Stressful work environment since Roe may dissuade many from becoming providers.
By CHARLIE QUIMBY
Last update: July 14, 2008 - 10:57 AM
Star Tribune
Sara Stoesz describes the latest ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court as an additional obstacle to access to legal abortion care ("In South Dakota, a blow to abortion rights," July 2).
With the strictest laws in the nation, South Dakota has been a bellwether state for the erosion of reproductive rights. Now the court's approval of a law requiring what doctors must tell their patients gives other states hell-bent on limiting abortion another way to drive a chink into Roe v. Wade. But if you think the threat to choice is coming from the state legislatures, court rulings or who's appointed to the Supreme Court, you're missing the real battle -- which may already be lost.
First, some history.
In 1967, my home state of Colorado became the first to reform its abortion law, permitting abortions if the pregnant woman's life or physical or mental health were endangered, if the fetus would be born with a severe physical or mental defect, or if the pregnancy had resulted from rape or incest. This same year, my high school girl friend -- her family rigidly fundamentalist, mine Catholic -- thought she was pregnant. Although it proved not to be the case, I still remember how isolated, powerless and bereft of options we felt, living in the place with the greatest reproductive choice in the country.
Other states began reforming or repealing antiabortion laws, most along the lines of Colorado's. In 1970, two years before the Roe v. Wade ruling, Alaska, Hawaii, New York and Washington made abortion legal. All but New York imposed a 30-day residency requirement for women seeking an abortion.
But if you were pregnant in say, a small Colorado town, without money or connections, and wanted a legal abortion, you might as well have lived on the moon.
According to an analysis by The Alan Guttmacher Institute, just over 100,000 women did leave their own state to obtain a legal abortion in New York City in the year before the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. The institute found an estimated 50,000 women traveled more than 500 miles to obtain a legal abortion in New York City; nearly 7,000 women traveled more than 1,000 miles, and some 250 traveled more than 2,000 miles, from places as far as Arizona, Idaho and Nevada.
The official line today is that if some states backtrack and limit abortion, it will remain legal in others. But some people who remember the old days aren't comforted. They remember how it used to be.
I don't have firm statistics, but I would say most of the physicians providing abortion services in Minnesota today are my contemporaries or older. That is, people who experienced the days of illegal abortion and the complications that ensued. That is, doctors within a decade of retirement. The late Dr. Jane Hodgson, who tested Minnesota's law by deliberately performing an illegal abortion in 1970, continued to perform abortions until age 76, traveling from St. Paul to Duluth, because doctors there would not. She was born in 1915 and reached reproductive maturity about the year nearly 2,700 women in America died from reported self-induced or illegal abortions.
Most of the subsequent generations of doctors, including those who completed OB-GYN residencies in the early '80s who will soon be leaving practice, received no training in terminating pregnancies, and the attitude in medical schools still seems to be "don't ask, don't tell." Residents who want to learn about the full range of women's health issues are free to arrange their own training, if they can find someone to provide it. The barriers don't just involve learning medical procedures that are not mentioned in class; there are also issues about malpractice coverage and getting institutional approval.
Today's medical residents were born in post-Reagan America, went to college in during the Rehnquist/Scalia era and have only known a post-Roe existence. Faced with roadblocks in their already stressful training regimens, even strongly prochoice residents may not pursue this on their own.
Meanwhile, practicing physicians who believe in choice may advise patients about all their options in handling a pregnancy, but they aren't going to provide all the options -- especially without having the training. But also because of outright harassment, fear of bad publicity or concern for their family's safety, they have quietly decided to let reproductive freedom become not just the patient's decision, but the patient's problem.
We may think the abortion issue will be decided contentiously on the Capitol steps, in Supreme Court cloisters or on the Planned Parenthood sidewalks. But more likely, Roe v. Wade will be nullified where none of us have any voice, by a medical profession with an ever-diminishing memory of the past -- and with fewer and fewer physicians who have the skills to keep choice a reality.
Charlie Quimby writes about community, values, perception and politics at Across the Great Divide. He is married to a physician.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Democratic Party's Stance On Abortion
Opinion Piece Examines Democratic Party's Stance On Abortion
Medical News Today
09 Jul 2008
Suggesting to women that the Democratic Party's "commitment to abortion rights is what should drive their vote," while simultaneously suggesting that "given the choice, having a baby is a more moral choice than abortion, will be understood for what it is: condescending and sexist," Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, write in a Salon opinion piece.
Concerns among Democrats about how to deal with "disaffected" supporters of former presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) "involves focusing on women's understandable fears that a John McCain administration would limit abortion rights and even overturn Roe v. Wade" and promises that "Democrats will clearly do better," the authors write. They add, "That's why it's so remarkable that in recent weeks, Democrats, including Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, havesuggested that the party may need to take another crack at tempering its strong platform support for abortion rights by making 'abortion reduction ... a central Democratic Party plank in this election.'"
Kissling and Michelman write that reducing the need for abortion is "sound policy" and that the abortion rights movement has been supporting such an agenda for two decades. They question why the Democratic Party platform should be framed by groups "who seem ignorant of the fact that the platform already contains all the elements necessary to reduce abortion," such as access to family planning and promotion of an "economic program, health care reform and protections for women's equality that would, if enacted, make it more possible for women who become pregnant and wish to continue those pregnancies to keep and raise their children in a secure environment." Kissling and Michelman note that, ironically, Sojourners and Democrats for Life do not promote contraception as part of an abortion reduction strategy. They add, "The stakes for women could not be higher, and Democrats need to do better in defending the moral right of women to choose, in every way: to choose to have a baby, to choose to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, to choose to terminate a pregnancy."
