Matters of life and death

1647

Lawmakers in Rhode Island declare that "self murder is by all agreed to be the most unnatural, and it is by this present assembly declared, to be that, wherein he that doth it, kills himself out of a premeditated hatred against his own life or another humor ... this goods and chattel are the king's custom." In Virginia, suicides must be given ignominious burials.

1652

Maryland prosecutes Captain William Mitchell, who is indicted for having "murtherously endeavored to destroy or Murther the Child by him begotten in Womb of Said Susan Warren." Mitchell, a member of the governor's council, had impregnated his bondservant, Susan Warren. He forced her to drink an abortifacient, which caused her "to break into boils and blains, her whole body being scurfy, and the hair of her head almost fallen off." The child was stillborn. After a grand jury indicts Mitchell, he is convicted of "adultery, fornication, and murderous intent" (there isn't sufficient proof that he had murdered the child). He is fined 5,000 pounds of tobacco and forced to sign a bond for his future good behavior. Warren receives a public whipping for her part in the fornication, but is then freed from her servitude to Mitchell.

1663

A Maryland surgeon is prosecuted for causing an abortion after several witnesses testify that Jacob [aka John] Lumbrozo first raped his maidservant, Elizabeth Wieles, then gave her an abortifacient. The young woman's friends testified that the "Physick that the doctor did give her did kill the child in the womb ... the doctor did hold her back for she was in such pain and misery that she thought that she would die." Lumbrozo escaped conviction by marrying Wieles-she could no longer testify against him, and the testimony of her friends was now hearsay.

1724

Colonial records in Massachusetts and Maine show 51 convictions for infanticide-almost always involving illegitimate children. Communities see the connection, and bring to bear moral and legal pressure on men to take responsibility for the children they beget. In Maine, for example, "Daniel Paul Jun'r of Kittery in the sd County Shipwright" is prosecuted for fathering a child by Bathesheba Lydston. He denies it, and several witnesses testify that Lydston is something short of chaste, but for the court it's enough that Paul has slept with her at least once. He's found liable and ordered to pay "Two Shillings & Sixpence Toward the maintainance of her child."

1821

Seven months after the infamous Rogers case, the General Assembly of Connecticut enacts the nation's first law specifically criminalizing abortion. Ammi Rogers, a Connecticut-born Episcopalian minister, was charged with seducing a woman then causing the death of the unborn child through the use of "pernicious drugs." He was sentenced to two years in a local jail; the Connecticut law, when enacted, stipulated time be served in the harsher Newgate prison. Between the 1840 and 1860, 13 states pass laws forbidding abortion during any stage of a pregnancy. Three others make it illegal after "quickening" (the time when a woman can feel a baby's movement, usually in the fourth or fifth month). By the end of the Civil War, 30 states had anti-abortion laws.

1830

John McDowall, a Princeton-educated preacher, establishes the Society for the Moral and Religious Improvement of the Five Points [neighborhood] in New York City, the nation's first compassion-centered effort to contain abortion. McDowall finds homes for the many abandoned pregnant women he encountered in that neighborhood. His Magdalen Society is controversial, drawing the ire of Tammany Hall, and ultimately fails to awaken New York society to the urgency of the now-common ills of seduction, abandonment, and abortion. Still, compassionate efforts eventually take hold, with the establishment of shelters such as the Erring Women's Refuge in Chicago.

1840

Prostitutes obtain a large percentage of abortions. Citizens often opposed prostitution; Bostonians, for example, rioted in 1793, and again in 1799, 1823 and 1825, storming brothels and closing them down. Similar riots occurred elsewhere, such as in Portland, Maine, and Lennox, Penn. But people also started seeing prostitutes, and their unborn children, as victims. Halfway through the 19th century, a New York physician, Dr. William Sanger, studied 2,000 prostitutes who sought treatment at New York City's main public hospital, Blackwell's Island. In talking with the women, he learned of many pregnancies, but very few children. He wrote of the "startling ... sacrifice of infant life," saying the loss was "one of the most deplorable results of prostitution."

