This article studies the medical and legal responses to the abortion-related death of Constance Ida Browne of Toronto, Ontario in 1924. The subsequent coroner's inquest led to a criminal prosecution of Browne's doctor and also her male lover on charges of illegally procuring a miscarriage. The legal proceedings and the detailed press commentary of the time offer an excellent opportunity to consider the interaction between medical and legal authorities jostling for position over the proper response to the demand for illegal abortions. The case also permits an examination of the social, psychological, economic, and medical circumstances which surrounded the procuring of illegal abortion in the first half of the twentieth century.

ISSN 0823-2105

© 2012 Canadian Society for the History of Medicine/
    Société canadienne d'histoire de la médecine