On June 27, both physicians were held by the coroner. Schultz was indicted for felony murder by a grand jury on October 6, 1930 and released on $10,000 bond. White was released on $5,000 bond. I've been unable to determine the outcome of the case.
Summary: 18-year-old Inez McGraw died in Spartanburg, South Carolina after an abortion perpetrated by midwife Henrietta Henderson. Interestingly enough, the man who arranged the abortion was sentenced to more than double the sentence faced by the abortionist.
On day two of a two-day trial, Henrietta Henderson, a 43-year-old black midwife, changed her plea to guilty in the abortion death of 18-year-old Inez McGraw of Woodruff, SC. She then turned state's evidence against 51-year-old mortuary proprietor and father-of-three William E. Evans, asserting that he had been the baby's father and had arranged the abortion.
Much was made of race during coverage of the trial, likely because both Inez and Evans were white and the bulk of the witnesses were black in a time and place where race was considered much more significant than it is now.
Robert Lee Bobo, a black man who worked for Evans, said he'd picked Inez up in a truck owned by Evans and dropped her off on the Greenville highway, where she got into Evans's private car.
Another black man, John Nix, said that Evans had come to him asking where to find a midwife.
The abortion was perpetrated June 23, 1942. Inez died in Spartanburg General Hospital two days later, on June 25, though news coverage sometimes erroneously gives her date of death as June 26. Her cause of death was generalized gas gangrene, necrosis of the uterine wall, acute peritonitis, and septicemia. The physician filling out the death certificate, in the space to note if the death was related to pregnancy or childbirth wrote "after miscarriage."
In court on July 28, 1942, Henrietta Henderson testified that Evans told her, "You don't know me and I don't know you. ... I want you to help me out. ... I want you to see after this girl for me. ... I done it."
Inez, a white woman who had worked as a stenographer at the mortuary, went into a room in Henderson's home on the old Greenville highway near Travelers Rest Church outside Spartanburg, South Carolina. Evans sat on a cot and waited while Henderson used "an instrument" that resembled "a little spoon" "I used it in her," Henderson said.
Evans denied being the baby's father and denied arranging the abortion.
When Henderson finished, she and Inez returned to the room where Evans waited. Evans handed Inez $10, which she then handed to Henderson. Evans had, Henderson testified, promised her another $5 but she never collected it.
Jesse Henderson, Henrietta Henderson's husband testified as well but news coverage doesn't say what evidence he provided. His wife's testimony had been that he'd been in the yard during the abortion.
A farmer and bondsman, J. L. Kimbrell, testified that Evans paid him ad Ab Kimbrell $30 to sign a $2,500 bond for Henrietta's release. Evans admitted to paying $30 to J. L. Kimbrel and his brother, Ab Kimbrell, for signing Henderson's bond to get her out of the county jail. The state asserted that Evans had arranged bond because he wanted Henderson to flee and thus be unable to testify. Evans, however, testified that he'd sought her release because he "knew she had been under pressure," and he wanted to know what she was planning to say in court.
Evans said that he spoke with Henderson. "I told her she knew that I wasn't the man who came out there." He also said, "I told her if she was not guilty to go up there and make a statement. She said she was not guilty." He said that Henderson told him that the officers, one with his hand on his gun and the other with a billy club in his hand, had threatened to put her in "a sweatbox."
Henderson was expected to testify that he had an alibi for the afternoon of the fatal abortion.
A woman named Eva Dixon said that she went to Evans in Inez's behalf to say that she needed help.
Henderson and Evans were arrested separately on June 30. Bond for each of them was set at $5,000, but only Evans was able to post bond.
It took the jury just 19 minutes to return a guilty verdict.
"Your sins have overtaken you -- 12 years," Circuit Judge T. S. Sease said in handing down Evans's sentence. Henderson was sentenced to 5 years. Evans's attorney announced an intention to immediately appeal. Because he was sentenced to more than 10 years, bond would have to be set by the state supreme court.
Evans was a father of three.
The trial took only two days, July 27 and 28, 1942.
Strangely enough, Inez's surname is given as Crawford, not McGraw, in the court's decision on Evans's appeal.
