1938: Anonymous solicitation for aid to assist punished midwives.
Vienna, April 1, 1938
Your Highness!
Please do not toss these lines with loathing into the wastepaper basket, but read them with utmost mercy. A despised midwife pens them, who first learned her occupation with joy, but soon was driven by her own need and the need of women to undertake abortion.
Now that so many are being forgiven by the long awaited government, I beg please give us poor, punished midwives work so that we do not have to carry out abortions, as we too want to live. In Vienna finer ladies go to their family doctor while the poor go to a midwife; some women are so capable that they help one another, as one can purchase catheters and tubes openly in all the drugstores, some even being openly displayed. People are easily able to find us poor midwives since we kept our nameplates on our doors despite punishment, which the government ignored - we had to live somehow.
Now that the letter of the law has been sharpened, women drive to Pressburg where it is carried out with no objections. Again, please help us poor midwives, as we are unemployed or widowed, and we would gladly be ready to do honest work.
Source: Archiv der Republik, Wien; Karton 2349/1938, Hebammen, 35.113-10/38