All the papers do not sin equally in this respect; but if the reader will take the trouble to send for specimen copies, especially of Sunday editions, to Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Cincinnati, or any other large city, he will see innumerable alluring advertisements plainly inserted by the keepers of houses of assignation and brothels and by abortionists. It is a shame that America tolerates such journalism.
In the personal columns of these papers may be found such matter as the following:
"Ladies in trouble will not regret calling at... ";
"Mrs. ..., midwife, receives ladies in trouble";
"...Sanitarium, perfect seclusion, female diseases a specialty, results guaranteed";
"Attention, ladies! ...pennyroyal pills are the best";
"Eelief for ladies, in sealed letter by return mail for twenty five stamps";
"Women's complaints and irregularities successfully treated by old Dr. ...".
Along with these there are the open advertisements of "massage parlors", which are perhaps worse than brothels, and of "rubber goods", and such nostrums as claim to "prevent" disease or to "enlarge the parts", or to "restore lost vitality".
The medical profession looks upon this apathy of the law makers with utter abhorrence. Of course there is no misunderstanding these advertisements by "those who are in trouble", and of course the remedies advertised are sold merely for profit and not from philanthropic motives, being utterly inefficient, but nevertheless the minds of the community become poisoned; pregnant womea having tried the abortifacient remedies advertised become desperate after their failure to act, and seek other more effective means, until they succeed in their undertaking.
Abortifacient drugs act by producing violent purgation or vomiting, and may so inflame the stomach and intestines as to cause death; none of them are safe, and none are ever used by physicians even for the purpose of producing "therapeutic", or necessary abortion.
Therapeutic, or Justifiable Abortion. The law leaves it entirely to the judgment of the medical profession to determine when it is necessary and warrantable to produce abortion. No wise physician, however, would bring this about except after deliberate consultation with one or more fellow practitioners of repute.
There is no immorality in producing an abortion therapeutically if it gives a chance of saving the life of the mother, when, if it were not done, it would be almost certain that both mother and child would perish.
The indications for therapeutic abortion appear "whenever the mother is suffering from disease arising from the pregnancy or originating before it, or accidentally occurring during it, which imperils her life, and there is a reasonable probability that she will recover if abortion occur".
Abortion has been brought on in the interests of the mother in certain diseases; for instance, in severe affections of the heart, or lungs, or kidneys, when acute symptoms supervene; in certain forms of Bright's disease associated with excessive dropsy; in cases where there is an enormous distention of the abdomen from twins or a superabundance of liquor amnii; in the uncontrollable vomiting of pregnancy; in pernicious anaemia; in chorea and convulsions; in hemorrhages from the uterus due to a wrong position of the placenta (placenta praivia); in extreme pelvic deformity where it would be impossible for the woman to bear a full time child; and in certain displacements of the gravid uterus when it has become incarcerated and is liable to gangrene.