Sources:
Leslie Reagan, in her book "When Abortion Was a Crime," indicates that he was expelled from the Chicago Medical Society after admitting guilt in Anna's death, but there is no record that he served time for the crime. In fact, he was free and in Danville, Illinois in 1917, when he perpetrated a fatal attempted abortion on Matilda Tidrick.
Anna's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.
Watch "Another Doctor Free to Kill Again" on YouTube.
On June 10, 1882, a wealthy 62-year-old farmer named James T. Phillips brought his daughter, 20-year-old Ruth Phillips, from their home to another farm near DeSoto, Wisconsin, where his two older daughters lived.
Ruth took violently ill. On June 13, she delivered stillborn twins.
A few days later she made a shocking deathbed statement to her sisters: she said that their father was the father of the twins, and that he had used instruments on her to cause the abortion that killed the twins and was soon to take her own life.
Ruth died on June 24, and was buried on the 26th.
"After the death and burial," says the July 26, 1882 Vernon County Censor, "suspicion of foul play having been around in the neighborhood, Phillips was arrested, the body disinterred, and a post mortem examination had by Dr. Gott."
The autopsy showed that Ruth had died from uterine inflammation, though there were no marks of instrumentation that the doctor could find.
Phillips. a native of Wales, was arrested and jailed pending $1,400 bail (a little over $11,000 in 2022). "There is much excitement in the community where Phillips lives, and open threats of lynching in case he secures bail."
"The crimes is the most terrible one that can be conceived, and if Phillips is proven guilty, no punishment that the law provides for such offenses can prove adequate."
Phillips had been tried fifteen years earlier for committing incest against another of his daughters, but was acquitted in that case.
Lynching turned out to be unnecessary. Phillips hanged himself in his jail cell on August 5, 1882. This leads me to believe that the abortion had really taken place, since a mere incest case hadn't been enough to lead him to suicide 15 years or so earlier.
Watch "Jailhouse Suicide" on YouTube.
Sources:
Edith Clark, age 29, traveled from her home in Newark, New Jersey to the Sparkhill, New York office of Dr. Robert Livingston to avail herself of the new law, for a first-trimester abortion on June 24, 1971.
Shortly after she was given an injection of Innovar for anesthesia, Edith went into cardiac arrest, and attempts to revive her failed. She left behind three children.
Edith was the first woman to die in New York's Rockland County from a newly legalized abortion. The second, 18-year-old Pamela Modugno, died in May of 1972 after an abortion in one of the many freestanding abortion facilities that opened immediately after New York decided to permit outpatient abortion-on-demand up to 24 weeks.
Watch A Dubious Honor on YouTube.
Source: "18-year-old student dies during abortion," White Plains Journal-News, May 18, 1972
Rose's "sweetheart," Edwin Block, had identified Ofner as the abortionist. Block was held by police but released.
Source:
Margaret Paula Clodfelter, a 19-year-old secretary at an insurance agency, had an abortion at Richmond Medical Center For Women on June 2, 1989. The abortion was performed by William Fitzhugh.
Dr. William Fitzhugh
On June 20 or 24, 1908, 36-year-old housekeeper Lillian "Lillie" O'Neill died in Dr. Albert C. Davis's Chicago office from complications of an abortion performed June 20. Davis was acquitted for reasons not given in the source document. A midwife named Cornelia Meyers was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to Joliet. Lillie's abortion was typical in that it was involved medical professionals, including a physician. This was especially true in Chicago during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The coroner also recommended the arrest of Dr. Joseph Mienczak, who assisted Zwieniczak, as an accessory. It was common for non-physician abortionists to have a doctor who provided training, equipment, and medications, and who would provide aftercare if a woman suffered complications -- much like the arrangement that the abortion lobby is currently pursuing of allowing non-physicians to practice abortion as long as they have physician back-up.
On June 20, 1929, 28-yaer-old Jennie Kuba died at Chicago hospital from an abortion performed there that day by midwife Mary Zwieniczak.
Zwienczak was arrested July 13. The grand jury handed down an indictment of homicide.
 |
| Dr. Milan Vuitch |
Dr. Milan Vuitch was a hero among abortion advocates. He had deliberately been arrested performing criminal abortions so that he could challenge the Washington, DC abortion law, and he succeeded in changing the way the law was enforced, effectively nullifying it.
