Русско-англо-русский юридический словарь

backstreet abortion: an illegal and usually dangerous operation to end a pregnancy done by someone who is not medically trained (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus)

One day when I came home from work - I was a research assistant at Barts Hospital - my mother told me the dressmaker had died. I discovered she had had a backstreet abortion that went wrong. I hadn't heard of this before - probably because the word was considered unmentionable. At that time a pregnant woman having an abortion and anyone who helped her could go to prison for it. (BBC News)

I discovered then that all the London teaching hospitals set a few wards aside each Friday for women who were septic, bleeding or dying from having backstreet abortions. (BBC News)