1850

Abortion gains its first significant number of religious advocates. Dr. Henry Gibbons, president of the California Medical Society, would note that "feticide is not a vice of ignorance. It rather grows out of a certain kind of knowledge which has become popular in late years ... the obscene literature of 'free love,' the delirium of spiritism, the impulse of passion, the concealment of shame." Spiritism, a New-Agey movement popular among the upper classes, teaches that self-fulfillment (read: self-gratification) is the highest good, and abortion is its cause célèbre. Its followers and sympathizers include Harriet Beecher Stowe (she was even married to a medium), John Greenleaf Whittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In his book The Spirit-Rapper, Orestes Brownson says spiritism is "making sad havoc with religion, breaking up churches, taking its victims from all denominations."

1871

The New York Times exposes "the evil of the age" when it sends reporter Augustus St. Clair undercover to investigate abortionists. Though abortion is illegal, practitioners run thinly veiled ads in most major newspapers, including (until 1869) the Times itself. St. Clair and a female friend visit the most-advertised abortionists in New York, posing as a couple in need of professional services. His three-part series runs in August, leading with "the enormous amount of medical malpractice [the common euphemism for abortion] that exists and flourishes, almost unchecked, in the city of New York." His series lays the groundwork, but it's another story that fully engages the public. The "Trunk Murder" case is reported a week after St. Clair's series runs. The nude body of a pretty young woman is found in a steamer trunk in a railway station baggage room. An autopsy shows her death was caused by the aftereffects of a surgical abortion. By the end of August police arrest a Dr. Rosenzweig, aka Ascher, whose newspaper ad had been quoted in St. Clair's story: "Ladies in trouble guaranteed immediate relief, sure and safe; no fees required until perfectly satisfied." Even after Rosenzweig is convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, the Times keeps up the crusade. The result is passage of new, tougher anti-abortion laws by the New York Legislature in 1872, and better enforcement.

1876

Although most states have lightened the common-law penalties against suicide (beginning with William Penn in 1701 Pennsylvania, who ended forfeiture), it's still clearly seen as wrong. The Supreme Court in Bigelow vs. Berkshire Life Ins. Co. says it's "an act of criminal self-destruction."

1886

A movement gains momentum to reform laws concerning the "age of consent," the age at which a young woman could legally consent to sexual relations. The age ran from 7, in Delaware, to 18 in Kansas and Wyoming. Armed with stories of reprehensible seductions and ridiculous acquittals based on "consent," the movement is largely successful; by the 1920s, nearly all states had laws putting the age of consent between 16 and 18 years of age. The idea was to keep seduction from being "easy and comparatively safe for men."

1900

Compassionate efforts are coming into their own. Chicago has a dozen shelters for pregnant and unmarried women; in Philadelphia, city officials praise the "numerous agencies throughout the city whose object is the rescue and reformation of fallen women." Like most of these compassionate efforts, New York City's Heartsease Home is resolutely evangelical. According to its founder, Annie Richardson Kennedy, the Heartsease Home is "founded on the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work for humanity. Our first work, therefore, is to bring our girls into contact with our Savior who alone can relieve them of their burden of sin." The Home is staffed by volunteers and funded by donations. Volunteers here, as elsewhere, are taught that they can't save the world, but they can help some.

1906

A bill is introduced in the Ohio legislature that would legalize euthanasia; "An Act Concerning Administration of Drugs etc. to Mortally Injured and Diseased Persons" is the result of public debate about painkilling techniques. New medicines, including morphine, not only relieve pain, but also seem to be able to bring about a painless death. The legislature soundly defeats the bill.

1916

Abortion in big cities begins making a comeback. One pro-life physician, Dr. M.S. Iseman, laments that in New York City, "embryonic humanity has no more sanctity nor protection than the rats which infest its docks." Meanwhile, early feminist Margaret Sanger is jailed, along with her sister, for dispensing information about contraceptives at the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. Her Birth Control Federation of America will become, in 1942, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

1925

Margaret Sanger gives the welcoming address to an international conference on eugenics. She laments that while the United States is now discourzaging immigration, "no attempt whatever is made to discourage the rapid multiplication of undesirable aliens-and natives-within our own borders." A eugenic approach, she declared, would be "the salvation of American civilization." This view was at the core of her campaign for contraception and, when necessary, abortion.

1936

In Britain, the dying King George V asks his physician, Lord Dawson, to hasten his death. The doctor gives him a fatal dose of cocaine and morphine.

1937

The Nebraska Legislature takes up a Voluntary Euthanasia Act, which would legalize euthanasia for anyone fatally ill, and permit the relatives of those deemed mentally incompetent to make that decision for them. The bill fails.

