Queen Wilhelmina is said to have had an abortion during her second pregnancy in 1902 because her life was in danger. Professor Trudy Dehue discovered this. Any form of intentional termination of pregnancy had been banned since 1811, and the royal family has always made it appear as spontaneous miscarriage.
For her book No, fetus, babyon sale from Thursday, emeritus professor of theory and history of psychology Trudy Dehue delved into the history of pregnancy and abortion and their consequences for women. During her research in a digital newspaper bank, she accidentally came across overseas newspaper reports about Wilhelmina’s termination of pregnancy in the night of 4 to 5 May 1902.
“I searched the digital archives for ‘abortus provocatus’ in the period 1900 to 1910 and I read in the Soerabaijasch Handelsblad reports about this procedure that saved the life of the Queen,” explains Dehue. “They did not name a direct source for that formulation, but in the next sentence they did refer to a telegram that Wilhelmina’s husband Prince Hendrik had sent to his family in Schwerin, Germany.”
Wilhelmina’s life hung by a thread due to a typhoid infection, and with it the monarchy. After all, the then only 21-year-old queen had no heir to the throne: the Dutch royal house would have fallen into German hands through her cousins.
Legally prohibited intervention
“She had to undergo an operation that was prohibited by law, but saved her life, and with it the royal family,” writes Dehue. ‘Her story perfectly illustrates the taboo of the time on termination of pregnancy as a life-saving procedure. That applied even if the woman involved was the queen and the monarchy would have fallen into German hands when she died.’
“The legislation was inspired by Catholics at the time and abortion – a word that has only been used in our language since 1880 – was prohibited under all circumstances. At that time, doctors argued for exceptions,” explains Dehue.
Abortion induced
After her discovery, Dehue picked up the two-part biography by Cees Fasseur – who did not yet have access to the digital archives at the end of the 1990s – about Wilhelmina’s life. In it she read that on the evening of 4 May 1902, the Queen gave birth to a stillborn child after four months of pregnancy, after the Utrecht gynecologist Benjamin Kouwer arrived at the Loo at 5.30 pm. ‘He too could do nothing’, writes Fasseur, and ‘at half past ten on the evening of the fourth of May she gave birth to a stillborn child, a good boy’.
Domestic newspapers mostly followed the reports of the royal family and reported only that the queen had “untimely delivered,” writes Dehue, which “put an end to her happy expectation.” But there were also reports that on 4 May ‘there was a threat to the life of the beloved princess’, that everyone in the palace was ‘occupied with a serious fear’ and that Kouwer ‘arrived in time (…) when an operation could no longer be postponed.
Crying out in pain
When investigating the background, the barely grown Wilhelmina turned out to have gone through miserable hours, during which she cried out in pain. Some newspapers also mentioned an English-language telegram from the Reuters news agency. It was about the’suspense‘ at Paleis Het Loo, and the hastily summoned eminent gynecologist who had been forced to use instruments, at ‘intense queens cries pain audible far‘, implying that the royal cries of pain could be heard from afar.
Hendrik also wrote to his mother on 7 May that ‘Wimmy’s’ cries of pain could be heard outside the palace. Gradually, her moans turned into screams that were almost unbearable to us as bystanders. The pain got worse and worse. It was despairing to see this and not be able to do anything’, Dehue quotes from his letter.
“Such excruciating pains are much more consistent with an inflammation in the uterus, the frightening consequence of an infected fetus and placenta in a typhoid infection, than with an ordinary early miscarriage,” says Dehue. There were no antibiotics at the time, and removal of the fetus is still often necessary in such infections.
secrecy
Dehue feels sorry for ‘the poor child’. “Even though it was so long ago. She was only 21, I don’t know how prepared she was. I’m not out to reveal private things of the royal family, but this shows how tough the legislation was at the time,” says Dehue.
She believes the secrecy surrounding this event helped determine the fate of many twentieth-century women. “The way we looked at termination of pregnancy still has an effect: in 2012, doctors in strict Catholic Ireland let a pregnant doctor die with an infection. She begged them to ‘take him out’, but they did not want to have an abortion because the heart was still beating. They have remained unemployed, as the official reporting in 1902 reported that Kouwer would have done to Wilhelmina.”
The Government Information Service has not responded to Dehue’s investigation. Wilhelmina, queen from 1890 to 1948, eventually had five failed pregnancies until she gave birth to Juliana in 1909.
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