Kissling and Michelman point out that two bills are "languishing" in Congress that focus on reducing the need for abortion: the Prevention First Act (S 21, HR 819) and the Reducing the Need for Abortion Initiative (HR 1074). "Moving these bills before the election will give us a yardstick by which to measure members of Congress' commitments to meeting women's needs while recognizing their rights," according to the authors. They add that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) could use his skills to garner support from Wallis and others to make "pregnancy and motherhood a real choice for everyone; to make sure abortion is a choice and never a grim default and, when it is a choice, is safe and legal and never stigmatized by Democrats." In addition, policies supporting women's rights must be a high priority for Obama, Kissling and Michelman write, adding that although "both men and women have a stake in women's well-being, women's preeminent role in developing policies that affect their lives must be a central commitment of the senator and the party." As "feminists who have proudly and enthusiastically supported Obama for some time, we are convinced that this is exactly the approach he will take," the authors write, concluding, "And while this approach is as old as feminism, it will be a breath of fresh air in the party" (Kissling/Michelman,Salon, 7/7).
Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.
© 2008 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.
Medical News Today
09 Jul 2008
Suggesting to women that the Democratic Party's "commitment to abortion rights is what should drive their vote," while simultaneously suggesting that "given the choice, having a baby is a more moral choice than abortion, will be understood for what it is: condescending and sexist," Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, write in a Salon opinion piece.
Concerns among Democrats about how to deal with "disaffected" supporters of former presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) "involves focusing on women's understandable fears that a John McCain administration would limit abortion rights and even overturn Roe v. Wade" and promises that "Democrats will clearly do better," the authors write. They add, "That's why it's so remarkable that in recent weeks, Democrats, including Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, havesuggested that the party may need to take another crack at tempering its strong platform support for abortion rights by making 'abortion reduction ... a central Democratic Party plank in this election.'"
Kissling and Michelman write that reducing the need for abortion is "sound policy" and that the abortion rights movement has been supporting such an agenda for two decades. They question why the Democratic Party platform should be framed by groups "who seem ignorant of the fact that the platform already contains all the elements necessary to reduce abortion," such as access to family planning and promotion of an "economic program, health care reform and protections for women's equality that would, if enacted, make it more possible for women who become pregnant and wish to continue those pregnancies to keep and raise their children in a secure environment." Kissling and Michelman note that, ironically, Sojourners and Democrats for Life do not promote contraception as part of an abortion reduction strategy. They add, "The stakes for women could not be higher, and Democrats need to do better in defending the moral right of women to choose, in every way: to choose to have a baby, to choose to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, to choose to terminate a pregnancy."
Kissling and Michelman point out that two bills are "languishing" in Congress that focus on reducing the need for abortion: the Prevention First Act (S 21, HR 819) and the Reducing the Need for Abortion Initiative (HR 1074). "Moving these bills before the election will give us a yardstick by which to measure members of Congress' commitments to meeting women's needs while recognizing their rights," according to the authors. They add that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) could use his skills to garner support from Wallis and others to make "pregnancy and motherhood a real choice for everyone; to make sure abortion is a choice and never a grim default and, when it is a choice, is safe and legal and never stigmatized by Democrats." In addition, policies supporting women's rights must be a high priority for Obama, Kissling and Michelman write, adding that although "both men and women have a stake in women's well-being, women's preeminent role in developing policies that affect their lives must be a central commitment of the senator and the party." As "feminists who have proudly and enthusiastically supported Obama for some time, we are convinced that this is exactly the approach he will take," the authors write, concluding, "And while this approach is as old as feminism, it will be a breath of fresh air in the party" (Kissling/Michelman,Salon, 7/7).
Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.
© 2008 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Brazil votes to keep abortion a crime
Agence France-Presse
Thursday, July 10, 2008 (Brasillia)
Lawmakers in Brazil voted to keep abortion a crime, disappointing groups seeking to decriminalise an operation estimated to be carried out three million times a year in the country with the world's largest Catholic population.
The representatives in the congressional commission on the constitution and justice voted 30 to four against lifting the penal prohibition on abortion on Wednesday.
One of the deputies carried dolls and a baby's coffin to the session to underline his opposition to changing the law.
A pro-abortion organisation, Catholics for the Right to Decide, said it was disappointed but not surprised by the outcome.
''We expected this result against decriminalising abortion because there are totally opposed forces at work within the Congress,'' said a spokeswoman for the group, Dulce Xavier.
''They called a public audience to decide the issue and invited eight people opposed to abortion, six of them religious leaders, and only one health ministry official in favour,'' said Xavier.
While abortion is illegal in Brazil and can be punished by jail sentences, it is widely practiced.
Of the estimated three million terminations, most are conducted on married Catholics, according to a study by the universities of Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro state and the health ministry, which was published in 2008 in the press.
Many women die because of inadequate procedures or follow-up.
Brazilian law permits abortions only in cases of rape and where the mother risks dying in childbirth.
Thursday, July 10, 2008 (Brasillia)
Lawmakers in Brazil voted to keep abortion a crime, disappointing groups seeking to decriminalise an operation estimated to be carried out three million times a year in the country with the world's largest Catholic population.
The representatives in the congressional commission on the constitution and justice voted 30 to four against lifting the penal prohibition on abortion on Wednesday.
One of the deputies carried dolls and a baby's coffin to the session to underline his opposition to changing the law.
A pro-abortion organisation, Catholics for the Right to Decide, said it was disappointed but not surprised by the outcome.
''We expected this result against decriminalising abortion because there are totally opposed forces at work within the Congress,'' said a spokeswoman for the group, Dulce Xavier.
''They called a public audience to decide the issue and invited eight people opposed to abortion, six of them religious leaders, and only one health ministry official in favour,'' said Xavier.
While abortion is illegal in Brazil and can be punished by jail sentences, it is widely practiced.
