The debate over abortion
is one of the central issues in American politics. Actually, abortion brings on
a set of questions, one often feeding off another to shape opinions and passions.
Is a person created at conception? If so, what rights does a fetus have? When,
during the course of a pregnancy, is “personhood” reached or achieved? What is
the proper role of the state in regulating abortions? If abortions were again
banned, what would be the consequences for the women who would surely seek them?
Frequently, we hear a lot
of rhetoric from the pro-choice side pointing to the dangers of banning
abortion. If Roe v. Wade is reversed, many say, the reemergence of the illegal
abortion industry (as well as dangerous self-inflicted attempted abortions) will occur. These shady practices of the past, according to
pro-choice organizations like NARAL and NOW, resulted in illegal abortion
‘mills’ that operated outside the law and accepted medical practice. Modern day
abortion advocates continually remind us that women seeking abortions died atrocious
deaths at the hands of untrained, corrupt, and greedy quack doctors.
As a history educator with
a lot of newfound, electronic access to newspaper and magazine archives, I find
myself in the unique position to research the topic. I was interested to see if
there is a solid historical record concerning such abortion mills and macabre deaths. Did they exist? Did women really die in any sort of numbers at their own hands or through the botched efforts of medical imposters and frauds?
After just a short search
on abortion-related deaths involving New Jersey women before 1973 (the year Roe
v. Wade established a nationally based, legal right to a first trimester
abortion), I can honestly say, they did. Absolutely. And the deaths, or at
least press coverage of them, go back far into our state’s history. How far?
Try the 1840’s.
One of the earliest
records of this comes from Morris County in the Denville/Rockaway area in
November of 1846. According to the National Police Gazette, a popular magazine
at the time, a “young” woman by the name of Elizabeth Peer had died as a result
of an abortion. The unmarried Peer had gotten pregnant due to a scandalous
affair. Fearful of the devastating social consequences, the young woman had
approached several local doctors for help in attaining an abortion. One doctor
testified that:
“In the month of July, the
deceased first visited witness and requested him to produce an abortion.
Witness refused. She came again about a month afterwards on the same errand.
Witness fully stated to her the dangers…of such an operation. She told him…that
she would rather die than suffer the [social]
disgrace.”
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The Abortion debate provokes
historical questions
as well as moral ones.
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Eventually, according to
court papers, Elizabeth Peer found an abortionist, a woman who ran a rather
large and profitable New York City-based operation who went by the name of
“Madame Costello.” Costello charged Peer $30 for the abortion – a huge sum at
that time.
Peer had gotten the
abortion only to succumb a month later to a nightmarish infection and/or hemorrhage.
One doctor testified:
“He found her bowels
uncommonly swollen - pulse small…vomiting with cold sweat and diarrhea…she then
stated she had gone to New York to one of those famous female physician-houses,
and that the membranes were ruptured by an instrument…”
There are other reports in
later years. An August 1867 newspaper article informs us of the tragic death of
one Elizabeth Ball, 28, from a “respectable family” in Newark. Ball had become
pregnant as a result of an extramarital affair involving a man the newspaper called
her “seducer”, Jacob Wilson. As in earlier stories, Ball was frantic to stop
the pregnancy early on, and had traveled to Brooklyn to get an abortion. Before
her death she told one doctor that the procedure had cost her $80 – a sum several
times the average worker’s monthly wage. Ball had to endure ten agonizing days between
the abortion and her passing.
One June 1868 account is
particularly disturbing, as it recounts the grisly death of one exceptionally desperate 38 year old, Jersey City area woman and mother by the name of
Henrietta Berry. Berry was so distressed to end her first trimester pregnancy
that she underwent two self-inflicted
attempts. The first was some kind of orally administered concoction, but this
failed. The second proved painfully fatal:
“On Thursday she resorted
to the use of some kind of instrument, by which it is supposed that the was injured
internally, as she immediately grew worse, and although a physician was called
in, death resulted in twenty four hours…deceased was 38…and the mother of four
children.”
The deaths continued, some
right up to the decade before Roe v. Wade. In May of 1963 the pages of The Washington Post revealed a grisly discovery. Angela Lach, a single 26 year old Sayreville
educator, was found in a scene reminiscent of a horror movie:
“Miss Lach’s body,
sprawled face up in the rain, was found last night in the driveway of a
Lutherville (Maryland) estate when the owner returned home.”
Lach, in her first
trimester of pregnancy, had apparently traveled from central New Jersey to a
Baltimore motel to get an abortion and had not been seen by family since. Upon
searching her purse, Police traced the man, a salesman, who had arranged the
abortion to a local diner, where they arrested him:
“[Police] described him as
a 42 year old traveling salesman who sells kitchen utensils in New York and New
Jersey…the salesman said he drove Miss Lach to Baltimore from New Jersey
Friday…but insisted that his last contact with her was a telephone conversation
early Saturday…He was not charged.”
It was obvious that the
abortion went wrong and Lach quickly died, only to be disposed of in a
grisly, undignified way.
Over the course of my
research I found numerous other New Jersey-based cases, but these three struck
me as especially tragic. These women were from all different walks of life. In
their desperation to preserve their dignity and control their own bodies they
were forced to turn to the most despicable, greedy quacks that operated in
places such women would have never otherwise visited, from back rooms in
Brooklyn to cheap, seedy Maryland motels.
These women, their
sufferings and ultimate demise are part of the historical record. Believe what
you want about the central questions of abortion today, but their deaths were definitive
results of a state where legal, safe abortions were impossible to get.
