George Lotrell Timanus

George Lotrell Timanus (January 31, 1892 – June 1981) was a physician who performed illegal abortions in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. area from 1920 to 1951.[1]

Timanus and one other abortion provider performed an estimated 90% criminal abortions in Baltimore.[1]

In 1950, Timanus used his criminal trial to challenge the abortion laws in the United States, as Aleck Bourne had done in the UK. However, his trial and that of another doctor, Edgar Keemer, were not understood as challenges by the public, and Timanus and Keemer did not recruit other doctors or patients to their cause in a way that might have built a movement or sparked national conversation.[2] He was fined $5,000, sentenced to six months in jail, and barred from further practice of medicine.[1]

Timanus participated in the Planned Parenthood Conference on Abortion in America in 1955. He gave a detailed breakdown of his patients, of whom he kept meticulous records, noting that of 5,200 women on whom he had performed abortions, only two had died.[3] As Garrett Hardin noted, this 0.04% rate, in the days before antibiotics, was not only far lower than the mortality rate for women carrying to term at the time, but still only half the maternal mortality rate a generation later.[4] At the conference, Timanus also lamented that of the 353 doctors who referred patients to him—some of them, Timanus claimed, with letters recommending abortion—none stood up to testify for him when he was arrested.[5]

Timanus asked referring doctors to make a written statement that the abortion was necessary because her life would otherwise be jeopardized.[1]

The breakdown of Timanus' patients was as follows:[1]

  • Age 12 - 15: 17
  • Age 16 - 20: 688
  • Age 21 - 25: 1,834
  • Age 26 - 30: 1,268
  • Age 31 - 40: 1,312
  • Age 41+: 91
  • Single: 1,830
  • Married: 2,773
  • Widowed/Divorced/Separated: 607
  • Physicians: 7
  • Wives of physicians: 58
  • Nurses: 270

Mary Calderone, then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, noted that Timanus "certainly seemed to be very competent and professional."[6]

References
  1. "Abortion in the U.S.", Time, June 2, 1958
  2. Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was A Crime, University of California Press 1997
  3. Ziff, Harvey L. (March 1969). "Recent abortion law reforms (or, much ado about nothing)". The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science. 60 (1): 7.
  4. Hardin, Garrett (1973). Stalking the wild taboo. W. Kaufmann. p. 15.
  5. "Abortion in the United States. A Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Incorporated at Arden House and The New York Academy of Medicine", by Mary Steichen Calderone
  6. "Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem," Mary S. Calderone, American Journal of Public Health, July, 1960
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