Of the estimated three million terminations, most are conducted on married Catholics, according to a study by the universities of Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro state and the health ministry, which was published in 2008 in the press.
Many women die because of inadequate procedures or follow-up.
Brazilian law permits abortions only in cases of rape and where the mother risks dying in childbirth.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
South Dakota's Unbelievable New Abortion Law
Telling Doctors What To Think --
South Dakota's unbelievable new abortion law.
Slate
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Wednesday, July 2, 2008, at 6:43 PM ET
In 2005, South Dakota passed an unprecedented abortion law. The statute purports to be about ensuring that patients give informed consent. Planned Parenthood characterizes it differently: as an intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, forcing doctors to give inaccurate medical facts and to be the state's ideological mouthpiece. Now, following a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, the law is about to go into effect for the first time. And the question is how it will change the experience of going to get an abortion—and whether it will open a new front in the abortion wars by encouraging other states to follow suit.
The South Dakota law requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," and that they have "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that is constitutionally protected. (What does the constitutionally protected part mean? Who knows.) In addition, doctors are ordered to describe "all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors," including "depression and related psychological distress" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide."
The idea behind the statute is that if you force women to confront the implications of an abortion, they'll be less likely to go through with it. That's what the "whole, separate, unique, living human being" language is about. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a fetus is not a person, in the legal sense of the word, which is to say it doesn't have the same rights. So South Dakota couldn't order doctors to tell women that to have an abortion is to kill a person. But human being is a different term that's up for grabs, the drafters of the legislation decided.
This was the insight of a smart New Jersey lawyer named Harold Cassidy, who has represented women who've accused abortion providers of malpractice, and who helped draft South Dakota's statute. Cassidy also helped persuade state lawmakers that women might be scared out of having abortions if doctors were forced to enumerate the procedure's medical risks. This is where the idea of linking abortion to depression and increased risk of suicide comes in. Never mind that the weight of the medical evidence tilts heavily against the increased-suicide tie or that there's more evidence of a link between depression and unintended pregnancy—or simply giving birth—than between depression and abortion, according to most of the literature.
If you care about doctors' freedom of speech, or their responsibility to give accurate information to patients, the South Dakota statute looks pretty alarming. And yet by a vote of seven judges to four, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit managed to weave its way around these concerns last week. After sitting on the case for more than a year, the court instructed abortion clinics (actually, clinic, since there's only one in South Dakota) to put the law into effect in mid-July.
In a majority opinion by Judge Raymond Gruender, the court ruled only on the "human being" part of the statute—a challenge to the suicide provision is still pending before a lower court. (Planned Parenthood decided it could live with the depression provision because the law doesn't claim that abortion increases that risk.) Planned Parenthood argued that the state is legislating morality because to call a fetus a "whole, separate, unique, living human being" is an ideological statement, not a medical one. The Supreme Court has told the states that it's not for them to resolve when life begins—and it should certainly follow from this that they can't force any such resolution on doctors. As the 8th Circuit dissent by Judge Diana Murphy points out, the question "in some sense encompass[es] the whole philosophical debate about abortion."
But none of this swayed the majority. They bought the state's argument that the statute circumvents ideology by defining "human being," elsewhere in the statute, as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." Presto, said the majority—with that definition, the "truthfulness and relevance" of the provision "generates little dispute." Yes, this logic is as tautological as it sounds. The legislature basically defined "human being" to include unborn human beings.
The idea that a fetus is whole and separate will probably be news to a lot of women who have carried one. But what's more distressing, because the majority's reasoning is so strained, is the assertion that by defining a phrase one way, a state can erase its ambiguity and the variety of perceptions people bring to it. It's one thing to say—as the case law the majority relies on here does—that a statutory definition binds judges and their interpretation of language. It's another entirely to say that when doctors tell women they are carrying a human being, that women will think, Oh, right, that means only the long, convoluted thing that the state says it does. Most patients won't think that, because they won't necessarily define "human being" the way the statute does. As Yale law professor Robert Post says in a 2007 article (PDF) in the University of Illinois Law Review, "If South Dakota were to enact a statute requiring physicians to inform abortion patients that they were destroying the 'soul' of their unborn progeny, and if it were explicitly to provide in the statute that 'soul' is defined as 'human DNA,' the evasion would be obvious." Instead, South Dakota has co-opted human being and attached its own meaning to it.
The 8th Circuit's decision to uphold the South Dakota law, even though it compels doctors to say things they don't believe, is in part the fault of Justice Anthony Kennedy. In his 2007 decision banning a method of late-term abortion, Kennedy worried a lot about women who regret having abortions. With paternalistic abandon, he wrote about their "distress" in terms of their "lack of information" about abortion. Kennedy was talking, in graphic specifics, about lack of information on the way a so-called partial-birth abortion unfolds. Whether or not he's right, these details have nothing to do with philosophical musings about whether the fetus is a human being. But that didn't stop the 8th Circuit from quoting him at length in the very different context of the South Dakota law.
The fraught claim that abortion harms women, which I've written about before, was languishing in legal Nowheresville until Kennedy unexpectedly raised it up and blessed it. Now that notion, and the small minority of women who attest to it, are a handy new tool for abortion opponents. The 8th Circuit includes six other states—Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Laws that compel doctors' speech, as this one does, would now be legal in all those places, should state legislators adopt them. And if states in other regions want to try passing such laws, they'll have a great precedent to cite to the other circuit courts.
In the meantime, Planned Parenthood's lawyers and the state's lone abortion clinic in Sioux Falls have two more weeks to figure out what its doctors can legally and ethically say to the women they treat. "Our doctors are now being asked to say things they do not believe are true," says Sarah Stoesz, the head of Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Whatever you think about abortion, how is that a good thing?
South Dakota's unbelievable new abortion law.
