A 19th Century Abortion Death

Emma Post, "about twenty years of age, daughter of one of our most respectable citizens, was sudeced by a young man living at Belleville." He called on her at the family home for about a year before learning that she was pregnant.

He convinced her to leave Brooklyn with him. She told her family that she was going to visit somebody in Dover. Instead, "she was kept in two houses of ill repute in this city." From there she was taken to Boston, where she submitted to a surgical abortion. She was spirited off to Newburyport on Wendesday. On Thursday, June 11, 1857, she "paid the forfeit of such acts, dying in excrutiating agony."

Her baby's father, F.R. Kickason, was arrested, as was Dr. Lewis Dix, believed to have performed the abortion.



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

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