Author: Sarah

Charles Swenson was concerned about the poor quality of abortion clinics after abortion was legalized in New York state, and the fact that so many clinics were badly run and dangerous to women.  He went went to the New York state attorney general, and told him that because of the new law they needed to start talking about the quality of care, of shaping up the clinics. The attorney general said:

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, there’s nothing in the law that says the state will play any role in the quality of care.”

I said, “you’ve got to be kidding.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 139

There are still very few regulations that abortion clinics have to meet in order to operate. Many dangerous clinics continue to operate unlicensed and unregulated, and many clinics are rarely or never inspected. Pro-choice groups fight against laws that would make abortion safer. Read about some of these bad abortion clinics here.

A doctor describes an abortion complication that he witnessed:

“What happened was this guy perforated; he thought it was the cord and pulled out – they measured in the laboratory – 8 feet of small bowels… He panicked and blew his cool. He got the 8 feet out know what he did? He cut it with scissors and then he put it in the bucket and then he called me.

So she’s in the hospital. She had a bowel repair, and the general surgeon finished and everybody’s telling me to do a hysterectomy on this 17-year-old kid from Birmingham, Alabama, no children. I decided no. She had a hole in the top of her uterus; I opened it up and removed the fetus… We sewed up the uterus… The patient had a very stormy course but she left the hospital with her pre-reproductive organs and she was okay… What I do want to know, and I’ve always wondered about these many, many years, was whether this kid never had any children.”

Dr. Rothstein

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 119

Learn about other botched abortions here.

And read about some woman who died in botched legal abortions.

An abortionist describes a D&C, an abortion procedure in which the  lining of the uterus is scraped to remove the baby and placenta. Now most early abortions are done by the suction curettage method, but in most cases the uterus is still scraped to remove remaining tissue that the  machine doesn’t suction out. So this quote is still relevant to the way abortions are performed today.

“I always used to tell medical students it was like being blindfolded and trying to scrape wet cotton balls out of a wet paper bag and getting all the balls without tearing the bag… The uterus was so soft, it was very easy to poke something through the uterus.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) page 58

Abortionist who set up a clinic shortly before Roe versus Wade, when abortion was only legal in a few states:

“We did about 60 abortions a day. It was a wonderful service, and women were coming from all over the United States where it was illegal. They traveled long distances… And then the problem of getting care for them after they’d go home. They’d call up and be in trouble and we didn’t know where to send them. There were no doctors to take care of them. It was quite an experience… Back in the early days, the clinic had an ambulance that was kept on hand all the time. It was rarely, if ever, used and finally they got rid of it. It just fell apart from no use but we didn’t know if it might be necessary if a woman started bleeding in the clinic and we had to rush her to the hospital…”

Sending women home without follow-up care and operating without a means of transportation for injured women put women’s lives and health at risk in his clinic.

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) page 18