Slate
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Wednesday, July 2, 2008, at 6:43 PM ET
In 2005, South Dakota passed an unprecedented abortion law. The statute purports to be about ensuring that patients give informed consent. Planned Parenthood characterizes it differently: as an intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship, forcing doctors to give inaccurate medical facts and to be the state's ideological mouthpiece. Now, following a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, the law is about to go into effect for the first time. And the question is how it will change the experience of going to get an abortion—and whether it will open a new front in the abortion wars by encouraging other states to follow suit.
The South Dakota law requires doctors to give patients who come for an abortion a written statement telling them that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," and that they have "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that is constitutionally protected. (What does the constitutionally protected part mean? Who knows.) In addition, doctors are ordered to describe "all known medical risks of the procedure and statistically significant risk factors," including "depression and related psychological distress" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide."
The idea behind the statute is that if you force women to confront the implications of an abortion, they'll be less likely to go through with it. That's what the "whole, separate, unique, living human being" language is about. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a fetus is not a person, in the legal sense of the word, which is to say it doesn't have the same rights. So South Dakota couldn't order doctors to tell women that to have an abortion is to kill a person. But human being is a different term that's up for grabs, the drafters of the legislation decided.
This was the insight of a smart New Jersey lawyer named Harold Cassidy, who has represented women who've accused abortion providers of malpractice, and who helped draft South Dakota's statute. Cassidy also helped persuade state lawmakers that women might be scared out of having abortions if doctors were forced to enumerate the procedure's medical risks. This is where the idea of linking abortion to depression and increased risk of suicide comes in. Never mind that the weight of the medical evidence tilts heavily against the increased-suicide tie or that there's more evidence of a link between depression and unintended pregnancy—or simply giving birth—than between depression and abortion, according to most of the literature.
If you care about doctors' freedom of speech, or their responsibility to give accurate information to patients, the South Dakota statute looks pretty alarming. And yet by a vote of seven judges to four, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit managed to weave its way around these concerns last week. After sitting on the case for more than a year, the court instructed abortion clinics (actually, clinic, since there's only one in South Dakota) to put the law into effect in mid-July.
In a majority opinion by Judge Raymond Gruender, the court ruled only on the "human being" part of the statute—a challenge to the suicide provision is still pending before a lower court. (Planned Parenthood decided it could live with the depression provision because the law doesn't claim that abortion increases that risk.) Planned Parenthood argued that the state is legislating morality because to call a fetus a "whole, separate, unique, living human being" is an ideological statement, not a medical one. The Supreme Court has told the states that it's not for them to resolve when life begins—and it should certainly follow from this that they can't force any such resolution on doctors. As the 8th Circuit dissent by Judge Diana Murphy points out, the question "in some sense encompass[es] the whole philosophical debate about abortion."
But none of this swayed the majority. They bought the state's argument that the statute circumvents ideology by defining "human being," elsewhere in the statute, as "an individual living member of the species Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." Presto, said the majority—with that definition, the "truthfulness and relevance" of the provision "generates little dispute." Yes, this logic is as tautological as it sounds. The legislature basically defined "human being" to include unborn human beings.
The idea that a fetus is whole and separate will probably be news to a lot of women who have carried one. But what's more distressing, because the majority's reasoning is so strained, is the assertion that by defining a phrase one way, a state can erase its ambiguity and the variety of perceptions people bring to it. It's one thing to say—as the case law the majority relies on here does—that a statutory definition binds judges and their interpretation of language. It's another entirely to say that when doctors tell women they are carrying a human being, that women will think, Oh, right, that means only the long, convoluted thing that the state says it does. Most patients won't think that, because they won't necessarily define "human being" the way the statute does. As Yale law professor Robert Post says in a 2007 article (PDF) in the University of Illinois Law Review, "If South Dakota were to enact a statute requiring physicians to inform abortion patients that they were destroying the 'soul' of their unborn progeny, and if it were explicitly to provide in the statute that 'soul' is defined as 'human DNA,' the evasion would be obvious." Instead, South Dakota has co-opted human being and attached its own meaning to it.
The 8th Circuit's decision to uphold the South Dakota law, even though it compels doctors to say things they don't believe, is in part the fault of Justice Anthony Kennedy. In his 2007 decision banning a method of late-term abortion, Kennedy worried a lot about women who regret having abortions. With paternalistic abandon, he wrote about their "distress" in terms of their "lack of information" about abortion. Kennedy was talking, in graphic specifics, about lack of information on the way a so-called partial-birth abortion unfolds. Whether or not he's right, these details have nothing to do with philosophical musings about whether the fetus is a human being. But that didn't stop the 8th Circuit from quoting him at length in the very different context of the South Dakota law.
The fraught claim that abortion harms women, which I've written about before, was languishing in legal Nowheresville until Kennedy unexpectedly raised it up and blessed it. Now that notion, and the small minority of women who attest to it, are a handy new tool for abortion opponents. The 8th Circuit includes six other states—Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Laws that compel doctors' speech, as this one does, would now be legal in all those places, should state legislators adopt them. And if states in other regions want to try passing such laws, they'll have a great precedent to cite to the other circuit courts.
In the meantime, Planned Parenthood's lawyers and the state's lone abortion clinic in Sioux Falls have two more weeks to figure out what its doctors can legally and ethically say to the women they treat. "Our doctors are now being asked to say things they do not believe are true," says Sarah Stoesz, the head of Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Whatever you think about abortion, how is that a good thing?
Dr. Tiller Vindicated!
Yay!!!
Feminist Daily News Wire
July 3, 2008
A Kansas Grand Jury adjourned on Wednesday without finding substantial evidence that Dr Tiller, a late-term abortion provider, violated any abortion laws. The Wichita Eagle reports that the grand jury was forced to convene by an anti-choice group, Kansas for Life. Kansas is one of six states that allow citizens to petition to convene a grand jury.
