Meet Dr. Kenneth Edelin — Part One

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, Kenneth Edelin, M.D., was the chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology at Boston City Hospital.  His forthcoming book, Broken Justice: A True Story of Race, Sex, and Revenge in a Boston Courtroom, details the events of his life when, shortly after the decision in Roe, anti-choice officials in Boston prosecuted him for performing a legal, second-trimester abortion. The book is not only a personal account of Commonwealth v. Edelin, the court case that was ultimately overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, it is also a stark reminder of the mayhem that can ensue when politics interferes with the provision of health care; a chronicle of the 1970s, a particularly turbulent time for women, African Americans, and the reproductive rights movement; and a story of one man’s commitment to the health, safety, and autonomy of women.

In the 30-plus years since his landmark court case, Edelin has become a powerful, outspoken champion of reproductive rights in the United States.  plannedparenthood.org talked to Edelin about his experience, his book, and his commitment to women’s rights and access to safe and legal abortion.

Tell us a little about your book.

Broken Justice is a five-year memoir, with some flashbacks, that begins in 1971, when I arrived in Boston to begin a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Boston City Hospital.  I had always wanted to be a specialist in ob/gyn.

I was three months away from completing my residency when I was indicted on a charge of manslaughter by a secret grand jury.

What were the circumstances of the indictment?

As the chief resident at Boston City Hospital in October 1973, nine months after Roe v. Wade had been decided, I performed a legal, safe abortion for a black 17-year-old who wanted to finish high school and go to college. She and her mother also feared the harm that might come to her at the hands of her own father if he found out she was pregnant. Six months later the grand jury indicted me for manslaughter in the death of the aborted fetus.

I performed the second-trimester abortion using a technique that the anti-abortion movement had been waiting for.  They had tried to get indictments in other cities — Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, to name two — to get charges brought against other health care providers who performed second-trimester abortions, but were unable to.  They found success in Boston with my indictment.
 
You’ve called the circumstances leading up to your indictment a “perfect storm” of events.  What do you mean by that?

There was a confluence of circumstances — race, religion, and the status of women in Boston — that allowed the district attorney to get the indictment.  Things just came together at the right time or wrong time, depending on what side of my life you’re on.  It was Boston. It was a particular district attorney.  It was a particular time.  All of this made it perfect for the anti-choice crowd — they grabbed the ball and ran with it.

At trial, of the 16 jurors who were originally picked — 12, plus four alternates — only three were women.  The jury was all white and made up overwhelmingly of Catholic men.  How this jury, and the grand jury that indicted me, were chosen are all a part of the “perfect storm” that allowed this anti-choice district attorney and the national anti-abortion extremist groups to indict, try, and convict me.

In some ways, it doesn’t sound like you have regret.

I wish I'd never had to go through it. The trauma and the resulting scar remain.

One of the early readers of the book, a physician, said, “ Many of us in the medical profession were proud to have Ken Edelin stand up to the attacks by the 'right-to-lifers' for all doctors who believe that women need to have access to safe, legal abortions in America.”  It was not my intention to make a point or to be an example. I was a resident doctor who believed very strongly in a woman’s right to choose, and I was just doing my job. When I was indicted I was three months away from finishing my residency, about to enter my specialty, and all of a sudden I was facing the loss of my job and my license to practice medicine, and jail. We heard rumors that there were inmates at the prison where I was likely to be incarcerated who were waiting to beat me up. It was all very frightening. It was a life-changing experience.

Did the trial transform your commitment to reproductive rights?

I was already committed. As an obstetrician and gynecologist, I was committed to providing complete reproductive health care to my patients. That includes abortions.

What the trial did for me, however, was to transform my commitment from being a practitioner to being an outspoken advocate for women’s reproductive health and rights. The experience of being indicted, tried, and convicted gave me the opportunity to study and understand the tactics of those who are opposed to legal abortion and the rights of women. I understand the enemy. I saw them up close and personal for two years.  I vowed, after the trial, to show them they had picked on the wrong person.  I said, “You asked for a fight, so here you go!”

The trial gave me a platform and opportunity on the local and national levels to speak out on the issue of choice — and I used it.  At first the opportunity to speak out helped me raise the money I needed to pay the enormous legal fees for the trial and the appeal. Even after all the legal fees were paid, I still had that platform, and I continued to speak out about women’s reproductive health, as well as the tactics and the face of the enemy.  I use the term “enemy” on purpose because that is what they are.  Some people have said that I am too harsh.  But I was the one who was targeted by them. I know what it was like. I think that maybe it’s not harsh enough.

I went on to be on the Planned Parenthood board and the NARAL board, and to become the chair of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.  All of those opportunities gave me the venue and the platform to continue to speak out.  The book is a continuation of that.

You performed legal abortions before Roe v. Wade.

When I arrived at Boston City Hospital in 1971, women who wanted abortions had to have their cases presented to the Abortion and Sterilization Committee for approval. The requests were granted if it could be demonstrated that continuation of the pregnancy would be detrimental to the woman’s physical or mental health.  The process was so cumbersome and time consuming that sometimes a woman who requested an abortion in her first trimester did not have the request approved and carried out until she was in her second trimester.

So, women had to be “physically or mentally unwell” in order to get an abortion.

Exactly!  Not only was that a burden, it was an insult. There had to be something wrong with women who wanted a pregnancy termination — that’s what the process said.

We were providing abortions before Roe, but it was not a procedure that the hospital made easy, and by the time I was chief resident, there were only two of us providing abortions.  We had to do the abortions in the late afternoon and we had to rely on volunteer anesthesiologists, nurses, and other personnel to help us out.  And sometimes there were so many cases that we had to perform them on Saturdays.

It was a very long and arduous process, but something those of us who provided abortion were committed to.  Although we tried to expedite things, we were still forced to deal with a cumbersome and difficult process.

Read Part Two of "Meet Dr. Kenneth Edelin"

Edelin’s book, Broken Justice, will be available in late August 2007.  For more information, see http://brokenjustice.com/.