As for her business, Rev. McCarthy felt that, in performing abortions, she was not doing anything most doctors didn’t. He personally knew others who performed abortions and noticed that “in high social circles [it was] advocated as a proper method for evading the duties and anxieties of maternity.” Given that abortion was seen as acceptable and accessible for the wealthy, he declared, “The fraud and falsehood by which she was made amenable to a law that is universally violated by the medical profession of this city cannot be too strongly condemned.”