1942

The number of physicians sympathetic to abortion has grown to the point that a conference on the procedure is held by the New York Academy of Medicine. The modern arguments are voiced; Dr. Sophia Kleegman charges that the restrictions on abortion can be blamed on the "theological dogma" of "one particular church." Other speakers declare that true compassion means that when a woman wants an abortion, "the ultimate decision should be hers." It's not long before all these views merge in the secular medical mind; in 1955, Dr. Theodore Lidz of Yale University said publicly "abortion is preferable to the birth of a child that might be injurious to the well-being of the mother and perhaps to other children in the family."

1962

Sherri Finkbine, ("Miss Sherri" of Phoenix's "Romper Room" children's television program) learns the tranquilizer she had taken during her pregnancy contained thalidomide, a drug known to cause horrible birth defects. A legal abortion is scheduled, with the approval of a panel of three physicians, but Finkbine contacts a Phoenix newspaper with her story and in the ensuing publicity, the hospital refuses to authorize the procedure. She quickly becomes the pretty face that pro-abortion forces put on their cause. Newspapers are happy to play the story this way; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, says she "had to go to Sweden to find a more civilized attitude toward her plight."

1965

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold vs. Connecticut , finds a right to marital privacy and invalidates a Connecticut law against the use of contraceptives by married couples. It finds, in fact, "a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system." This right will later be applied to unmarried couples (Eisenstadt vs. Baird in 1972) and then to Roe vs. Wade.

1970

Hawaii repeals its abortion law, allowing doctors to perform abortions up until the 20th week of pregnancy. New York soon legalizes abortion through the 24th week. In 1972, 61 percent of Michigan voters vote against a referendum proposal to legalize abortion on demand during the first five months of pregnancy. A Gallup poll shows 66 percent of all Americans opposing legalized abortion on demand.

1973

In Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton, the U.S. Supreme Court declares abortion a constitutional right. Newspapers cheer. The New York Times calls it "a major contribution to the preservation of individual liberties ... it wisely avoids the judicial quicksand of attempting a judicial pronouncement on when life begins." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch commends the decision for being "remarkable for its common sense" and "its humaneness." The decision includes some room for regulation-but precious little room, as future court decisions will show.

1975

The 21-year-old Karen Ann Quinlan collapses at a party in New Jersey after ingesting alcohol and tranquilizers. Doctors say she's in a "chronic persistent vegetative state" and will never recover; her parents ask to take her off life support. In ruling for her parents, the New Jersey State Supreme Court finds a right to privacy that "grows as the degree of bodily invasion increases and the prognosis dims." In 1976 the respirator is turned off, but Miss Quinlan fails to die; she lives another 10 years.

1976

A husband is now a "third party" to an abortion and a woman does not have to have his consent before an abortion, the Supreme Court rules in Planned Parenthood vs. Danforth. Using the same reasoning, the Court decides that parents of a girl wishing to obtain an abortion are also third parties, and that a law requiring a minor to get written permission from a parent before an abortion is unconstitutional. Meanwhile, Congress enacts the Hyde Amendment, preventing the federal government from funding abortions through Medicaid and other Department of Health and Human Services programs, except in rare cases (the "rape, incest, or life of the mother" litany). The Supreme Court will uphold restrictions on public funding of abortion, ruling that failing to pay for an abortion with public funds "does not impinge upon the fundamental right recognized in Roe." California passes its Natural Death Act, which allows "living wills" and prevents patients from suing doctors for failing to treat incurable cases.

1980

Crisis pregnancy centers are spreading across the United States. By the mid-1980s nearly 3,000 centers nationwide counsel women, offering them free pregnancy tests, telling them about fetal development and the consequences of abortion, and providing material help when needed. They're successful enough that the pro-abortion lobby begins to take notice. Officials in a number of cities, including Dallas and San Francisco, accuse CPCs of false advertising and demand that they state in their ads their unwillingness to refer for abortions. Congressional hearings in 1991 will force the Yellow Pages Publishers Association to agree to divide listings into "abortion providers" and "abortion alternatives."

1988

Randall Terry's new group Operation Rescue begins its "Siege of Atlanta" protest; Terry is jailed the first day and soon 100 other "rescuers" join him there. It's the beginning of a brief but fervent movement; by 1990 OR itself is broke and closes its national office in Binghamton, NY, mostly because of fines and civil judgments levied against it by courts. The group bickers, splinters, and finds itself at the fringe of the pro-life movement.