The District Attorney told the Wichita Eagle, "After six months of conducting an investigation … this Grand Jury has not found sufficient evidence to bring an indictment on any crime related to the abortion laws." The grand jury investigation had previously come before the Kansas Supreme Court over its attempts to subpoena confidential patient medical records.
Dr. Tiller is one of only a few late-term abortion providers in the country. According to Kansas and federal law, an abortion can only be performed after the 22 weeks if carrying the fetus to term would cause the woman "substantial and irreversible impairment," according to KWCH News. Dr. Tiller has consistently been targeted by anti-choice groups.
Media Resources: Wichita Eagle 7/3/2008, KWCH 7/3/2008, Feminist Daily News Wire 7/6/2007, Feminist Daily News Wire 5/7/2008
Feminist Daily News Wire
July 3, 2008
A Kansas Grand Jury adjourned on Wednesday without finding substantial evidence that Dr Tiller, a late-term abortion provider, violated any abortion laws. The Wichita Eagle reports that the grand jury was forced to convene by an anti-choice group, Kansas for Life. Kansas is one of six states that allow citizens to petition to convene a grand jury.
The District Attorney told the Wichita Eagle, "After six months of conducting an investigation … this Grand Jury has not found sufficient evidence to bring an indictment on any crime related to the abortion laws." The grand jury investigation had previously come before the Kansas Supreme Court over its attempts to subpoena confidential patient medical records.
Dr. Tiller is one of only a few late-term abortion providers in the country. According to Kansas and federal law, an abortion can only be performed after the 22 weeks if carrying the fetus to term would cause the woman "substantial and irreversible impairment," according to KWCH News. Dr. Tiller has consistently been targeted by anti-choice groups.
Media Resources: Wichita Eagle 7/3/2008, KWCH 7/3/2008, Feminist Daily News Wire 7/6/2007, Feminist Daily News Wire 5/7/2008
Obama: Mental distress can't justify late abortion
BOO!!!!
Article
Jul 3, 6:01 PM (ET)
By JIM KUHNHENN
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says "mental distress" should not qualify as a health exception for late term-abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights.
In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."
Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."
Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling because it "dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."
The health care exception is crucial to abortion rights advocates and is considered a legal loophole by abortion opponents. By limiting the health exception to a "serious physical issue," Obama set himself apart from other abortion rights proponents.
The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: "A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family."
The 1973 landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, established a right to an abortion, and a concurrent case, Doe v. Bolton, established that medical judgments about the need for an abortion could include physical, emotional and psychological health factors.
"Senator Obama has consistently maintained that laws restricting abortions must contain exceptions for the health and life of the mother," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday. "Obviously, as he stated in the interview, he has consistently believed those exceptions should be clear and limited enough to ensure that they don't undermine the prohibition on late-term abortions."
In a statement, NARAL Pro-Choice said Obama's magazine interview is consistent with Roe v. Wade.
"Sen. Obama has consistently said he supports the tenets set forth by Roe, and has made strong statements against President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban, which does not have an exception to protect a woman's health," the organization's statement said.
A leading abortion opponent, however, said Obama's rhetoric does not match his voting record and his previously stated views on abortion rights.
David N. O'Steen, the executive director of National Right to Life, said Obama's remarks to the magazine "are either quite disingenuous or they reflect that Obama does not know what he is talking about."
"You cannot believe that abortion should not be allowed for mental health reasons and support Roe v Wade," O'Steen said.
In the interview with Relevant, conducted on Tuesday, Obama also defended his opposition to restrictions on induced abortions where the fetus sometimes survives for short periods. Obama voted against such a bill when he was in the Illinois Senate. He has said he supported a federal version of the law that contained more specific language because he feared the Illinois proposal would have applied to all abortions.
"There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the 'Born Alive' bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill," Obama said Tuesday. "The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn't think it was going to pass constitutional muster."
Article
Jul 3, 6:01 PM (ET)
By JIM KUHNHENN
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says "mental distress" should not qualify as a health exception for late term-abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights.
In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."
Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."
Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling because it "dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."
The health care exception is crucial to abortion rights advocates and is considered a legal loophole by abortion opponents. By limiting the health exception to a "serious physical issue," Obama set himself apart from other abortion rights proponents.
The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: "A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family."
The 1973 landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, established a right to an abortion, and a concurrent case, Doe v. Bolton, established that medical judgments about the need for an abortion could include physical, emotional and psychological health factors.
"Senator Obama has consistently maintained that laws restricting abortions must contain exceptions for the health and life of the mother," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday. "Obviously, as he stated in the interview, he has consistently believed those exceptions should be clear and limited enough to ensure that they don't undermine the prohibition on late-term abortions."
In a statement, NARAL Pro-Choice said Obama's magazine interview is consistent with Roe v. Wade.
"Sen. Obama has consistently said he supports the tenets set forth by Roe, and has made strong statements against President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban, which does not have an exception to protect a woman's health," the organization's statement said.
A leading abortion opponent, however, said Obama's rhetoric does not match his voting record and his previously stated views on abortion rights.
David N. O'Steen, the executive director of National Right to Life, said Obama's remarks to the magazine "are either quite disingenuous or they reflect that Obama does not know what he is talking about."
"You cannot believe that abortion should not be allowed for mental health reasons and support Roe v Wade," O'Steen said.
In the interview with Relevant, conducted on Tuesday, Obama also defended his opposition to restrictions on induced abortions where the fetus sometimes survives for short periods. Obama voted against such a bill when he was in the Illinois Senate. He has said he supported a federal version of the law that contained more specific language because he feared the Illinois proposal would have applied to all abortions.