On June 15, 1974, seventeen-year-old Wilma Harris of West Virginia went to Vuitch's Laurel Clinic for a safe and abortion. Five days later, on June 20, she was dead. During interrogatories, Vuitch said that anesthesiologist Strahil Nacev described Wilma as "so quiet" during the abortion. Although he had begun a vacuum abortion, Vuitch said that the fetus had been too big to pass through the suction tube. He said he used instruments to remove the remaining fetal parts.
Although the abortion was done at around 2:00 PM, Vuitch didn't transfer Wilma to a properly equipped hospital until after midnight. Wilma's family sued, claiming that Vuitch and his staff had allowed Wilma to lapse into a coma and lie unattended for 12 hours before transferring her to the hospital. The suit also claimed that Vuitch and his staff falsified records to cover their tracks. The family won a judgment on December 23, 1976, but the settlement was sealed by court order.
Georgianna English also died after an abortion by Vuitch. WDVM-TV won a Peabody Award for their expose of Vuitch after her death.
Vuitch isn't the only abortionist who kept his nose clean as a criminal abortionist, only to kill two patients after legalization. Jesse Ketchum managed to kill Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner in a four-month period after New York put out a welcome mat for carpetbagging abortionists in 1970. Benjamin Munson of South Dakota killed Linda Padfield and Yvonne Mesteth.
Watch "Permission to Take Lethal Risks" on YouTube.
On June 19, 1908, undertaker Thomas Graham went to the house of William C. Patterson in West Philadelphia. There he picked up the body of Patterson's 27-year-old sister-in-law, Elizabeth "Bess" Alexander Geis. The young woman, Graham was told, had died that day of Bright's disease, a disorder of the kidneys.
Elizabeth's brother, Leslie Alexander, knew that Bess had not died from Bright's disease. He went to the police, telling them that she had died from a botched abortion and demanding that they arrest Dr. William H. Heck, who had cared for Elizabeth during her final illness.
Police questioned Heck, who said that he had given Bess some medication, then came back the next morning and found that her condition had deteriorated. "I did what I could for her," he said, "but when I was called four and a half hours later she was dead. I was told that a child had been born before she passed away."
After awakening from a nap on June 19, 1984, 14-year-old "Gwen Newhart's"* mother found her dead on the bathroom floor.
 |
| Dr. E. Wyman Garrett |
Just five days before, Gwen had undergone a second-trimester abortion performed by 46-year-old Dr. E. Wyman Garrett** in Newark, New Jersey. She was 22 weeks pregnant.
At home after her abortion, Gwen began vomiting and suffered from abdominal pain and a high fever. Her mother called Garrett, who told her that the symptoms were normal and prescribed antibiotics. She seemed to improve briefly, but took a turn for the worse on June 18.
Gwen's mother called the next morning and Garrett said to bring Gwen in to the office. Mrs. Newhart took a nap and awoke to find her daughter dead on the bathroom floor.
The massive infection that was causing her symptoms killed her.
An autopsy found that Gwen's uterus had been punctured, and her abdomen was full of pus and adhesions.
When the New Jersey medical board investigated Dr. Garrett, they noted that he had illegally altered Gwen's medical records. He had also performed Gwen's abortion in violation of state regulations, since New Jersey required that abortions past the first trimester be performed in a hospital.
They noted other, non-fatal injuries including:
Garrett argued that he was suffering from ''burnout syndrome,'' caused by performing more than 2,600 second-trimester abortions between 1982 and 1986. He asserted, "If any man has this much work, he's going to have complications." He pleaded no-contest in the state case.
In 1986 the board concluded that Garrett was guilty of gross negligence, abandonment of patients, and professional misconduct. He failed to recognize and treat complications in a timely manner, they found. banned Garrett from performing abortions or other outpatient surgery. In 1987 they revoked his license. They cited a total of 26 abortions performed in a "grossly improper" manner. As of 1994 he still owed over $175,000 in fines and court costs from the medical board suspension proceedings.
