Revisiting "Septic Abortion Wards"

Dr. Doug Laube of Wisconsin is one of the many abortion practitioners who repeats hoary old tales of septic abortion wards. In an interview with Feministe's Clarisse Thorn, he in fact made a rather outrageous claim that before legalization, not only were there entire wards in inner city hospitals devoted totally to treating illegal abortion complications, but also claiming that half of the women admitted for botched abortions died.

Ms. Thorn swallowed that claim without even pausing to chew on it.  I did a search to get a bit more of a realistic idea, and found Surgery, gynecology & obstetrics, Volume 26 By Franklin H. Martin Memorial Foundation, American College of Surgeons, 1918.

In other words, I found an account not merely from pre-Roe days, but from the days before there were even blood transfusions and antibiotics.  Dr. Julius E. Lackner reviewed admissions for abortions at a large charity hospital in Chicago. He wrote:

I reported 500 cases occurring in the service of Drs. Banga and Fninkenthal at the Michael Reese Hospital in the years 1900 to 1914. Of these 500 cases 4 died.

Let's do the math. Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago admitted five hundred abortion cases of any kind in 15 years. "Abortion cases" included not just illegal abortions but also miscarriages. That's about 34 admissions a year or one admission every 11 days for both miscarriages and induced abortions. That hardly an entire ward full of septic abortion cases, even if every single one of those women was indeed suffering from a criminal abortion and not a single one of them was just having a miscarriage.

What's more, the mortality rate was less than 1%. And remember that this record predates blood transfusions and antibiotics. And, keep in mind, this case load is comprised of all women whose pregnancies ended before about six months, both naturally and due to criminal interference.

Give claims the smell test before swallowing them.