In 1921, a young woman named Eunice left her northeast Texas hometown of Bonham for Dallas. She didn’t get to stay long. Police found her and brought her back. A grand jury was investigating whether the 19-year-old’s recent miscarriage was actually an abortion.
The grand jury indicted Eunice as an accomplice of the doctor who allegedly performed an illegal abortion on her. She was jailed for two weeks and not allowed to see her family. Then, officials took her from jail to a public courtroom in Fannin County to testify against the local doctor who had performed the procedure that led to her miscarriage. Abortion had been a felony crime in Texas since 1856, and this was the way it was traditionally prosecuted: Put the woman on the stand and make her give evidence against others involved.
From the stand, Eunice was pressed repeatedly to divulge invasive and intimate details about her life and her desperate efforts to end her pregnancy, according to case records from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that are held by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
