RealChoice: March 28, 1942: Teen Blames Fatal Abortion on Popular Doctor

Friday, March 28, 2025

March 28, 1942: Teen Blames Fatal Abortion on Popular Doctor

SUMMARY: On March 28, 1942, 19-year-old Cleo Florence Moore died at New Rochelle Hospital in New York from peritonitis from an illegal abortion she said had been perpetrated by Dr. Frank F. Marino.

Who Was Cleo Moore?

Cleo Florence Moore was the only daughter of Floyd and Margaret Moore, whose four other children were all sons. The family operated a thriving, prosperous onion farm in Middleville, Michigan.

Farming wasn't the life that Cleo wanted, though. She left the family farm and moved to New Rochelle, New York in July of 1941.

Cleo moved into a rooming house at 15 Church Street in New Rochelle. There she met another young woman, a waitress named Mrs. Alice Olga Petersen, in early 1942. The two became friends, and Cleo suggested that they share a room and split expenses, so they moved to a one-room apartment at 208 Center Avenue.

Cleo worked as a telephone jukebox operator -- an obsolete job that I had to look up.

Cleo and other women would work from a central location. Patrons at restaurants and diners could chose from a selection of songs listed on a tabletop jukebox, put a coin in the slot, and talk to the operator by a telephone linkup inside the machine. The patron would select the song by number and the operator would put the record on a turntable hooked to speakers in the jukebox. This enabled a larger musical selection than playing the music from an on-site turntable.

What Happened to Cleo?

Cleo's roommate, Alice, told authorities that Cleo had met a man through her work, and discovered that she was pregnant in January. On March 5, Alice said, Cleo visited 42-year-old Dr. Frank F. Marino at his office on 208 Center Avenue to arrange an abortion. The specific choice of Dr. Marino was described in the news as "arbitrary."

On March 9, Alice said, Cleo left the apartment at 2pm, and asked Alice to meet her at around 4pm at Marino's office to help her get home after the abortion. Cleo arrived about 5 minutes early and saw Cleo leaving in a taxi. Alice waved the cab down. She testified that Cleo was very pale and looked "terrible." They rode home together and Cleo, already feeling unwell, went to bed. Cleo got up briefly at around 7:30 to get something to eat and then went back to bed. Alice attributed the sleepiness to the effects of the morphine administered for the abortion.

By March 11, Cleo was so ill that Alice summoned Marino. He examined Cleo then sent her to the hospital. "When you get there," Alice said Marino warned Cleo, "don't tell them who did the job." Alice also said that Dr. Marino's wife told her to protect her husband, lest "you and Miss Moore...go to prison."

Somehow the abortion was reported to the authorities. At first Cleo told them that she had taken some pills to induce the abortion, but later she changed her story and said that Merino had performed the fatal abortion.

Cleo languished in the hospital until her death at 1:45 on the morning of March 28. An autopsy showed that she had died from peritonitis caused by an abortion.

Merino's Side of the Story

Between his indictment and the start of the trial, Marino became a captain in the Army Medical Corps. He was stationed in Atlantic City but was placed on inactive leave to attend the trial. Originally he denied ever having seen Cleo before admitting her to the hospital.

He later testified that he had examined Cleo on March 5, confirmed the pregnancy, and charged her $2 for the consultation. He testified that Cleo had indeed requested an abortion but he had refused, recommending that she marry the baby's father. Merino said that Cleo said she couldn't do that because the baby's father was already married. Cleo, he said, had told him that she would find somebody else to do the abortion before she left his office. Merino admitted that he'd lied earlier about having seen Cleo before March 11, but had done so because "I didn't want to get mixed up in this mess."

Merino said that he didn't hear from Cleo again until the 11th, when he was summoned to her home and sent her to the hospital without reporting the abortion.

Neither of these consultations was documented in Merino's records.

He produced alibi witnesses who said that from 1pm to 3 pm on the day of the abortion he had been treating patients in his office and was doing house calls from 3pm to 4 pm.

Marino's defense also asserted that Cleo's abortion was so badly botched that it was clearly "the work of a bungling amateur." This was a common defense among abortionists, but considering the catastrophic injuries I've seen documented in safe and legal abortion deaths, doctors are just as capable of mangling their patients as non-physicians.

A doctor testifying for the prosecution admitted on cross-examination that it would have been possible for Cleo to have done the abortion herself.

Marino, who had been a member of the County Board of Supervisors, the New Rochelle Board of Education, and the New Rochelle Zoning Board of Appeals, was also a golfing buddy of the prosecutor of the case. It should come as no surprise, then, that Marino was acquitted.

Cleo's abortion was typical of pre-legalization abortions in that it was performed by a physician.

During the 1940s, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality from abortion. The death toll fell from 1,407 in 1940, to 744 in 1945, to 263 in 1950. Most researches attribute this plunge to the development of blood transfusion techniques and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Watch Alas, No Legalization Fairy on YouTube.

Watch Alas, No Legalization Fairy on Rumble.

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