Three Family Tragedies

On November 24, 1907, Lizzie Paulseu, age 38, died at County Hospital in Chicago from an abortion performed that day. John and Minnie Nelson were arrested and held without bail. John Nelson was sentenced to Joliet for his role in Lizzie's death. Nelson's profession is given as "outside labor force" and "abortion provider", so it is likely that he was a professional lay abortionist, which was unusual in that most criminal abortions were performed by physicians.

On November 24, 1916, 24-year-old Mrs. M. Marazak died at Chicago's West Side Hospital from an abortion performed by an unknown perpetrator.

Our last anniversary today is a heartrending case in which the abortion and its results came as a devastating surprise. When 18-year-old Michelle Madden's parents arrived at her college to take her home for Thanksgiving in 1986, the house mother told them that Michelle had collapsed three days after an abortion she'd sought on November 18 because a doctor had told her that her epilepsy medication would cause birth defects in her unborn baby. Dr. O.B. Evans at Family Planning Medical Center of Mobile, Alabama, had left a leg bone, two pieces of skull, and some placenta in Michelle's uterus, causing the massive infection and bleeding that killed her on November 24.