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9 Wake Forest L. Rev. Online 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/wflron9 and id is 1 raw text is: CONCERN OR CALCULATION: AN EXAMINATION OF STATE LAW MANDATING THE BURIAL OR CREMATION OF A FETUS Ashley Collette* I. INTRODUCTION It was a kitchen table, coat-hanger abortion. It took maybe six minutes. I got on the kitchen table. I think my stepmother gave me a drink of brandy or something, and she said, Now this may hurt a little bit. She held my hand and this woman stuck a piece of coat hanger into my vagina. And then my stepmother said, Okay, now get dressed. And what you were supposed to do was leave that in there until you started to abort. I remember walking out with this coat hanger between my legs. That evening I started bleeding and I think I was feeling cramps. I got up very early in the morning and went to the bathroom, and there was just this passage of blood and a clot that was slightly bigger than the clots I usually passed during my menstrual period. I realized that that was the fetus. The next month my period came on time.1 Before to the 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade,2 women like Lila went through demeaning, illegal, and often dangerous lengths to obtain abortions. Countless women died as a result.3 * J.D. 2019, Wake Forest University School of Law; M.A. 2012, Marquette University; B.A. 2008, University of Kentucky. I would like to extend a special thank you to Professor Tanya Marsh for her encouragement and guidance on this topic and Professor Kate Irwin-Smiler for inculcating a passion for legislative history research. 1. Claire Landsbaum, 4 Women on Having Abortions Before They Were Legal, THE CUT (Nov. 29, 2016), https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/4-women-on- getting-an-abortion-before-roe-v-wade.html (recounting excerpts from a book originally published in 1988, Back Rooms: Voices From the Illegal Abortion Era, written by Ellen Messer and Kathryn May); see also Stephanie Hallett, 8 Stories that Show What Abortion was Like Before Roe v. Wade, Ms. MAGAZINE: BLOG (Jan. 19, 2016), http://msmagazine.com/blog/2016/01/19/8-stories-that-show-what- abortion-was-like-before-roe-v-wade/ (relaying personal stories of woman having abortions before abortion was legalized in 1973). 2. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). 3. Rachel Benson Gold, Lessons from Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?, GUTTMACHER INST. (Mar. 1, 2003), https ://www. guttmacher. org/gpr/2003/03/lessons -roe-will-past-be-prologue (Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North 1

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