Storm Lake has a complicated history with abortion

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Back in the good ol’ days, when everything was more wholesome, Storm Lake was an abortion center.

Dr. James Alva Swallum was The City Beautiful’s most prominent physician, founding a hospital on the lakeshore with other local doctors called Swallum Hospital. It is now the site of Methodist Manor Retirement Community.

Swallum was a famed breeder of Chester White hogs and a Big Man On Campus at the Iowa State Fair.

He also provided abortions at his home on the south side of West Fifth Street, in a second-story surgery designed for ample natural light equipped with the latest gear in the 1920s. Dr. Swallum was charged by a coroner’s jury in 1931 with second-degree murder in connection with the death of a 24-year-old woman from Cherokee, following an abortion.

Swallum continued to practice in Storm Lake through the mid-century, and died in 1959. Buena Vista County Hospital was seeded with a gift from banker George Schaller in 1945, and opened in 1951 across the street from Dr. Swallum’s home/surgery.

It’s difficult finding out many details, because it is not something people discussed.

Good Catholic farm families were happy for Swallum’s capable services in trade for chickens and eggs. They knew that young women from Chicago were riding the Illinois Central train to Storm Lake to seek out Swallum’s services. He also knew how to deliver a healthy baby from a complicated pregnancy, and afterwards he could advise the husband on better swine husbandry for the ultimate prosperity of their newborn.

Abortion was illegal the whole time Swallum practiced. We could not find the disposition of his Cherokee County charge because the file is buried in the courthouse basement and will not be found by a clerk’s staff already on short hours. We know that he remained in practice and not behind bars.

People were okay living with that because they needed Dr. Swallum and his hospital.

Abortions were reputedly done in Storm Lake after Dr. Swallum’s time, in a clinic. My pro-life mother sent me to one such such suspected and respected doctor despite her knowledge of his practice because his school physicals were so cheap and thorough.

We did not talk about the girls who were sent off for a spell to live with an aunt Out East. They came back, no questions were asked, and all seemed well.

The Iowa Supreme Court’s recent affirmation of a state law banning abortions at six weeks will not stop the practice. Iowa was more conservative in 1931 than it is today, believe it or not, and the procedure was tolerated even though it was illegal.

We are not aware that abortions have been done in Storm Lake in many years. Now, a pill can do the job. You can take a short drive to Minnesota if necessary. It is a different era. Most Iowans do not support the six-week ban, and a solid majority were okay with the truce over the issue that was imposed by Roe v. Wade over the past 50 years.

Storm Lake was okay with Dr. Swallum for decades — even the Catholics and Missouri Synod Lutherans were, when your arm is caught in a corn sheller.

It was one of those things. Mom did not like abortion, but she liked a cheap physical exam done by a smart physician. Old McDonald said his mea culpas but took the doctor’s advice on rheumatism.

Swallum also was known to have prescribed opiates to drug addicts. He got busted for it, and claimed entrapment. He was unsuccessful in court but again uninterrupted in practice because people understood he may have been managing a patient as he saw fit.

So we are at worst hypocrites and at best conflicted about where to set boundaries around profound life questions, and civil rights, and necessary political pragmatism. Dr. Swallum was not Charlie Manson in the eyes of Storm Lake.

Some may find irony in the pro-life legacy of Methodist Manor. Many babies were delivered at Swallum Hospital. Just a few blocks away, young women got off the train for his surgery. Most everybody knew it. They just didn’t talk about it, maybe because it was not their business, or they knew that abortions were going to happen so they might as well be done safely, or because Swallum did a lot for their town, or they didn’t know how to sort it out so they just didn’t talk about it. It’s complicated.

Gov. Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird and the Legislature cast it as simple as politics can be: Just ban it. So the Supreme Court did. That doesn’t end abortion. It just makes us pretend that it is not happening.

Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot , where this column first appeared, as well as Art Cullen’s Notebook on Substack. It is republished here as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.

Editor’s note: Please consider subscribing to the collaborative and its member writers to support their work.

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