Summary: Ida Alice Bloom, age 28, died March 24, 1905 after an abortion perpetrated in Chicago by Dr. Julius Goltz.
On March 24, 1905, 28-year-old Ida Alice Bloom, a Swedish immigrant working as a domestic servant, died suddenly in Chicago from septic peritonitis caused by an apparent criminal abortion perpetrated on or about March 15.Dr. Julius N. Goltz as arrested as a principal, and James McDonald as an accessory. Both men were held without bail by a coroner's jury.
Alice's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.
During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.
Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion.
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