Motherless: Clara Duvall 1895-1935

From Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles

People hurt by illegal abortions include the children left behind. A film made in 1992 recounts the story of four children whose mothers died from an illegal abortion. Over the next couple of weeks, I will publish four chapters that tell these stories from my book. This book was sent to pro-life organizations and judges including the Supreme Court.

These stories are no less poignant today than they were when they happened, when Linn Duval was an old woman or today when we read about it. 

I doubt Linn Duvall is still alive today.

Linn Duvall Hartwell’s Story

A black-and-white photo of three little girls with bobbed hair in the style of the 1920s is on the screen. One of them is Linn Duvall Hartwell.

We do not know how old she was when her mother, Clara, died in 1925 of an illegal abortion. We can glean some information by simple math. The film was made in 1992. Linn took viewers on a tour of her old neighborhood. She tells the audience she hadn’t been back for fifty years, making her around 69.

Linn has huge glasses and curly gray hair. She looked like a cookie-baking grandmother with a lap ready to cuddle any child.

The director used Linn’s voice over movies of Pittsburgh in the 1920s. A few Model-T type cars and street cars move back and forth down city streets. Pedestrians walk at a slightly faster pace than normal.

The camera switches to Linn riding down Princess Avenue, where she grew up. Her childhood home was a modest yellow-brick, two-story house. All the homes on the street were either wooden or brick houses with porches. They almost touch. It would be easy to imagine parents sitting on those porches after dinner as children played ball in the small yards or on the street during a summer evening.

Linn was one of five children living there with her parents and grandparents.

A photo of her father shows a balding man dressed in a suit and tie. She described her father as a “wordsmith,” saying he’d been Editor for the Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Gazette.

A profile photo of Clara shows a beautiful woman, her long hair piled on her head. She had what they call a button nose.

Her mother was a singer and sang on the radio, the first woman to do so, Linn said. The song? “If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I’d fly.” Ironic.

Linn doesn’t know whose idea the abortion was. Did her grandmother say you can’t have another child? There isn’t room. With five children and four adults in the house, that possibility is realistic.

Linn believed her mother must have been desperate to run the risk of losing her life.

The children were at Clara’s deathbed. “You’re the mother now,” Clara said to her ten-year old daughter Eleanor, Linn’s older sister.

Linn was an adult before her grandmother said that her mother had died from an abortion.

The camera follows Linn walking through the cemetery where her mother is buried until they come to a small, simple stone with the name, date of birth and date of Clara’s death carved. “If you hadn’t been there I would have lain down on the ground and wept,” she tells the camera.

A lifetime later there is still pain. “Very unnecessary and even though it was this long ago, it Shouldn't have happened to women."

Botched illegal abortions continue today as laws controlling women's body increase. Women with resources can go elsewhere. Women with less income do it themselves. Doctors who see patients with medical problems and need a portion are afraid to give women the care they need. 

American women have gone backward in time.

More can be read about prize winning film directors/producers Janet Goldwater, Barbara Attie and Diane Pontius. https://abortionfilms.org/en/show/3484/mutterlos-das-vermachtnis-des-verlustes-illegaler-/ and at www.attiegoldwater.com