Garrett had other unsavory run-ins with society. In 1971, during a teacher strike, Garrett (who was then a school board member) told a school trustee "We know where you live. We're going to get you." He then turned to a reporter who was taking notes and said, "You'll have to give me your notebook or you won't get out of this building alive." Garrett then, according to the reporter, summoned two men to beat the reporter up and take his notebook and wallet. Two weeks into the trial Garrett plea-bargained down to interfering with people at a public meeting and paid $2,000 in fines and costs.
In 1983 he started refusing to do second-trimester abortions at University Hospital in Newark because they would no longer pay him $250 to $300 per abortion instead of the Medicaid physician fee of $79. (In 2022 dollars, he had been getting $734 - $880 per abortion when the Medicaid fee was $232.) Garrett publicly said that since the hospital was reimbursed $1,334 ($3,915 in 2022 dollars) per abortion and he performed 851 abortion there in the previous year, he'd brought the hospital more than $1.2 million in Medicaid dollars (about $3.5 in 2022 dollars). Garrett argued that he was entitled to more than $79 because his usual abortion fee was from $400 to $900 ($1,174 - $2,641 in 2022 dollars).
In 1986 a whistleblower claimed that she discovered that Garret was preparing post-operative reports prior to surgery he was performing at University Hospital.
*Source failed to redact name in original, but out of privacy respect I use a pseudonym.
** "John Roe 268" in Lime 5
Watch "Stopped Before He Could Kill Another Patient" on YouTube.
Sources:
 |
| Deceived or lying? |
Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL,* admitted that he and his associates knew that the claims of 5,000 to 10,000 criminal abortion deaths were false. They bandied them about anyway, Nathanson confessed, because they were useful. This, too, is old news -- Nathanson came clean in 1979 when he published Aborting America.
 |
| Milan Vuitch |
Died on Her Wedding Day. Athol, Mass., June 19. -- Miss May Parmenter, one of Athol's prettiest and brightest girls, was to have been married yesterday to Leroy Felton, a well-known young man of Orange. on the morning of the wedding she was taken violently ill, and died during the afternoon. It now transpires that Miss Parmenter was the victim of malpractice, performed by a well-known physician. She was urged to take the step by a very near relative, against the wishes of her intended husband.
"Sara" underwent a second trimester abortion in New York City in May of 1972. She was 18 weeks pregnant. She had problems with retained tissue, so three weeks after the abortion she had a D&C to remove the tissue. Sara had developed infection from the retained tissue, and on June 18, 1972, the infection took her life. She left one child motherless.
I am not asserting that Sara's doctor did anything that constituted malpractice or lawbreaking. If we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he really did think a dead baby is a good thing, we don't have enough information to say he went about killing Sara's baby in a particularly inexcusable way. We don't even know which technique he used to be able to pass judgment on that decision. We don't know why he didn't get all of the tissue out of Sara's uterus. We don't know why he didn't notice that he hadn't removed the entire fetus and all of the placenta. We don't know why it took three weeks for anybody to notice the retained tissue. We don't know why the attempts to correct the problem were ineffectual. And, Tlaloc, you will note that in all the years that I've blogged Sara's death on the anniversary of that sad event, I've not called her doctor a quack or a butcher, I've not demanded that his license be yanked, I've not said he belongs in jail.
I'm capable of giving even an abortionist the benefit of the doubt if I don't have evidence that he did anything wrong other than make the perfectly legal judgment that a dead baby is a good thing. And I've conceded that there are no doubt some doctors that really do agree with you that dead babies are just as good as live ones, and often far superior.
The 1970 liberalization of abortion had made New York an abortion mecca until the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling that abortionists could legally set up shop in any state of the union. In addition to "Sara," these are the women I know of who had the dubious benefit of dying from the newfangled safe-and-legal kind of abortion in pre-Roe New York:
Sources:
The Journey
In June of 1953, Bettye Porter, 24, lived in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband, Herbert, and their two children. This young black woman flew to Washington state with the boys, ages 11 months and 3 years, on June 14.
As Herbert, a young bartender, saw his family off, he had no way of anticipating what would follow.
After arriving in Washington, Bettye Porter left her children with friend Anna Barzar in Tacoma. Bettye then went to Seattle on her own to visit friends there. Days later those friends called Herbert to tell him that his wife was missing. They hadn't seen her since June 18. Herbert contacted Seattle police and flew down himself.
