Deadly Midwife, Doctor, and Boyfriend

Mother-and-Daughter Midwife Team, Brooklyn, 1880

Mrs. Sophia Berghusen of Brooklyn died on April 28, 1880, under the care of the mother-and-daughter midwife team of Mrs. Mary Kaufmann and Miss Margaret "Maggie" Kaufmann. The coroner concluded that Sophia had died of abortion complications. Sophie had been found moribund at the Kaufmann house. Both the Kaufmann women were arrested and tried but acquitted, though the sources do not say what was lacking in the case against them.

Civil-Rights Activist Turned Abortionist, Chicago, 1973

T.R. Mason Howard

Survivors of Julia Rogers, age 20, alleged that she underwent a safe and legal abortion performed by Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (pictured) at his Friendship Medical Center in Chicago on April 21, 1973. Julia's death certificate states that her death April 28 at Tabernacle Hospital was due to "bronchopneumonia and generalized peritonitis complicating extensive necrotizing endometritis and myometritis with sealed perforation." In other words, she developed pneumonia on top of peritonitis. A hole had been poked in her uterus, causing an infection that made the muscle tissue of her uterus start to rot inside her. Evelyn Dudley and Dorothy Brown also died after abortions at Friendship Medical Center.

A Boyfriend and an Aquarium Tube, California, 19909

"Daisy," age 32, died on or shortly after April 28, 1990 after she let her boyfriend attempt a home abortion in California. Daisy was not a poor, ignorant woman. To the contrary, she was a systems analyst for a defense contractor. Daisy knew that abortion was legal and readily available. She had an appointment to abort her second-trimester pregnancy scheduled for April 30, 1990, at a local abortion clinic. But for some reason, Daisy didn't wait for her appointment. On April 28, she allowed her boyfriend to insert a plastic tube into her uterus in a home-abortion attempt. Daisy died of complications of that abortion.