1990

The U.S. Supreme Court allows the parents of 32-year-old Nancy Cruzan to withhold from her food and water, ingested through a feeding tube; the parents persuaded a court that she might have wanted it that way. She'd been in a coma since a 1983 auto accident. This differs from the Quinlan case because this time, feeding is portrayed as an extraordinary measure. Six years later, Nancy's father Joseph ends his own life. Jack Kevorkian, a retired Michigan pathologist, constructs a "suicide machine" and "helps" his first victim, 54-year-old Alzheimer's patient Janet Adkins, to kill herself. Before he's stopped, Dr. Kevorkian helps more than 100 people die.

1992

The Supreme Court reaffirms its pro-abortion position in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which says a woman has a right to obtain an abortion prior to "fetal viability," without undue interference from the state, and that any restrictions placed on abortion after viability must have exceptions for pregnancies endangering a woman's life or health.

1993

The True Love Waits abstinence campaign is launched by Southern Baptist minister Richard Ross. It's a popular movement that catches on quickly with teens-in the summer of 1994, more than 25,000 arrive at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to display 210,000 "pledge cards," each signed by a teen promising to stay pure until marriage. It's not the only abstinence effort; the Best Friends program headed by Elayne Bennett, for example, expands beyond D.C. to New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington state. In July, abortionist David Gunn is shot to death outside the Women's Medical Services Clinic in Pensacola, Fla. Protester Michael Griffin is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. A few weeks later, abortionist George Tiller is shot in both arms as he drives away from a clinic in Wichita, Kan. Rachelle Shannon is convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

1994

The brief but highly publicized spate of killings continues; in July 1994 abortionist John Bayard Britton is shot to death, along with his bodyguard, James Barrett, at the Ladies Center abortion clinic in Pensacola. Paul Hill is convicted of the crimes and receives the death penalty. Later in the year, John Salvi walks into two Boston-area clinics and shoots everyone in sight; two receptionists are killed and five others wounded. He is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole, but commits suicide in prison in November 1996. Pro-life groups loudly and repeatedly denounce the killers and violent tactics of any kind, but the movement-and particularly its "rescue" branch-are branded. President Bill Clinton signs the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. It's less a response to abortion clinic violence (which is illegal already) than a shrewd move to stifle the pro-life movement. It sets out penalties for not only violent acts, but also non-violent protest and counseling, if it occurs too close to a clinic. Oregon passes the nation's first physician-assisted suicide law. The Death with Dignity Act goes into effect three years later, after court challenges to the law fail.

1995

Congress for the first time passes a bill banning partial-birth abortion. President Clinton vetoes the bill, HR 1833, on April 10, 1996. Congress will try again in 1997 and in 1999; the president vetoes these, as well. Many journalists refuse to provide specific detail about this legal infanticide, but the word does get out and public opinion is affected. Many states pass parental notification, parental consent, and waiting period laws.

1997

There's no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court rules in Glucksberg. Overturning two 1996 circuit court rulings, the court says the state "has an interest in protecting vulnerable groups-including the poor, the elderly, and disabled persons-from abuse, neglect, and mistakes." Citing cases in the Netherlands, the court warns that assisted suicide can turn into involuntary euthanasia. States may outlaw physician-assisted suicide, the court rules.

1998

Dr. Death has become a celebrity. Jack Kevorkian has won acquittal after acquittal in the Michigan courts, but he finally overplays his hand. As camera and videotape roll, he kills Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old man with Lou Gehrig's disease. He takes the tape to CBS's 60 Minutes, which airs it. The next year, Dr. Kevorkian is convicted of second-degree murder for Youk's death, and sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.

2000

The New York Times reports that with a significant decrease in the number of abortions, clinics in many cities are having to compete for customers. The number of abortions peaked in 1990, with 1.6 million, then dropped by 17 percent in the next seven years, to a low of 1.3 million. Dr. Warren Hern, owner of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado, laments, "the competition for patients is absolutely ruthless." The Food and Drug Administration approves the sale and distribution of RU-486, and the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban. Voters in Maine defeat a referendum patterned after Oregon's assisted-suicide law. Faye Girsh of the pro-euthanasia Hemlock Society was distraught over the loss: "We seem to be a long way away."

Sources: Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America by Marvin Olasky (Crossway Books, 1992); The Press and Abortion, 1838-1988 by Marvin Olasky (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988); news accounts of the 1990s