Trial
Afterwards, the Crown indicted Stowe for having "administered and caused to be taken poisons with intent to procure a miscarriage" which had been outlawed since 1869. Stowe could have gone to prison for life for this. The intent was to discourage abortion in a widely publicized trial. Stowe pleaded not guilty in an Ontario County Court. The coroner was called to testify, and he confessed he had lost all medical evidence. Another doctor was accused of being antagonistic to Stowe because she was a woman doctor, and of calling Stowe a "bitch."
Finally, the defence under Dalton McCarthy argued that whatever drugs may have been prescribed, Stowe did not administer them nor cause them to be administered. While supplying such drugs was also a crime (with a lesser penalty), Stowe had not been charged with it. Moreover, it was possible that a person would disregard such a prescription. The judge agreed and wound up deciding the jury need not even decide the case, as there was no case against Stowe to make. The judge also questioned whether women should be doctors. However, the anti-woman sentiment among Stowe's opponents might have been so extreme and offensive that it helped Stowe's case.
In 1880, she was granted her medical license by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, making her the second licensed female physician in Canada after Jennie Kidd Trout.
Read more about this topic: Abortion Trial Of Emily Stowe
Famous quotes containing the word trial:
“You may talk about Free Love, if you please, but we are to have the right to vote. To-day we are fined, imprisoned, and hanged, without a jury trial by our peers. You shall not cheat us by getting us off to talk about something else. When we get the suffrage, then you may taunt us with anything you please, and we will then talk about it as long as you please.”
—Lucy Stone (1818–1893)
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)
“You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)