"There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the 'Born Alive' bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill," Obama said Tuesday. "The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn't think it was going to pass constitutional muster."
Va. Bishop Apologizes Over Girl's Abortion
Article
By Kameel Stanley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 4, 2008; B01
Leaders of a Richmond-based Catholic charity under federal investigation are scrambling to explain the organization's involvement in helping a 16-year-old illegal immigrant in its care get an abortion in January.
Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo apologized this week for the "monumental tragedy" and the embarrassment the incident has caused the diocese and Catholics across the country.
"The guilt and depression that many of us experience as a result of the behavior of a few is something that we will bear for a long time to come," he wrote in a statement to the Catholic Virginian, a biweekly newspaper that serves the Richmond diocese.
DiLorenzo's comments followed reports that four staff members of Commonwealth Catholic Charities were fired after it was revealed that they provided the girl with transportation and signed a consent form needed for the abortion.
An investigation revealed that the workers also had helped her implant a contraceptive two months before the abortion, Joanne D. Nattrass, the charity's executive director, said in a statement.
The charity's staff and DiLorenzo "are deeply saddened by the incident," she said.
The girl, who is from Guatemala, was in the government's refugee resettlement program and living in Virginia. It is unclear why the workers helped her obtain the abortion, which is against Catholic teachings.
Nattrass would not discuss the employees' motivation. But she said Commonwealth Catholic Charities has taken steps to ensure that such an incident doesn't happen again, including ongoing education and training for employees about Catholic beliefs.
Charity employees do not have to be Catholic but are expected to adhere to the religion's teachings. "Most of our staff here are not Catholic," spokeswoman Paula Ritter said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating whether the charity violated state and federal laws by facilitating the abortion.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops receives about $7.6 million annually to provide foster care for illegal immigrant children until they can be reunited with their families.
The conference contracts with more than 1,700 Catholic Charities branches across the country to provide services. Federal law prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger.
Also, Virginia law requires those younger than 18 to have parental consent for an abortion.
"These federal funds are awarded with the clear purpose of caring for unaccompanied minors here from other countries," said Kenneth J. Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families. "We were surprised and disappointed to learn of a chapter of Catholic Charities using this funding to care for a minor, facilitated a minor procuring an abortion."
Nattrass said no agency or diocese funds were used.
A statement by Catholic Charities USA said the association "encourages all of our member agencies and their staff to adhere to our Code of Ethics which states that 'agencies shall clearly indicate, prior to the creation of any client relationship, that the agency does not provide services contrary to the teachings of the Church.' "
Because of privacy issues, little is known about the girl or her current situation. And it is unclear whether she is still in the United States or whose care she is under. But correspondence between government officials and the charity and statements by the charity's leaders reveal more about the incident.
Church leaders learned Jan. 17, the day before the procedure took place, that the girl was pregnant and considering an abortion but did not stop her, according to an April 23 letter that David Siegel, head of refugee resettlement program, sent to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In a statement, Nattrass said that upon learning of the plans, she immediately contacted DiLorenzo, who explicitly forbade the procedure.
"Based on erroneous and incorrect information provided to Nattrass, the Bishop was told it could not be stopped," the statement said.
In addition to failing to get parental consent, the agency also failed to file a treatment authorization request, required for medical procedures for minors in their care, federal officials said.
"The CCC staff had rationalized that [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] had given consent for the abortion because the staff had a medical authorization form on file," Siegel wrote.
Furthermore, even though the federal government has custody over children in the refugee resettlement program, federal guidelines require consent from a minor's parent or legal guardian when the medical procedure is considered serious.
Abortions are in the "serious medical services" category, according to federal officials.
"It was a failure of management and oversight by [the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] and a failure in judgment by CCC to conclude that a medical procedure of such seriousness . . . could be consented to unilaterally by a grantee of the federal government," Siegel said in the letter.
Richmond diocese spokesman Steve Neill said church leaders hope the incident will not permanently taint the organization.
"The main thing is there was a life taken, and in no way does the Catholic Church condone abortion," he said. "The bishop is agonized over it."
Some say the damage is done.
Judie Brown, founder and president of the American Life League, an anti-abortion organization, said she was horrified to learn that DiLorenzo knew about the abortion before it took place.
"It's scandalous," Brown said. "It's just another nail in the coffin of the Catholic Church's credibility."
Brown said she holds DiLorenzo responsible, especially given the position and authority bishops hold in the church.
"I don't think it matters what this girl was thinking," she said. "I think it matters what the bishop did not do."
Others say the government's reaction to the incident is disturbing.
Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, said the government should be helping teens who ask for help, not putting up roadblocks.
"It's a big concern, and we're learning more about it," Amiri said. "Instead of showing them compassion, the government is putting its political opposition to abortion above their best interests."
By Kameel Stanley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 4, 2008; B01
Leaders of a Richmond-based Catholic charity under federal investigation are scrambling to explain the organization's involvement in helping a 16-year-old illegal immigrant in its care get an abortion in January.
Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo apologized this week for the "monumental tragedy" and the embarrassment the incident has caused the diocese and Catholics across the country.
"The guilt and depression that many of us experience as a result of the behavior of a few is something that we will bear for a long time to come," he wrote in a statement to the Catholic Virginian, a biweekly newspaper that serves the Richmond diocese.
DiLorenzo's comments followed reports that four staff members of Commonwealth Catholic Charities were fired after it was revealed that they provided the girl with transportation and signed a consent form needed for the abortion.
An investigation revealed that the workers also had helped her implant a contraceptive two months before the abortion, Joanne D. Nattrass, the charity's executive director, said in a statement.
The charity's staff and DiLorenzo "are deeply saddened by the incident," she said.
The girl, who is from Guatemala, was in the government's refugee resettlement program and living in Virginia. It is unclear why the workers helped her obtain the abortion, which is against Catholic teachings.