The Grim Discovery
On June 29, Alfred and Dwight Aronson, ages 10 and 18 respectively, went out picking blackberries with their friend, 15-year-old Richard Hook. As they foraged near the south end of Midway Road near the Gig Harbor end of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, they spotted the body of an attractive young black woman.
At around 5:20 pm, Deputy Sheriffs Chet Jones and E. E. Bathke arrived and took charge. Officers Lyle Lanthrop and Ed Dahl photographed the scene. The woman was fully clad, dumped face-down about 300 feet east of the south end of Midway road and 12 feet south of an old logging road.
Care had been taken to remove tags from the woman's expensive clothing before her body was dumped. Police theorized that this had been in an attempt to make her harder to identify.
The person or persons who did this, however, didn't realized that police would be able to tentatively identify the body from fingerprints. Believing that the corpse was the missing Bettye Porter, they contacted Herbert. He was able to make a positive identification.
How Bettye Died
An autopsy concluded that Bettye had bled to death internally from a criminal abortion. She had been dead between 7 and 14 days.
After an investigation, police arrested 34-year-old mechanic Norman Wade Austin. He was charged with attempted abortion, second degree murder for Bettye's death, and manslaughter for the death of her 5-months unborn child. Police concluded that he had perpetrated the abortion in a massage parlor he had recently opened in the Savoy Hotel at 1214 2nd Avenue.
The hotel's operator, Harry A. Howard, and 23-year-old Geraldine Lowe were charged with second-degree murder for their roles in arranging the fatal abortion. All three parties were held pending posting of $10,000 bail each.
Bettye's date of death was determined to be June 18.
And... That's All.
I can't find any evidence of a successful prosecution, just an article noting that by November of 1953, when they were arrested for running an auto-theft ring, Geraldine and Norman were identified as a married couple.
"Clara," identified as "Miss F." in the source document, was 21 years old when she used a catheter to perform a self-induced abortion in mid-May of 1910. Five days later, Clara began suffering chills, fever, and abdominal pain. She passed the fetus the nest day but did not pass the placenta. Her condition deteriorated, so on June 12, 1910 she went to Cook County Hospital. Her admission notes indicate, "Very weak and sick. Face drawn and anxious. Abdomen distended and tender. Muscles rigid." The following day, Clara's temperature began to fall below normal and her pulse became more rapid. She died on June 18 from streptococcal peritonitis.
On June 18, 1914, 39-year-old Bridget Murphy died at Post Graduate Hospital in Chicago from an abortion performed that day by an unknown perpetrator.
The Coroner was never able to identify the abortionist responsible for the death of 19-year-old Julia Suchora June 18, 1917, at her Chicago home. Given the plethora of physicians and midwives running abortion practices in Chicago, it is likely that she availed herself of one of them.
Dr. Hugh Benjamin Munson had been practicing criminal abortion in Rapid City, SD as early as 1967. In 1969, he was convicted of performing an abortion on a 19-year-old patient. Munson, who went by his middle name, won an appeal in circuit court. When the state appealed, the South Dakota Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Munson was in the process of appealing this decision when Roe vs. Wade was handed down, making the case moot. Munson was free to practice abortion at-will.
Into this situation walked 28-year-old Linda Padfield.
 |
| Linda Padfield |
On June 14, 1973, Linda traveled about five hours to Munson's Rapid City clinic from her home in Groton, SD with her three small children and a friend.
The following day Linda went to Munson's clinic, where the 57-year-old doctor performed an abortion. Linda, her friend, and her children went to spend the night at a nearby hotel.
According to Linda's friend, Munson was supposed to come to the hotel the next day to check on Linda, but he never arrived. The two women were unable to reach him by phone, so they took Linda's children to do some sightseeing and then headed home to Groton.
When arrived on the 17th, Linda was already sick with nausea and high fever. She told her mother about the abortion, and her mother took her to St. Luke's Hospital in Aberdeen for emergency surgery, but the infection had progressed too far and Linda died on June 18.
Three Years Later
Not a word about Linda's death appears in the media until three years later, almost to the day. Munson was arrested and charged with manslaughter on June 17, 1976.
