LeRoy Carhart (continued)
"The anti's are trying to undermine existing rights by making abortion unavailable by reducing the number of providers willing to work-or able to work. Abortion may remain legal on the books, it just may not be available except by unlicensed providers. No matter what form of birth control you use, there's nothing right now that is 100% effective. And pregnancy itself carries its own risks-risks that women with wanted pregnancies are willing to take. However, it is inherently safer to terminate an unwanted pregnancy than to carry to term. It is simply cruel and unusual punishment to force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
Men have had unlimited availability to 'abortion' since the beginning of time. Men can walk away from unwanted pregnancies with virtually no response from government. I believe that, unless women are given an equal right to determine whether or not they remain pregnant, they will not be considered equal. I think that's what the anti's are most afraid of-women becoming equal.
I've been a doctor for a long time. For over 20 years, I served as an officer in the United States Air Force, providing medical and surgical services to the women and men of the armed service and their dependents. I started providing abortion services as a medical student over 30 years ago. It was as a medical student that I learned when a woman finds herself in a desperate situation involving an unwanted pregnancy, even the fear of death will not deter her from seeking a solution. During those years, I sat on "Abortion Committees" where the fate of a woman and the decision of how a certain pregnancy would affect the remainder of her, and her family's life was decided. Decided by a committee of, notably, all male physicians.
During these same years, I spent months on rotations at Hahnemann Hospital and Philadelphia General Hospital, both in the emergency departments and on the wards. Here countless women, all having sought the only solution available to what they considered an impossible situation, were brought to the hospital septic and near death. For many, death was the alternative they received. And for the women who were lucky enough to survive the complications, all were left deeply scarred, and the vast majority, sterile for life. Dead or sterile, not because of their choice to end their unwanted pregnancy, but because of the horrible conditions they were forced to undergo to fulfill that choice.
Upon my retirement from the Air Force, I opened a medical practice in Bellevue, Nebraska. Very soon thereafter a friend, who happened to be a nurse, approached me. I had operated upon both her husband and her daughter while on active duty. She asked if I would consider helping out in a nearby abortion clinic, where she worked as the director of nursing. After much discussion with my wife, children, father and friends, and a great amount of prayer, the decision to become an abortion provider, as a part of my medical practice, was made. After three months of intense training, I performed my first abortion in over ten years in February of 1988.
On September 6, 1991, my daughter's twenty-first birthday, and the day the Nebraska Parental Notification Law became effective, my life and the lives of my entire family were changed forever. On that day, an arsonist set fire to and completely destroyed virtually everything we owned and had worked for. Our house, a forty-three stall horse barn, a food concession stand, a tack store, a truck, a camper and two horse trailers were completely destroyed. In addition, seventeen horses, our cat and our dog were killed. Everything we owned, except the clothes we were wearing and the vehicles we were driving, was destroyed. The following morning, I received in the mail a letter from someone claiming responsibility and likening the "murder" of the horses to the murder of children. The Bellevue and Nebraska state fire marshals were present at the fire before it was extinguished. After a cursory evaluation, both confirmed the suspect of arson, stated that less than 2% of arsonists were ever caught in Nebraska and ordered the entire remains of the blaze to be bulldozed in a large pile, thus rendering any further investigations impossible.
To prevent this event from being even a minute victory for the anti-choice zealots, my family and I decided to make the practice of abortion, the training of physicians to become abortion providers, and increasing the availability of safe and legal abortions to a greater number of women, my goals for the remainder of my professional life.
In the years that I have provided abortions, I have cared for all kinds of women who have decided to obtain abortions. Women who could not afford another child, abused women, young women, some in their pre-teen years who didn't even know they could get pregnant. Raped women, some raped by a close relative, and a few even by their own father. Some women have been suicidal. Others have had serious health problems that are complicated by pregnancy-like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and AIDS. And many that just could not face the trauma of continuing their pregnancy at this time of their life. Every one of these women had two things in common: 1) Each one had already made the decision to have an abortion. Most of the younger women have had the support of, and were accompanied by, their parents. Most of the women come with the support of their partner or best friend. 2) Each one, no matter what the circumstances surrounding her decision, wanted the assurance that she was going to get the best medical care possible. The government should not be allowed to force me to provide less."
Jane Hodgson (continued)
"I decided to challenge my state's abortion law and I was spurred on when New York passed a law legalizing abortion. We were all so elated. I was denied permission by the federal court to perform an abortion, but I went ahead with the abortion at a private hospital in Minnesota and was indicted. I went to trial in the fall and pled guilty. The assistant district attorney published a three-page newspaper story on why I was guilty in the Catholic bulletin. I looked upon it as a period of education for the public and legislature. I had gone to the legislature several times before to modify the law but they could never agree on any of the details.
I was sentenced to 30 days in jail though the sentence was suspended pending my appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Justice Blackmun, who was in Rochester at the time as an attorney for the Mayo Clinic, cited my case several times, even referring to it in Roe v. Wade. He described it as a case that demonstrated the need for change.
The state supreme court sat on my case until Roe v. Wade in 1973. In the meantime, I was offered a job as medical director in Washington, DC, where abortion laws were more liberal, at the Pre-term Clinic two blocks away from the White House. Women came from all over the country. We only did first-trimester abortions. It was kind of exciting because it was an entirely different technique and surgical environment. We also stressed the counseling concept. It was all very new, a new field, new sub-specialty. Each patient had her own counselor that stayed with her through the whole procedure. We wrote a lot, published a lot. It was a very meaningful time."