Nattrass would not discuss the employees' motivation. But she said Commonwealth Catholic Charities has taken steps to ensure that such an incident doesn't happen again, including ongoing education and training for employees about Catholic beliefs.
Charity employees do not have to be Catholic but are expected to adhere to the religion's teachings. "Most of our staff here are not Catholic," spokeswoman Paula Ritter said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating whether the charity violated state and federal laws by facilitating the abortion.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops receives about $7.6 million annually to provide foster care for illegal immigrant children until they can be reunited with their families.
The conference contracts with more than 1,700 Catholic Charities branches across the country to provide services. Federal law prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger.
Also, Virginia law requires those younger than 18 to have parental consent for an abortion.
"These federal funds are awarded with the clear purpose of caring for unaccompanied minors here from other countries," said Kenneth J. Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families. "We were surprised and disappointed to learn of a chapter of Catholic Charities using this funding to care for a minor, facilitated a minor procuring an abortion."
Nattrass said no agency or diocese funds were used.
A statement by Catholic Charities USA said the association "encourages all of our member agencies and their staff to adhere to our Code of Ethics which states that 'agencies shall clearly indicate, prior to the creation of any client relationship, that the agency does not provide services contrary to the teachings of the Church.' "
Because of privacy issues, little is known about the girl or her current situation. And it is unclear whether she is still in the United States or whose care she is under. But correspondence between government officials and the charity and statements by the charity's leaders reveal more about the incident.
Church leaders learned Jan. 17, the day before the procedure took place, that the girl was pregnant and considering an abortion but did not stop her, according to an April 23 letter that David Siegel, head of refugee resettlement program, sent to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In a statement, Nattrass said that upon learning of the plans, she immediately contacted DiLorenzo, who explicitly forbade the procedure.
"Based on erroneous and incorrect information provided to Nattrass, the Bishop was told it could not be stopped," the statement said.
In addition to failing to get parental consent, the agency also failed to file a treatment authorization request, required for medical procedures for minors in their care, federal officials said.
"The CCC staff had rationalized that [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] had given consent for the abortion because the staff had a medical authorization form on file," Siegel wrote.
Furthermore, even though the federal government has custody over children in the refugee resettlement program, federal guidelines require consent from a minor's parent or legal guardian when the medical procedure is considered serious.
Abortions are in the "serious medical services" category, according to federal officials.
"It was a failure of management and oversight by [the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] and a failure in judgment by CCC to conclude that a medical procedure of such seriousness . . . could be consented to unilaterally by a grantee of the federal government," Siegel said in the letter.
Richmond diocese spokesman Steve Neill said church leaders hope the incident will not permanently taint the organization.
"The main thing is there was a life taken, and in no way does the Catholic Church condone abortion," he said. "The bishop is agonized over it."
Some say the damage is done.
Judie Brown, founder and president of the American Life League, an anti-abortion organization, said she was horrified to learn that DiLorenzo knew about the abortion before it took place.
"It's scandalous," Brown said. "It's just another nail in the coffin of the Catholic Church's credibility."
Brown said she holds DiLorenzo responsible, especially given the position and authority bishops hold in the church.
"I don't think it matters what this girl was thinking," she said. "I think it matters what the bishop did not do."
Others say the government's reaction to the incident is disturbing.
Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, said the government should be helping teens who ask for help, not putting up roadblocks.
"It's a big concern, and we're learning more about it," Amiri said. "Instead of showing them compassion, the government is putting its political opposition to abortion above their best interests."
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Repairing the Damage, Before Roe
NY Times
By WALDO L. FIELDING, M.D.
With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside.
When such fears arise, we often hear about the pre-Roe “bad old days.” Yet there are few physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience. I can.
I am a retired gynecologist, in my mid-80s. My early formal training in my specialty was spent in New York City, from 1948 to 1953, in two of the city’s large municipal hospitals.
There I saw and treated almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure, done either by the patient herself or by an abortionist — often unknowing, unskilled and probably uncaring. Yet the patient never told us who did the work, or where and under what conditions it was performed. She was in dire need of our help to complete the process or, as frequently was the case, to correct what damage might have been done.
The patient also did not explain why she had attempted the abortion, and we did not ask. This was a decision she made for herself, and the reasons were hers alone. Yet this much was clear: The woman had put herself at total risk, and literally did not know whether she would live or die.
This, too, was clear: Her desperate need to terminate a pregnancy was the driving force behind the selection of any method available.
The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.
We did not have ultrasound, CT scans or any of the now accepted radiology techniques. The woman was placed under anesthesia, and as we removed the metal piece we held our breath, because we could not tell whether the hanger had gone through the uterus into the abdominal cavity. Fortunately, in the cases I saw, it had not.
However, not simply coat hangers were used.
Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.
Another method that I did not encounter, but heard about from colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap solution forced through the cervical canal with a syringe. This could cause almost immediate death if a bubble in the solution entered a blood vessel and was transported to the heart.
The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.
It is important to remember that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.
What Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women, finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their doctors to treat them as such.
Waldo L. Fielding was an obstetrician and gynecologist in Boston for 38 years. He is the author of “Pregnancy: The Best State of the Union” (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971).
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Coat Hanger Project featured in "Words of Choice" Blog!
I'm thrilled that notable pro-choice activist Cindy Cooper gave TCHP some love on her Words of Choice blog. Thanks for the shout out!
About the blog:
This blog is about airr -- artistic investigations of reproductive rights & essential human rights for women. Creativity opens breathing space for new and positive conversations about women's freedom and reproductive justice. This blog shares the ways!
