Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Anniversary: Criminal death after abortion by midwife

On March 6, 1928, Lucille Smith, a 23-year-old store clerk, died at Chicago's Burrows Hospital from complications of an abortion performed that day at the office of midwife Emma Schulz. Schulz was indicted for felony murder on April 1, 1929.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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4 comments:

Tlaloc said...

Now does anyone want to argue that this woman would have had an abortion performed by a *midwife* if abortion had been legally available from doctors?

Rachel?

Tlaloc said...

That should be "Rachael?"

Anonymous said...

She just might have b/c women are still having abortions performed by midwives...you just don't hear about it as much unless they 'screw up' and kill the woman along with her child...

Tlaloc said...

"She just might have b/c women are still having abortions performed by midwives...you just don't hear about it as much unless they 'screw up' and kill the woman along with her child... "

I think we can safely assume such practices now are extremely rare fringe cases. There is a reasonably sized body of professionals available to do the job. That goes a long way toward limiting the number of amateur attempts.