The Changing Ethics and Attitude Regarding Abortion during 1970s

Lucy Murray
HIST 230

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plagiarism. The work I am submitting is entirely my own work. I understand that if
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Abortion has been a technique used to control population and unwanted
pregnancies for centuries. It is an intentional termination of a fetus or embryo before it
fully develops into a baby that can survive without the mothers womb. There are medical
and surgical methods to carry out abortion. Abortion has been documented since 2737
B.C. It was also documented in the Ebers papyrus. It could be described as old as the
social life of man.(Joffe) Since the existence of abortion it has been a controversial topic
in all cultures because it strikes at the core of societal values. The moral and legal issues
surrounding it are still heavily debated today. Abortion was not considered illegal in the
United States until the 1800s. As a result of the attempt to control religious ethics and
proper medical standards, women would be driven to dangerous illegal abortion as the
only way out. Illegal abortion resulted in the deaths of millions of women due to
punctured organs, uncontrollable bleeding, and infections. With the coming of the youth
culture in the 1960s, it challenged Americans views on abortion as a womens right
rather than a sin. Over the past several decades, new laws have changed abortion to
become a more accessible service. New technology also took off after the lifted abortion
laws making abortion a faster and safer procedure. New ethical debate would also be
brought on due to the advancement in technology, questioning the biological status of a
fetus. The danger women faced when in need of an illegal abortion led to the change in
abortion laws dividing America into a debate of pro life vs. pro choice.
The subject of abortion was not widely spoken about until the 1800s. Most midwives
knew how to perform an abortion and they were done in the comfort of a patients home.
Some herbal remedies were also used to terminate pregnancies. It was not until the
development of professionally trained doctors did the issue of sanitation come into

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question. Making abortion illegal also locked women into the traditional childbearing
role. Many religions also saw abortion as a sin since children were gifts of god.
Connecticut became the first state to limit abortion. By the 1880s, most states had banned
abortion unless it was necessary for the womens well being. For the next century
desperate women would rely on risky techniques to terminate pregnancies. One of the
most well known methods was to insert a coat hanger in to the uterus. Either she had
gone to some self-appointed unskilled practitioner, or she had tried to produce the desired
effect with a coat hanger, some other foreign body or one of the poisons Ms. Manning
describes. (Baum) Some women also took lethal drugs and chemicals as an abortion
method. Lethal drugs and chemicals could leave lasting effects on the health of women.
Overdose could lead to death and organ failure. Since abortion was illegal, women who
attempted abortion would face criminal charges. Many women suffered serious infections
in an attempt to abort their pregnancy. They were denied medical treatment and forced to
give up names of accomplices. Dr. Jane Hodgens writes as she awaits her trial for
terminating a pregnancy that she felt endanger the welfare of the woman
As doctors, we all tend to be rigid and moralistic. Instead, we should strive to be
more humanistic, more involved with the needs of society and individual patient, rather
than passing superficial judgments. There is no room for a punitive attitude toward the
woman with the unwanted pregnancy. (Greenhouse)
Women would deny any attempt of abortion even in critical times of life and death.
Arrests were common among women who attempted abortion and any accomplices.
Through the 19th and 20th century, midwives and unlicensed doctors carried out
most illegal abortions in highly unsanitary conditions. These exposures increased the

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likelihood of infections for many women. Illegal abortion also resulted in women going
into septic shock, having damaged kidneys, perforated colons and uteruses, going into
cardiac failure and even dying. The cost of an illegal abortion was staggering, raging
from fifty to thousands of dollars not including hospital fees for future complications.
Women also had to travel thousands of miles, sometimes to another country, to obtain an
abortion. Desperate women did what they could to find abortionists through word of
mouth from friends and referrals by their doctors. We gynecologists did what we could
---for our middle class, well-off, unwillingly pregnant patients. (Joffe) By the end of the
1960s, a new system was developed to help women find abortion, known as the Abortion
Counseling Service. It used the code word Jane to refer women to safe practitioners. It
was considered lucky if you could afford it let alone travel away from home to get it.
Most women had no choice but to seek traditional methods such as inserting various
objects into the uterus to disrupt the pregnancy. Doctor Nathanson describes his early
experience at the Gynecology Ward at Womans Hospital as I was struck by the
enormous disparity in the rate of spontaneous miscarriage between the private patients of
the staff physicians and the poor patients in our clinic population. (Nathanson) As his
description of spontaneous miscarriages were mostly illegal abortions gone wrong.
Many women were left botched, unable to bear children ever again. There were many
cases of heavy bleeding and crippling infections. Since the introduction of public health
care, women would be sent to major hospitals for any complications. The idea of
Intensive Care did not come into hospitals till 1950s. Women who were sent to hospital
before intensive care were questioned before able to receive treatment. Many kept quiet
about their illegal abortion due to the fear of being reported. There were few laws

