Illegal abortion killed my great- grandmother

Could her story be reality again in USA?

The Supreme Court listened to arguments Monday about SB- 8, the Texas bill that all but bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That’s before most women know they’re pregnant.

The Texas law is in direct conflict with Supreme Court rulings such as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which established and reaffirmed that a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body during a pregnancy stems from the constitutionally protected right to privacy.

To be clear: The right to an abortion is not directly on the table yet in either of the cases the Supreme Court is hearing. Instead, they center on whether abortion providers or the Justice Department can challenge a law that allows private citizen vigilantes to use civil remedies to sue abortion providers. But as we saw last month when the court declined to protect women from what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called “grave and irreparable harm,” neither precedent nor women’s bodily autonomy matter to this court.

In Monday’s hearing, the justices appeared skeptical of the Texas law, but it does not mean women are in the clear. On Dec. 1, the court is scheduled to hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which asks the justices to overrule Roe. The court could throw out the Texas law but still overturn Roe later.

Botched abortion in 1936

My great- grandmother, Joyce Hubbard, died from a botched abortion.

It was 1936 when she found out she was pregnant again. She was 25.

Before the 1929 stock market crash, the Hubbard- Millar family from Clinton, Missouri, had been well- off cattle ranchers. Seven years later, they could barely feed their four kids and were experiencing homelessness. Joyce decided to have an abortion, which was illegal at the time.

That decision would take her life and would tragically mark the life of my grandmother, who would be sent to live with relatives as her father battled poverty, alcoholism and depression.

Women have been finding ways to end pregnancies since ancient times. Before Roe, wealthy American traveled to Europe to seek abortions. But in 1936, poor women in rural America were left with unappealing ways to end their pregnancy.

A University of California Irvine’s Western Journal of Emergency Medicine article, “The Back Alley Revisited: Sepsis after Attempted Self- Induced Abortion,” describes some of the more well- known methods used ( and continue to be used) to induce abortion.

There were oral and injectable medications like phosphorus, mercury, lead, kerosene, turpentine and detergents.

There also were coat hangers, knitting needles, sticks and crochet hooks, which were often swarming with bacteria. And then there was self- inflicted abdominal trauma, such as a belly flop onto the floor or ramming one's stomach into the edge of the bathtub.

In the case of my great- grandmother, we were never sure about the details of her death, except for the medical diagnosis listed on her death certificate: “Abortion c ( sic) infection. Peritonitis.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade

It’s hard to know whether she told the truth about what she had done to end the pregnancy, or how long she waited until she sought treatment.

She may have developed the peritonitis from a perforation in her uterus, or from unsterilized instruments that scratched her insides, poisoning her blood with bacteria.

She likely lay in her hospital bed retching for days, raked by fever, cramping, sweats, vaginal bleeding, vomiting and intense pelvic pain as her body attempted, and failed, to fight off deadly bacteria.

According to Planned Parenthood, about 25 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where they are expected to lose abortion access if the United States lets states decide whether to legalize or restrict abortion ( as before Roe v. Wade).

Also according to the organization, “Overturning Roe v. Wade could put safe, legal abortion out of reach for onethird of people ages 15 to 49 who may need it.”

In a 2004 report, the World Health Organization estimated that 68,000 women die due to the complications of unsafe abortions, with sepsis as a major cause. In the United States, we have largely avoided this issue thanks to the availability of access to a legal, safe abortion, guaranteed by the Supreme Court’s decisions.

But we should get ready for many more sad stories like those of my greatgrandmother if the Supreme Court justices decide to let laws like SB- 8 continue or, down the road, overturn Roe.

It is exceptionally problematic that 85 years after my great- grandmother died, women in the United States are still fighting for the right to make safe choices about their reproductive health.

I will not stand by quietly as women’s bodies are again treated as collateral damage in a conservative war on abortion. My great- grandmother’s death was not in vain.