April 16, 1920: First of Two Deaths Attributed to Dr. Webber

SUMMARY AND CONTEXT: Rose Seibermann, age 24, died April 16, 1920 after an abortion attributed to Dr. Herman J. Webber. This story highlights a seldom-addressed reality: Most pre-legalization abortions were perpetrated physicians or trained medical professionals, not the woman or some amateur. 

Mary Calderone

As then-Planned Parenthood Federation medical director Mary Calderone estimated in the July, 1960 American Journal of Public Health, "90 per cent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians." Another researcher, Nancy Howell Lee, estimated in The Search for an Abortionist (1969) that 89% of illegal abortions were being done by physicians. These estimates are the result of independent research. Calderone was basing her estimates on Planned Parenthood's 1955 conference "Abortion in America," in which physicians, public health officials, and even one criminal abortionist worked together to draw as accurate picture as possible. Lee based her estimates on an extensive survey of women who had sought out abortions prior to legalization.

Grant Hospital in Chicago

On April 16, 1920, 24-year-old Rose Seibenmann (erroneously recorded as Lieberman in the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database, died at Chicago's Grant Hospital from a criminal abortion. 

Rose's father, Otto Siebenmann, swore out warrants against Dr. Herman J. Webber and Walter Biesse. 

"My daughter and Beisse expected to be married. They had been engaged for four years," Otto told detectives.

Webber testified at the inquest that Rose had come to his office a dozen times but he had not perpetrated an abortion. Beisse said that he had only asked Webber to examine Rose.

Webber was indicted by a Grand Jury in June, and released on $10,000 bond, but the case never went to trial.

Webber was later implicated in the 1927 abortion death of Irene Campbell.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. 

Context in Closing: 

The idea that legalizing abortion magically eliminated tragic deaths is false. The major decline in maternal mortality — including deaths from illegal abortion — occurred decades before Roe v. Wade (1973), driven primarily by sulfa drugs (1930s), penicillin and other antibiotics (1940s), improved blood transfusions, and advances in obstetric care. Legalization simply shifted many abortions from one set of physicians to another. In some cases it led those "back alley" physicians to move onto main street and start killing women with a carelessness they never would have dared before legalization, as exemplified by Milan Vuitch, Jesse Ketchum, and Benjamin Munson. All three had no criminal abortions deaths to their discredit but each went on to kill two patients with appalling malpractice after legalization. Legalization did not eliminate the human cost or the incentives for providers to cut corners. Claims of dramatically improved “safety” still rest on voluntary self-reporting from the facilities and physicians performing the procedures, a system with documented cases of falsified records and gaps in accountability.

Sources: 

• Homicide in Chicago Interactive
• "Two Women Die; Fiance of One and Doctor Held," Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1920