Legal Wrangling and Taking Sides
 |
| Dr. H. Benjamin Munson |
Munson also alleged that the decision to prosecute was made in bad faith because Attorney General William Janklow was opposed to abortion. Munson's attorney noted that since his client performed almost all the abortions in South Dakota, taking him out of circulation would put a virtual halt to abortions in the state.
Abortion-rights activists with the National Abortion Rights Action League started a defense fund for Munson, raising over $40,000 (over $200,000 in 2022 dollars). The National Organization for Women took out a large newspaper ad offering public support for Munson. Given the choice between a dead patient and the person who had caused her death, they chose the latter.
The Trial Begins
Jury selection was held behind closed doors. Circuit Court Judge Merton Tice Jr. said that he wanted to have prospective jurors "free from influence outside of those which are proper." The Rapid City Journal sought to have the closure lifted so that they could cover jury selection. They lost their bid to open the procedure.
The jury was sequestered during the trial. Judge Tice asked the attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense not to talk to the press.
Jurors were taken for a tour of Munson's clinic on the first post-selection day of the trial.
Testimony From Doctors
One of the doctors who had treated Linda at the hospital, Dr. James Hovland, said that Linda had been conscious when she first arrived but that she deteriorated rapidly. She seemed to be going into kidney failure, and didn't even bleed from the incision made for exploratory surgery. When asked if an immediate hysterectomy would have saved her, Hovland expressed his doubts, given how gravely ill Linda was from the results of the infection raging through her entire body.
Dr. A. C. Vogele, another doctor who treated Linda, agreed with Dr. Hovland that Linda had been conscious and alert but was showing low blood pressure, abdominal pain, bleeding, and signs of shock. The exploratory surgery found no perforation of the uterus or bowel. The doctors halted any further surgery, Vogele said, because Linda was so sick that she'd have died during surgery. When asked if he would have performed a hysterectomy had he known how much of Linda's fetus was still inside his body, Vogele responded that he probably would have.
The only person who knew how much of Linda's fetus was still in her body was Benjamin Munson, and he evidently had not bothered to tell anybody.
How much of Linda's unborn baby had been left in her uterus? A pathologist found the remains of a five-month fetus, missing the left leg, right arm, part of the skull, and part of the front of the torso. A five-month fetus typically weighs about 360 grams; Munson had left 240 grams behind. He had only removed about a third of Linda's baby.
The 240 grams of retained fetus were, the pathologist believed, the source of the problem. The retained fetus caused sepsis, which caused hemorrhage, which caused the adrenal failure that killed Linda.
The prosecution focused on the fact that infection will inevitably result from that much retained tissue and that there was simply no way Munson could have been unaware that he had failed to complete the abortion. The Attorney General commented, "You take a three-inch leg off something, you have to know that there's more in there than just the leg."
Munson's Attorney's Argument
The defense argument was basically this:
In short, he argued that since Munson was the only abortionist in South Dakota, whatever he did was by definition the right thing to do. Unless you could prove that he wanted Linda to die, you couldn't hold him accountable for her death.
The Verdict and Aftermath
The judge agreed with Munson's attorney and directed the jury to return a verdict of "Not guilty."
Munson called the directed verdict "like Christmas in October."
Munson later became a member of the National Abortion Federation (NAF). He evidently didn't to much to change his standards of care, because in 1985 he sent a teenage patient, Yvonne Mesteth, home with retained tissue. She, like Linda Padfield, died of infection. Again Munson was prosecuted for manslaughter, and again he beat the rap. As the only abortionist in South Dakota, he was the ultimate arbiter of what was accepted practice.
Munson in Context
Munson is the third former criminal abortionist I've learned of who had a clean record -- no patient deaths -- as a criminal abortionist, only to go on to kill two patients in his legal practice. The others are Milan Vuitch (Georgianna English and Wilma Harris) and Jesse Ketchum (Margaret Smith and Carole Schaner).
Munson died at a ripe old age in a Vermont nursing home in 2003. Had Linda not turned to Munson but instead reached out to a pregnancy resource center, she would have been 57 years old, and her baby 30 years old.
Watch "It Was the Right Thing to Do Because He Did It" on YouTube.
Sources:
Sources: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database; Illinois death records
 |
| Dr. Steven Berkman |
.jpg){kind=link}
.png){kind=link}
