Erica's aunt, a nurse, instead took the girl to a hospital. Erica died of an embolism (foreign matter or air in the bloodstream) shortly after midnight on March 2.

Jammie Garcia lingered in the Intensive Care Unit of a Houston hospital, with spiking fever, chills, nausea, pain, respiratory distress, a distended abdomen, low blood oxygen levels, and foul-smelling discharge. The 14-year-old had suffered a torn uterus and cervix during her February 18, 1994 abortion performed by John Coleman at Mosche Hachamovitch's abortion facility in Texas. An inspection of the clinic after Jammie's death on March 2 found pitted and dirty instruments, an autoclave that didn't work, and an administrator who was fully aware of how bad things were.