Norma Beck1900s, 30s, chicago, illinois, illegaldoctorSUMMARY: Norma Beck, age 32, died at Lakeside Hospital on April 4, 1907 after an abortion perpetrated by Dr. Thomas Balhollchett in his Chicago office.

Lakeside Hospital, Chicago
On April 4, 1907, Mrs. Norma Beck, age 32, died at Lakeside Hospital in Chicago from septic peritonitis caused by a criminal abortion perpetrated at the office of Dr. Thomas J Balhatchett on March 24.

Dr. James W. Walker and Dr. H. N. Richter had attended Normal at the hospital, and relayed Norma’s deathbed statement to police. She directly implicated Balhatchett. Some of her relatives and friends also spoke to the police, fingering Balhatchett.

Balhollchett was held by the coroner’s jury and indicted, but there is no record that the case went to trial.

Norma’s abortion was usual in that it was performed by a physician. The assertion by abortion-rights organizations is that before legalization, the world of abortion was a world of rusty coathangers and untrained quacks is an insult to the abortion-minded women of yesteryear. It presumes that they were all so mentally unhinged or utterly mindless. The vast majority sought out professionals of the same caliber they’d go to for any other gynecological or obstetric issue.

Note, please, that with 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.It was, in fact, advances in public health and in medicine that brought about the rapid decline in maternal mortality, including abortion mortality, during the 20th century. Crediting the improved survival rate of women having abortions is either misinformed or dishonest.

For more about abortion and abortion deaths in the first years of the 20th century, see Abortion Deaths 1900-1909.

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. T. J. Balhatchett is Held to Answer Murder Charge,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 5, 1907

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