Emma Melvin19101919, 20s, chicago, illinois, illegaldoctorOn June 9, 1917, 26-year-old homemaker Emma A. Melvin died at Chicago’s St. Mary’s Hospital from infection caused by a criminal abortion. Emma’s husband, Robert, testified before a coroner’s jury that Dr. Maximillian Meinhard perpetrated the abortion.

Meinhard, who for some reason was charged with manslaughter but never tried in Emma’s death, had been implicated in the abortion death of Anna Rice in his Sheridan Road home in 1912. He had also been connected with the 1915 abortion death of Stella Cams.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

In fact, due to improvements in addressing these problems, maternal mortality in general (and abortion mortality with it) fell dramatically in the 20th Century, decades before Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion across America.

For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see Abortion Deaths 1910-1919.

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

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Sources:

• Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
• Death certificate
• “Dr. Meinhardt Again Charged With Abortion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 13, 1917

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