A Midwife's Single Dead Patient; One in a Doctor's Trail of Carnage

On April 3, 1928, 30-year-old homemaker Stefania Kwit died from complications of a criminal abortion performed that day by midwife Pauline Majerczyk. On May 3, Mauerczyk was held by the coroner for murder by abortion, and indicted for felony murder on May 15. I've been unable to find any other abortion deaths attributed to Majerczyk's practice.

Ethel Hestland, age 30, died on April 3, 1932, in the Oklahoma City area from a criminal abortion. Her death certificate was signed by Dr. Richard E. Thacker (pictured), who had been identified as responsible for a string of other abortion deaths, including Marie Epperson, Isobel F. Ferguson, Ruth Hall, Lennis May Roach, Nancy Joe Lee, and Robbie Lou Thompson. Suspicion also fell on Thacker for the abortion death of Geraldine Easley. Thacker was eventually sentenced to life in prison, and died in 1937.



Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion