The Chronicles Of Grant County
Abortion In New Mexico – Part One
The United States Supreme Court Building. (The photograph was provided courtesy of The United States National Archives and Records Administration, circa – perhaps – prior to 1960.)
With the recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court, the decisions of whether to allow abortion in most cases and what restrictions to put in place regarding abortion are now in the hands of the individual states, commonwealths, and the District of Columbia.
Many statements have been made regarding how abortion will be regulated in the future. A number of those statements reference what happened in the past in this country.
One of the statements being made is that abortion is now illegal everywhere in the U S. That is not the case. Especially in New Mexico.
This edition of The Chronicles Of Grant County looks back on how abortion and abortion-related issues were reported in years past by newspapers in New Mexico. Some of the news items focused on activities that occurred within the State, while other news articles detailed events that took place in other locales. A few examples of these news articles:
On February 22, 1883, the Las Vegas Daily Gazette included a news article detailing that a jury on the day before in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had found a doctor guilty of double murder. The doctor had performed an abortion on a woman; both the woman and the unborn baby died during the procedure.
A year later, on January 18, 1884, the same newspaper reported that a woman died from an abortion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "The girl in her dying statement said that four other girls were under treatment at the house in Philadelphia, where she was operated upon," noted the Las Vegas Daily Gazette. "Dr. Bruce, arrested [and] charged with the abortion…was tried once [before] on a similar charge, but acquitted."
The Santa Fe New Mexican Review reported on its front page on the same day that "Later, Dr. D. B. Bruce, arrested for criminal malpractice resulting in the death of [the woman]…acknowledges the woman had been treated at his house, but denies performing the operation."
A few days later, the Weekly New Mexican Review on January 24, 1884, detailed that "a Republican Colorado Springs special says…a woman between 30 and 35 years of age who has been working as a servant…" with a family in Colorado City, Colorado, was found dead on January 29. "A post mortem examination revealed the fact that death resulted from an abortion committed by her own hands," the newspaper continued. "Instruments lay upon a table beside the bed, and blood on her hands showed only too plainly that in her endeavors to remove the cause of her shame she had unintentionally taken her own life, and must have died in intense agony."
The Albuquerque Morning Democrat on August 29, 1891, included a news article on its front page noting that a husband and wife from Denver were arrested the night before on charges of murder: "It is alleged that…[a second woman – who had already been arrested on charges of committing an abortion – had delivered] twins prematurely [from the wife] and that the bodies [of the twins] were burned in the presence of the husband and wife."
In Melrose, New Mexico, a man "…has been discharged from arrest on accusations of abortion and seduction filed against him by [a woman], on which he was brought back from Globe, Arizona," according to a news article in the Santa Fe New Mexican printed on August 12, 1918. "The district attorney stated that there was insufficient evidence."
A bill to make abortion a felony was passed by the New Mexico State Legislature in February of 1919. On the 25th day of that month, the Albuquerque Morning Journal stated that this bill "…went to the governor today, making abortion a felony, with punishment from $500 to $2,000 on conviction, or imprisonment from one to five years, or both, within the discretion of the court." The Columbus Courier on February 21, 1919, had explained that "The bill also provides that in case a patient dies after such an operation, the physician shall be guilty of second degree murder."
On March 10, 1921, the Alamogordo News reported that a local doctor in Roswell, New Mexico, took poison to avoid being arrested on charges of performing an abortion that caused the death of a local woman. This news article noted that the doctor had been "…once before convicted on the same charges, sentenced to the penitentiary and pardoned by…" a recent governor of New Mexico. This doctor, according to the newspaper, had been the secretary of the Chaves County Republican Central Committee.
The next edition of The Chronicles Of Grant County will detail additional aspects of abortion regulations through the years in New Mexico.
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© 2022 Richard McDonough