October 5, 1937: Prominent Doctor Named in Deathbed Statement

One of the biggest factors separating the prochoice from the prolife is how they perceive the world of illegal abortions. The prochoice see the greasy old man with a coat hanger lurking in an abandoned warehouse, plying his trade with booze on his breath and lechery in his eye. The prolife see a story substantiated by newspapers: doctors doing abortions on the sly.

Today's case from newspaper archives serves as examples of a doctor entangled in an abortion case. Law enforcement was sometimes unable to tell if the doctor was indeed the guilty party who caused the woman's death, but the prevalence of physician involvement in these old abortion cases underscores the research done by Planned Parenthood and by Nancy Howell Lee: most criminal abortions were done by doctors, and most non-physicians performing illegal abortions had physician accomplices who provided support and equipment.

Eleanor Haynes, age 22, died of peritonitis at Hackensack Hospital in New Jersey on October 5, 1937. She had been admitted two days earlier by a doctor whose name was not divulged. 

In a dying statement, Eleanor said that Dr. Percy Ralph McFeely had performed an abortion on her in his office on September 25. Eleanor's fiancée claimed no knowledge of an abortion. 

McFeely, a school and police physician who was also president of the local PTA, said that although he was treating Eleanor for a "minor ailment," he had not performed an abortion. 

McFeely was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence.  

Sources:

• "Bogota Physician is Under Arrest," Paterson Morning Call, October 6, 1937
• "Grand Jury Acts in Girl's Death," Hackensack Record, November 30, 1937

Watch Two Doctors, Two Decades on YouTube.