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protecting women harmed during illegal abortions. It was not until the Emergency
Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 did all patients have the right to
treatment regardless of what happened.
After the civil rights movement, feminists gained momentum to push for womens
rights, to be more than just sexual objects that held traditional childbearing roles. Women
believed that they deserved to have the same opportunities as men. Abortion became a
right that the feminists heavily pushed for. With the long records of women being pushed
to self-harm, abortion being illegal did the opposite of protecting women. Supporters
argued that the fetus needed the mothers womb to survive so it should be the choice of
the woman to decide the fate of the child. The growth of a fetus within a mother has no
benefit to the mother. The fetus was described as a parasite, which benefitted from the
host. Giving women reproductive rights gave women the right to control their own body.
it is about giving women a choice between continuing a pregnancy then either
raising the child or giving it up for adoption, or having an abortion. It is about presenting
those three possibilities as equally real choices and respecting whichever one the woman
ultimately makes. (Manninen)
Supporters of legal abortion also argued that unwanted children were most likely to grow
up below the poverty line or in orphanages. This adds to problem of poverty stricken
areas. Statistically, if a family had fewer children it is argued that they can live better
lives. Some pregnancies also resulted in children with crippling genetic diseases. No
children should be born unwanted. These children create heavy burdens on the families
through the amount and cost of care. It is also argued that these children continue rare
genetic diseases that could be extinct with controlled pregnancies. Unwanted children are

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also more likely to grow up in unloving and neglectful families, leading many to commit
crimes.
Supreme court cases were the key to nullifying the laws that made abortion
illegal. There had been many attempts to challenge state abortion laws but none were as
successful as the case Roe v Wade of 1973. This case was critical to overturning abortion
laws in America. As a fairly conservative state, Texas has had a restriction on abortion
since 1857. A woman under the pseudonym Jane Roe requested an abortion from the
court. With a long history of troubles, Roe was working at her low-income job when she
became pregnant for the third time. Her previous pregnancies were given up for adoption
due to her inability to take care of a child. She requested an abortion with the description
that she was impregnated through rape to give her a better chance of the courts approval.
Texas had no protection against pregnancy by rape so the court denied her request. Three
years later the case made it to Supreme Court. The main argument was that state abortion
laws violated the ninth and the fourteenth amendment. The ninth amendment addresses
the issue of rights that were not written into the constitution. Rights that were not
included into the constitution do not mean they do not exist. The fourteen amendment
addresses due process rights that include privacy to protect anyone from government
intrusion. Abortion laws violated a womans choice to have an abortion. Abortion laws
also violated the simple rights of a woman. A restriction on abortion was ruled no
business of the government until the fetus becomes viable on its own. An unborn childs
life does not out weight the rights of a woman. Abortion decision was ruled part of the
right to privacy. The court saw that Texass laws were prejudiced against abortion, as no
other surgical procedures are a matter of the state. It should be a personal choice made

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with proper counseling and family. Our ask, of course, is to resolve the issue by
constitutional evaluation free of emotion and prejudice. (Drucker) In an attempt to
protect the health and safety of the pregnant woman and the life she carries, abortion laws
have only put more women in danger from the practices of illegal abortion. The court
ruling invalidated all Texas abortion statues, which lifted virtually all limitation on
abortion in the state of Texas. With most states having similar abortion statues, it
unintentionally invalidated other states abortion laws as well.
After the Roe v Wade changed the legal status of abortion, it did not have an
immediate effect on accessibility of abortion. What was then illegal abortion continued to
be practiced. Getting an abortion was still generally hard to find, as there was no such
thing as a womens clinic like we have today. Planned parenthood redirected women to
others for abortion. Hospitals did not want to offer the service of abortion right away, as
the gynecology ward would just be filled with women wanting an abortion. There was no
plan for the expansion of service right after the legalization of abortion. The same
numbers of women were still showing up in urgent care with the effects of botched
abortions. The legalization of abortion did not change the fact that there were few people
properly trained to do abortions. There were also little to no regulations on abortionists
and there were no consequences for anything that went wrong. Abortion also remained
expensive. There was no health coverage that covered abortion. It remained a difficult
thing to get for the poor. Eventually the access to abortion widened by the late 1970s.
New clinics were opened exclusively for the purpose of abortion. This opened up a world
of new interest in the world of gynecology.

