On December 26, 1919, Rose Kulamer, a 33-year-old homemaker who had emigrated from Hungary, died at Columbia Hospital in Wilkensberg, Pennsylvania. The coroner found that she had died of septicemia from an abortion, and recommended that the person responsible be identified and arrested.
Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.
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