Abstract

PIP: With the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) case legalizing abortion, a review of abortion practices pre-Roe is instructive. Abortion became criminalized in the US around 1870, yet many abortions were performed. While estimates for the yearly number of pre-Roe illegal abortions roughly resemble today's number of legal abortions, the difference between legal and illegal abortion rests in the difference between the large number of women who died or were injured then, and the very few women who now die from illegal abortions. Along with the self-induced abortion, different categories of providers performed illegal abortions: physicians, nonphysicians, nurses, midwives, and lay people; all with varying skill, experience, and motives. While there were "butchers" and sexual exploiters, there were also competent, beloved physicians. There were the financially motivated physicians providing abortions full time, and the occasional providers acting with a sense of conscience, risking successful practices and jail. Within this "conscience" group of 44 interviewees gathered through personal networks, ads, etc., abortions were: performed outside of hospitals, reducing the risk of discovery, but creating greater medical risks; begun outside of a hospital with the intrusion into the uterus of an object, provoking a "spontaneous abortion" (miscarriage) needing completion by D and C (dilation and curettage) within a hospital, but only a limited number of such patients could be referred before arousing suspicion; and in a hospital under disguised circumstances, a very tricky undertaking with severe limitations, available only a few times before risking detection. Avoidance and lack of training by today's physicians and the well organized antiabortion groups will undoubtedly make illegal abortions even more difficult to engage in than the pre-Roe days.