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Remember, legal abortion came on the scene just as other opportunities were
opening up in the field of obstetrics and gynecology: assisted reproductive technology,
more sophisticated obstetric with ultrasound and electronic fetal heart monitoring,
chemotherapy and radical surgery of gynecologic tumors, the proliferation of medical
schools needing new personnel for teaching purposes, and the lavishing of government
grants for clinical research in obstetric and gynecology. (Nathanson)
To make abortion more available and cheaper, the industry of abortion was born.
Professional training was required to be an abortionist. Womens clinics opened
everywhere, fighting for abortion as a business. In those clinics, most were abortionists
fresh out of medical school and psychology counselors that kept the operations going. It
became a simple process. Woman received a short counseling session that would list
other options besides abortion and if the woman decided to continue with the procedure a
doctor would be called in. Most doctors never even introduced themselves or knew their
patients name. Patients received a small dose of anesthesia and the doctor would come in
with his tools. When the doctor was done, the patient was sent home. There was no real
doctor-patient relationship. Abortionists did so many abortions in a day that it became a
routine. But most providers, even some of the pioneers I have cited, came to
acknowledge the routinization of abortion work. (Joffe) Each abortion was like a task.
The doctor did his job if the task was complete. At the conclusion of their eight-hour
shift, they would return home to their families, to their practices, to their house of
worship. (Nathanson) Abortionists got hourly pay, since every abortionist would fight
for patients if the pay were by the number of patients. Abortion clinics also bought on
better technology to assist the process of abortion. Vacuum aspiration is a technique that

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used a machine to vacuum out fetus parts and cells when inserted into the uterus. It was
much safer than using tools to scrape the walls of uterus. Many women had their uterus
perforated, sometimes as far as the colon and kidney too when the scraping method was
used. There was little regulation to these abortion clinics and many continued the
dangerous practices of illegal abortions.
State laws regulated when was the latest time during a womans pregnancy they
could acquire a legal abortion. New York was the most lenient state that gave women the
option for abortion until their second trimester or the 24th week. Women who could afford
abortion flooded clinics around. Many of these clinics used malicious tactics that only
benefited the profits of the doctors. Doctors were not checked out for past violations upon
hiring. Many doctors were suspended in multiple states and received a practicing license
in other states without a problem. This put many women in dangerous hands when
getting a legal abortion. One of the few ways to find a notable practice was through
referrals. Some women ended up in shady practices that led to traumatic injuries to
organs and to the unmoved fetus. Children were born with missing arms. Women were
bleeding for days before being sent to the emergency room for untreated organ bleeding.
Women still suffered from life-threatening infections. Even with the incompetent doctors
in practice banning abortion was not an option. We cant ban it and have it go away. If
we ban it, people will die. (Johns) It took time but regulations eventually caught up with
unethical doctors. Most were banned from practicing medicine ever again some even
faced jail time.
Ultrasound Imaging or Sonogram was bought into America in the late 1960s. It
was not used widely by gynecology until the late 1970s. This tool allowed doctors and

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patients to see the growth of fetus through the use of ultrasound waves. Ultrasound waves
were released targeting the abdominal area sending waves towards the fetus. When the
waves are bounced back, the distance of each wave creates visualization of the fetus. For
the first time in history, women were able to see their baby before it was born. It also
creates new relationship between the fetus and the doctor. Doctor could no longer see
each fetus as just a scientific creations. This new technology quickly changed the view on
abortion for many. Dr. Nathanson was a pioneer in abortion but later changed his view on
abortion and did his last abortion in 1979. I continued to do abortions through 1976. I
was doing abortions and delivering babies, but increasingly I found the moral tensions
building and become intolerable. On one floor of the hospital we would be delivering
babies and on another floor doing abortions. (Nathanson) While others thought fetus
were not exactly human, ultrasound provided proof that they carried many human
characteristics such as the ability to hear, feel and differentiate music. Sonograms also
showed fetus having eyes, toes and brain by the first trimester. By the second trimester,
fetus could hear and recognize voices. New intimate bonds can be created between the
mother and the fetus after seeing ultrasound images. New abortion regulation also
sponged up after the use of Ultrasound as a pregnancy tool. Some states up till today still
requires a women to get Sonogram before proceeding with abortion. It has been proven
that out of ten women that wanted an abortion only one went through with the procedure
after seeing ultrasound images of the fetus. Mothers could not only feel the fetus within
them but also watch it move and learn to love it before it enters the world. The strong
impact it has on any viewer made many question if abortion was really murdering a
helpless human. The film The Silent Scream depicted a fetus going through abortion

