RealChoice: October 11, 1936: An Infamous Montana Abortionist

Saturday, October 11, 2025

October 11, 1936: An Infamous Montana Abortionist

Gertrude Pitkanen

The mantra among abortion-rights organizations is that before legalization, the world of abortion was a world of rusty coat hangers and untrained quacks. Frankly, it's an insult to the abortion-minded women of yesteryear to assume that they were all so mentally unhinged or utterly mindless. The vast majority sought out professionals of the same caliber they'd go to for any other cause.

On the night of October 11, 1936, 18-year-old Margarite Helen "Margie" Fraser died at St. Peter's Hospital in Helena, Montana. According to her death notice, Margie was a graduate of Hamilton High School and worked in the state auditor's office. According to 1930 census records, she was the daughter of a Scottish-born farmer and his Canadian-born homemaker wife.

Prior to her death Margie told the county coroner Dr. O. G. Kline and Deputy County Attorney Leo Kottas that she had undergone an abortion on October 1 in Butte at the hands of surgical nurse Gertrude Pitkanen. An inquest was held, with eight witnesses, including four physicians. The findings corroborated what Margie had said on her deathbed. Her cause of death was "general septicemia following criminal abortion."

Pitkanen, born in 1878 in Lincoln, Nebraska, completed her nurse's training at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. She moved to Butte in 1907, and was one of the first surgical nurses at St. James Community Hospital, assisting her husband, Dr. Gustavus Pitkanen. Gustav Pitkanen was an abortionist until he was jailed for sedition in 1917, whereupon his wife took up the curette.

Pitkanen was charged with manslaughter on October 15. Pitkanen pleaded innocent in Margie's death and posted $5,000 bond. Due to insufficient evidence, and difficulty in finding witnesses, the charges were dropped on April 29, 1937. The fact that Pitkanen had married a former Butte police detective several years earlier is an interesting tidbit of information relating to the case. This former detective, William VanOrden, arranged for a sanity hearing for his wife shortly after the case was dropped. Pitkanen was held for several days before being declared sane and released.

Pitkanen was also charged with the abortion deaths of Violet Morse (August, 1929) and Hilja Johnson (May, 1939). A woman who was a student nurse at St. James Hospital in Butte remembered Pitkanen's victims. "They died horrible deaths from infection," she told a reporter from the Montana Standard.

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