Category: Historical Information

Coroner describes prevalence of illegal abortion in Australia

In Australia, as in the United States, illegal abortions took place before abortion was legalized. In 1890, coroner Dr. Richard Youl wrote:

“There are several institutions devoted entirely to procuring abortions. It is a demoralizing thing. Murder is a fine art, and persons who get used to it do not stop.”

Gideon Haigh The Racket: How Abortion Became Legal in Australia (Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 2008) 17

The Racket is a book that documents illegal abortions in Melbourne, Australia, and comments on the reasons abortion was legalized in Australia.

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Few women were involved in making abortion legal in California

Kristin Luker, historian on abortion:

“The reaction of state legislators of the 1960s, when asked what role women had played in securing passage of the Beilenson bill [which legalized abortion in California before Roe V Wade], could best be epitomized as a blank stare. All of them could name individual women who had been active in the reform group California Committee on Therapeutic Abortion (CCTA), but none of them believed that women as a constituency were central to the issue.”

Kristin Luker Abortion in the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 93 [emphasis in original]

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Psychiatrist admitted to writing “fraudulent” letters to help women get abortions

Before Roe v. Wade, many states allowed abortions to save a woman’s life. Abortionists used to consider a woman’s threat of suicide as a legitimate reason for abortion. They would send a woman to a psychiatrist, who would certify in writing that the woman would kill herself if an abortion were not performed, and then the abortion would be authorized and done.

One psychiatrist who took part in this said:

“I write letters recommending abortion that are frankly fraudulent, because I am satisfied to be used so that someone may obtain what our society otherwise would deny her.”

L Eisenberg “Abortion and Psychiatry” Abortion in a Changing World The proceedings of an International Conference on Abortion Convened by the Association for the Study of Abortion, at Hot Springs, Virginia. November 17 – 20th, 1968 (Columbia University Press)

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