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during the second trimester. It is filmed when the baby is broken down and removed
inside the womb. The fetus opened its mouth like it was screaming. Another marvelous
technology bought into the pregnancy process was the electronic fetal heart monitor. Real
heartbeats of the fetus can be measured with ultrasound waves when held to a pregnant
womens abdominal area. Doctors and patients could hear the contraction of a fetus heart
for the first time. Heartbeats of the fetus not only told the fetus was alive but how it was
doing.
The moral status of a fetus was declared not a human therefore it does not have a
moral status. New technology made this statement troubling for some to understand.
Many argued that life beings at the conception in the utero. Life is a cycle that should
begin when life begins. All lives are meant to go through the growing cycle of life that
begins in the womb and ends with death. This process is disrupted when an abortion takes
place. Most pregnancy should end with a new citizen bought into the world. Abortion is
seen as taking lives away from this world. The first nine months in the mother womb is a
time the fetus takes time to prepare for the outside world. It is a time of growth. The
moral status of a fetus is hard to determine because a fetus cannot speak for itself. A fetus
does not have language or rationality. It has not yet learned. One of the key arguments
against fetus as having moral status is there is no detection of pain or pleasure. No one
can detect or ask a fetus if it feels the pain of an abortion. Since the baby does not make
any sound in the womb it is hard to know if it can sense threatening situations such as
abortion. The holocaust against the unborn is the greatest sin they could ever do or even
ever participate in. (McCorvey) What moral status is exactly is still yet to be exactly

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defined. There are serious flaws in what humans consider having moral status is because
we are not the only society that exist.
Pro-life supporters argued heavily on the fact that all phases of a human life is
considered human. If murder is definition of ending someones life before his or her
natural death then abortion is doing the same thing. The fetus never had the choice to say
yes or no to death. The mother must use her judgment to determine whether the fetus
should be aborted. This decreases the value of human life overall as millions of abortion
are carried out each year. The rate of abortion increased every year during the first ten
years of legalized abortion. Many women are psychologically damage after the
experience of abortion. The experience of abortion is life changing and led many to
depression, anxiety and even suicide.
As she reflects on the experience, she notes that although she never regretted the
abortion, she didnt want to be dismissive of it either. She never experienced it as this
guilty, horrible yoke around my neck, she wanted to be able to convey that
it really was as big a deal as it was. And I accept responsibility for that. (Manninen)
Counseling services were developed to help women choose life. There are required
counseling before an abortion in most states. These counselors were not there to argue
whether abortion is wrong but to inform women other options are available to let the
fetus live. They were patients advocates. Counselors also wanted to make sure that the
women was doing it as a last resort. Counseling services helped many women walk away
from abortion and chose adoption.

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Abortion remains to be a heavily debated topic in America. The transformation of
abortion during the 1970s was rapid. Women took courage and pride to earn the rights of
abortion as a right to their own body. The legalization of abortion stopped millions of
women from being hurt during illegal abortions. Abortion is now viewed as a safe service
provided by public health. The number of women treated for complication after illegal
abortions decreased over time. Roe v Wade changed the abortion industry immensely but
also opened up new research for obstetric as a whole. The continuous change in abortion
bought on new discovers and new debate against fetus as a living human. Polarizing
arguments brings more attention to abortion than any other medical public policy. Despite
abortions moral debate, it is a safe choice provided for women when in need. The
success of the abortion movement showed the continue change in American ethics and
liberalization.

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Culp-Ressler, Tara. "Woman Who Had Abortion Before Roe v. Wade: All I See Is Things
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