Eleanor Haynes, age 22, died of peritonitis at Hackensack Hospital in New Jersey on October 6, 1937. She had been admitted two days earlier by a doctor whose name was not divulged. In a dying statement, Eleanor said that Dr. P. 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.
During the first half of the 20th century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality from abortion. The death toll fell from 1,407 in 1940, to 744 in 1945, to 263 in 1950. Most researches attribute this plunge to the development of blood transfusion techniques and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.Watch Two Doctors, Two Decades on YouTube.
Sources:
- "Bogota Physician is Under Arrest," Paterson Morning Call, October 6, 1937
- "Grand Jury Acts in Girl's Death," Hackensack Record, November 30, 1937
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