Dec 29 2024 52 mins 7
Thirty years ago this week, Brookline became the site of the most deadly anti-abortion violence in American history, at least up to that point. Sadly, right wing extremists and religious terrorists have since eclipsed the bloodshed on Beacon Street on December 30, 1994. On that day, two women’s health clinics were targeted by a radical with a gun because, along with pap smears, birth control, and STD screenings, they provided abortion care. His shooting spree left two people dead, five wounded, and fit into a national pattern of violence against abortion providers. This week, we’ll review that heartbreaking case, then we’ll revisit a classic episode that warns us what could happen to pregnant women in Boston before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America through the tragic example of Jennie Clarke.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/317/
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Trunk Tragedy in the City of Shoes
- The medical examiner’s report on the Jennie Clarke case
- 1845 abortion law in Massachusetts
- 1847 law restricting advertisements for abortion
- Commonwealth v Isaiah Bangs (1812)
- Commonwealth v Luceba Parker (1845)
- An act negating archaic statutes targeting young women (NASTY Women Act, 2018)
- An 1860 publication of the American Medical Association arguing for stronger abortion bans
- Boston Globe Articles
- The body is discovered
- Jennie Clarke’s burial
- Goodrich and Kimball arrested
- Trial
- Retrial
- Verdict
- Sentencing
- 1879 ad for MacClellan’s Female Pills
- 1889 ad for “ladies who are in trouble and require skillful medical or surgical treatment”
- Wire service stories
