I just cried over a relative I've never met.
Been doing some genealogy, and found a relative I was particularly fond of had no mother listed in his records (haven't found his birth records, but she doesn't appear in later census records for his family). I thought that was strange and perhaps she'd left the family and that was why she didn't exist on paper.
Nope.
Just poked a bit and found her death certificate. She died leaving young children.
She died before WWII of staphylcoccol septicemia. This was not a terribly uncommon thing to die of before there were antibiotics to fight blood poisoning.
But...there was also this phrase "septic abortion - natural."
This meant, she'd had a miscarriage, but not all of of the embryo or fetus was expelled as part of the miscarriage. It's the sort of thing that American women generally haven't died from in 50 years, between the availability of antibiotics and the fact that most doctors check a woman who's had a miscarriage to make sure whether there's any pregnancy-related tissue remaining in the uterus. Because if it isn't all expelled or removed, the woman can die of blood poisoning.
As this relative did.
She had a miscarriage on about 8/22. I don't know when she first went to a doctor (again, she had young children at home and I don't think the family had much money). Her death certificate states that she had an operation on 8/27. I'm guessing by that point, a doctor could remove an incomplete miscarriage without being accused of giving her an abortion. But it was too late and she died on 9/8. Just 16 days from miscarriage to her own death.
We're in a situation in some states where more women will die like this again, making doctors fearful to check whether a woman has had a complete miscarriage. At least women in those right-suppressing states in that horrible situation might be able to get antibiotics and pain pills and might get to live.
My own mother was in a similar situation decades later. After three miscarriages and three children, the fetus she was carrying died five months into her pregnancy. She went to her doctor who told her "I can't do anything until you go into labor."
My mother, being overly polite in 1960, did not scream "What do you mean, there's nothing you can do? The baby is already dead." but went home to wait.
She had to care for 3 children under the age of 4. She had to tell people who congratulated her on her pregnancy that her baby was already dead. She had the risk of going septic while she waited.
She was lucky - she went into labor five weeks later and delivered her stillborn baby. She did not go septic and leave three young children without a mother.
