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Geraldine Santoro's Dangerous Self-Induced Abortion

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In the early hours of June 4, 1964 the body of Geraldine Santoro was found in a low-end motel room. She was found on the floor, her face shoved into the carpeted ground with her knees tucked into her chest, blood seeping down her thighs, she had bled to death from a self induced abortion. Santoro, at the time, was living separately from her abusive husband and was with another man, Clyde Dixon, whom she had fallen pregnant with. She feared her husband would seek retribution and murder her because of this, she opted to abort the baby. Clyde and Geraldine checked into a motel on June 3, 1964 with plans to abort the baby themselves. The operation quickly fell apart after Santoro started to hemorrhage, Clyde fled the scene leaving her to slowly …show more content…

It was after that year, the laws began to change and restrictions on birth control and abortions started to appear. Women who were desperate resorted to attempting dangerous self-induced abortions. Some of the methods used were: inserting knitting needles or coat hangers into the vagina and uterus, douching with solutions such as detergent, or swallowing strong drugs or chemicals. These dangerous self performed abortions caused many women to end up in hospitals with infections, with some women becoming sterile, and in extreme cases resulted in death. It wasn’t until 100+ years later the tide of abortions started to …show more content…

Inspired hugely by the Civil Rights and Antiwar movements, woman banded together and to start another Women's Rights movement. Unlike the Suffragette movement, that took place from 1848 to 1920, this focused solely on dismantling workplace inequality, such as denial of access to better jobs and salary inequity, discriminatory and anti abortion laws, and equality on both a political and personal level. In 1959, the American Law Institute, ALI, proposed to legalized abortion in cases of rape, incest, or fetal deformity. In 1967, Colorado Governor signed the ALI’s proposed bill which would allow women to legally obtain an abortion in cases of permanent physical or mental disability for the mother or child, and in cases of rape and incest. Following in the steps of Colorado’s Governor, 14 more states reformed and four states repealed restrictive abortion laws between 1967 and 1972.
On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court struck down all existing criminal abortion laws in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. The courts were found in favor that it’s a woman’s decision to seek an abortion in the first trimester and was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty. However, the Courts allowed the States to place and regulation they saw fit on the second and third trimester abortions except for if a pregnant woman’s life or health were endangered. In that case, a woman would not

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Ionah Romanos HIST 180 Professor Riggin 17 May 2023 Term Paper In the book "San Francisco's Queen of Vice: The Strange Career of Abortionist Inez Brown Burns", Lisa Riggin highlights the upbringing and navigates the challenges that Inez Brown Burns, an infamously controversial figure in the early 1900s due to her profession as an abortionist and her operation of an illegal abortion clinic. With notary forces such as District Attorney Pat Brown, who strived to implement conservative agendas to free San Francisco from such corruption. From the beginning of District Attorney Pat Brown’s involvement in politics, he has made it clear of his political, conservative views and measures. Even his own father, Ed Brown who owned a poker club, was an

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In 1973, abortion became legal in the United States through the well-known court case of Roe vs Wade. Jane Roe was a pregnant and single woman who filed a lawsuit against a Dallas Country District Attorney, Henry Wade, in a federal court in Texas. She argued that she had a right to terminate her pregnancy in a safe medical environment even if her life was not in danger. The court ruled in her favor, saying that the constitution protects an individual’s “zone of privacy”, and that the zone was wide enough to include a woman 's choice whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. Since 1973, millions of abortions have been performed, yet the controversy over whether it should have been legalized is still argued by countless individuals today.

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The Court held that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision gave woman the liberty to abort a fetus during the first trimester. It also defined different levels of state interest for the second and third

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Roe vs. Wade is the highly publicized Supreme Court ruling that overturned a Texas interpretation of abortion law and made abortion legal in the United States. The Roe v. Wade decision held that a woman, with her doctor, has the right to choose abortion in earlier months of pregnancy without legal restriction, and with restrictions in later months, based on the right to privacy. As a result, all state laws that limited women 's access to abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy were invalidated by this particular case. State laws limiting such access during the second trimester were upheld only when the restrictions were for the purpose of protecting the health of the pregnant woman. Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the greater United States, which was not legal at all in many states and was limited by law in others.

