In 1911, a woman named Zsuzsanna Fazekas, born Zsuzsanna Oláh, moved to Nagyrév, Hungary, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. Some versions of this story refer to her as Julia Fazekas. In addition to working as a midwife, Fazekas also performed abortions. At the time, abortions were illegal for both married and unmarried people, but according to Women’s and Gender History by Krassimira Daskalova and Susan Zimmermann, those who were married faced a harsher sentence. Abortion has since been legalized in Hungary as of 1953, although the government continues to impose restrictions.
Fazekas helped people access abortions for at least a decade, during which time she was arrested at least 10 times. But she was never convicted for performing abortions. In at least one instance, the abortion charge was related to the high number of infants diagnosed as stillbirths in Nagyrév. According to The Spectator, Fazekas is believed to have been poisoning infants with homemade arsenic.
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Because there was no village doctor in Nagyrév, Fazekas also assumed most of the other medical duties in the village and sometimes gave away free medicine. The only other doctor in the area came by just once a week as he traveled through the neighboring villages. As a result, Fazekas soon became a popular figure in the town and became known as Aunt Suzy.
[Featured image by Palotabarát via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]