About "Words of Choice"
Words of Choice is dynamic pro-choice theater. Created by Cindy Cooper, the play is a collection of savvy and sophisticated works by a dozen writers and performed by three actors. We've traveled to 20 states to open new conversations about choice.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Harvey Karman, 84; invented device for safer, easier abortions
By Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times
May 18, 2008
Harvey Karman, a flamboyant psychologist whose invention made a key contribution to women's reproductive health, particularly by making abortions simpler, cheaper and less painful, died May 6 at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. He was 84.
The cause was a stroke, said his son Kenneth, of Los Angeles.
Activist, inventor, educator and rogue, Karman was drawn to the plight of women facing unwanted pregnancy in the 1950s, when abortion was illegal. While training in psychology at UCLA, he started an underground abortion referral service and eventually performed abortions himself, for which he was convicted and sent to state prison for 2 1/2 years.
In the early 1970s he developed a soft, flexible tube, or cannula, for a device that was widely adopted in the United States and developing countries to perform early abortions. He freely demonstrated its use for doctors and other medical professionals and in 1972 was part of a humanitarian mission to terminate the pregnancies of 1,500 Bangladesh women and girls who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers. His cannula is still widely used today.
"Harvey Karman did more for safe abortion around the world than practically any other person in the world," said Dr. Malcolm Potts, Bixby professor of Population, Family Planning and Maternal Health at UC Berkeley, who accompanied Karman to Bangladesh 35 years ago.
"Karman's name is not known, yet his ingenuity and to some extent his courage has made safe abortion available to literally millions of women around the world."
Doctors later found other applications for the Karman cannula, including using it in the diagnosis of uterine cancer, said Dr. Philip Darney, chief of gynecology and obstetrics at San Francisco General Hospital.
The tube, which Karman never patented, is so inexpensive and easy to sterilize and re-use that it has "dramatically reduced healthcare costs in treating uterine bleeding, one of the most common reasons women come to the emergency room," Darney said.
Karman also had many detractors, particularly because of his attempt to revolutionize second-trimester abortions with a device called the super coil, which was inserted into the uterus and expanded when exposed to moisture, causing a miscarriage. It caused serious complications, including hemorrhaging and infection, when it was used on about a dozen women in Philadelphia on Mother's Day in 1972.
"Harvey engaged in some very irresponsible experimentation on women's bodies," said Carol Downer, who co-founded feminist women's health clinics in Southern California in the 1970s.
The incident was investigated by the national Centers for Disease Control, where Darney worked at the time. Darney called the super coil a "bad idea" but added, "I don't think that offsets the importance" of Karman's other contributions.
Downer agreed, calling Karman "a real change agent" whose invention gave momentum to the abortion rights movement in the period before the procedure was legalized by the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade. "I would never take away from the importance of a lot of the work he did," she said.
Karman was born Harvey Walters on April 26, 1924, in the tiny northwest Oregon town of Clatskanie. He did not know his father, and his mother, who led a transient lifestyle, often left him in orphanages. When she married, he took the last name of his stepfather.
A high school dropout, he joined the Army Air Forces and was stationed in England during World War II. After completing his military service, he used the GI Bill to attend UCLA, where he earned a bachelor's in theater and a master's in psychology. He later became director of psychosomatic research at San Vicente Hospital in Los Angeles.
He became interested in abortion when he was conducting research at UCLA on the emotional aspects of therapeutic abortion. During this time a student with an unplanned pregnancy committed suicide and another died from a botched abortion. Karman responded by helping women obtain illegal abortions in Mexico. Unhappy with the high prices and poor care some of the women received, he began performing abortions himself.
His ultimate goal, according to Darney, who met Karman in the early 1970s, was to "make it possible for women to safely do their own abortions using the simplest possible equipment."
Working with Merle Goldberg, a medical writer and women's health activist, Karman developed a method for extracting menstrual blood during the first weeks after a missed period with a vacuum syringe and a flexible plastic tube about the width of a drinking straw.
The device could be manually operated and, because of the narrowness of the tube, caused less discomfort than the larger metal curets that were normally used in abortions.
The procedure Karman and Goldberg developed took a matter of minutes, leading some to call it the "lunch-hour abortion." Karman offered the procedure at his Community Service Center clinic in West Los Angeles. Studies found that complications were rare.
Some doctors were quoted expressing reservations about do-it-yourself abortions, warning of the risk of infection and other problems. Anti-abortion forces attacked Karman as an illegal abortionist. But Karman was undeterred and proceeded to train many mainstream doctors as well as paramedics and others, including Downer and other feminist healthcare activists.
In 1973, the New York Times reported that the method was available in 45 states and cost no more than $80.
After the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, when Bangladesh gained independence, he was part of a five-member team of abortion experts invited by the Bangladesh government to perform abortions on rape victims and train native doctors and paramedics in his method. Most of the victims were between the ages of 10 and 16.
"Many victims were actually being driven from their homes and villages by husbands and families who felt disgraced. And many committed suicide," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1972.
He said the team visited outlying villages and taught midwives, village chiefs, young girls, "anybody who wanted to learn," how to use the cannula for an abortion. The method is still used widely there, although it is called menstrual extraction because abortion is banned.
Karman "is responsible for saving the lives of countless women throughout the world through this innovative technology," Vicki Saporta, president and chief executive of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion providers based in Washington, D.C., said in an interview last week.
Along with advances in local anesthesia and suction equipment, his little tube, she said, was one of three major innovations that dramatically improved abortion care in the 1970s.
Karman spent much of the late 1970s and early '80s in Bangladesh, India and China, where he championed women's rights and safe, easy abortions. He lived for some years in London, where he also had a psychotherapy practice. He retired in 1992 to Santa Barbara.
In addition to his son Kenneth, Karman is survived by three other children, Kathleen, Steven and Janice; and six grandchildren.
elaine.woo@latimes.com
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