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The laws that mandate abortion took a climatic turn on January 22, 1973 during the pivotal Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, which essentially limited the states’ ability to prohibit abortion as it was unconstitutional and it violated the women’s right to privacy (Gold). Although the right to a privacy was not explicitly mentioned in the constitution, it was guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. It confirmed that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, but with certain limitations. The law made it illegal for the state and federal governments to ban abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, but they were given power declaring abortion illegal in the last three months of pregnancy. Furthermore, it only

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On January 22, 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, made it a crime to perform an abortion unless a woman’s life was at stake. Roe was challenging a

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Roe v. Wade (1973) Roe v. Wade was a historic Supreme Court decision made in 1973 that changed the lives of women. It was determined by the Supreme Court that the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, including the Due Process Clause, would apply to the rights and protections of women to decide to have an abortion. It did, however, still reserve the potential for regulation of abortions based on the protection of women’s health and the potential harm to human life. This has resulted in much debate over the years over what is considered to be “human life,” and the topic of abortion remains a contentious political issue to this day.

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In 1973 the Supreme Court made a decision on which state laws made it illegal for a women to have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy should be left up to the women and her doctor to decide. Every year around the decision. Opponents of abortion march up to the Constitutional Avenue to the supreme court in Washington

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In the United States, laws that had to do with abortions didn’t exist until the 1800s. During that time women did not have many rights. In 1821, Connecticut passed the first law in the United States barring abortions after “quickening”, which were usually performed by administering a type of poison to the woman after the fourth month of pregnancy. By the 1880s, all states had laws criminalizing abortions and these laws stayed intact until the 1960s and 1970s. In 1973, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made it possible for women to get safe, legal abortions from trained medical practitioners.

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“On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, a challenge to a Texas statute that made it a crime to perform an abortion unless a woman’s life was at stake. The case had been filed by “Jane Roe,” an unmarried woman who wanted to safely and legally end her pregnancy. Siding with Roe, the court struck down the Texas law. In its ruling, the court recognized for the first time that the constitutional right to privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” (Roe v. Wade, 1973).

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Patricia Maginnis was one of these women. In the 1960s Maginnis created the Citizizens’ Committee for Humane Abortion Laws and openly asserted that abortion was a decision the government should have no influence over. Among those who backed up her opinions one finds the National Organization for Women (NOW) who in 1967 publicly declared support of annulling the current laws regarding abortion. The ones expressing the most evident approval of the repeal though were various Women’s Liberation Movement groups such as New York City Redstockings and the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union along with black feminist groups.

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The Right to Abortion On January 22, 1973, in a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down it’s landmark decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which recognized that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions — including the decision to have an abortion without interference from politicians (Planned Parenthood). There are many moments in history when Roe v. Wade has been so close to being overturned, yet it is still in place. Abortion should stay legal, or not overturned, for the health of women everywhere. First, this important case took place at the time of abortion being illegal in most states, including Texas, where Roe v. Wade began.

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Annotated Bibliography "Abortion ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

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This is when the idea of abortions becoming acceptable within certain circumstances came into play. In the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case, the Supreme Court legalized abortion holding that the constitutional right of privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy.” The court found that a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester was protected under the right of privacy which was founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty. The court also allowed states to place restrictions in the second trimester to protect a woman’s

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Though it overturned when passed, the law was still a looming possibility of loss in power for women. Another tactic of using fear as leverage was employed by editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association. This tactics was not allowing women treatment to any abortion induced medical complications until she ‘confessed’ to her abortion and cause of it. This tactic ruthlessly lead to many deaths in the late 1920’s. Anti abortionist recently used fear to influence people by setting up fake abortion clinics where they spread misinformation and intimidate women out of abortion, nearly 4000 clinics were set up, 5 times more than real abortion clinics in the United States.

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