1926: Midwife's abortion efforts prove fatal

On December 20, 1926, 23-year-old Mary Paradowski died in a Chicago hospital of complications of a criminal abortion that had been performed on December 13. An investigation lead to the indictment of midwife Josephine Petrova for felony murder in Mary's death.

For some reason it just really, really creeps me out when midwives turned their hands to abortion. I just expect them to know better, to be less callous than doctors might be, to have a more maternal mind set. It's like how creepy it was that Sherri Finkbine was a Romper Room lady, not a mergers and acquisitions attorney who you might expect to take a materialistic, cost-benefits analysis attitude toward children. Midwives and Romper Room ladies are supposed to love kids. It's like finding out that the grayhound rescue crew is running a dogfighting ring. Disgusting enough when people you expect to be callous are doing it, really uber-creepy when it's done by people who really ought to know better.



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

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