Life Before Roe v. Wade

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court voted by a margin of 7-2 that a woman had a constiutional right to an abortion. On the 33rd anniversary of that decision, the Senate Judiciary Committee is contemplating the nomination of Samuel Alito, a man who is on record opposing abortion rights. Here are the brief stories of three people who helped provide abortion before 1973. They are members of Voices of Choice, a multi-media project with two dozen physicians and social activists who helped provide safe,illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade was decided. Their voices are a reminder that outlawing abortion doesn't make it go away; it just makes it less safe.

Mildred Hanson, M.D.

A featured speaker at several congressional briefings on abortion, Hanson spent 30 years as the medical director of what was then Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and South Dakota. Today, she oversees her own Minnesota clinic, where, at the age of 82, she provides abortions to women from Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

"In 1935, when I was 11 years old, my mother left our Wisconsin house on a bitter February night and dashed to the farm next door to help an ailing woman who'd had an illegal abortion. Our neighbor was writhing in pain so severe that she was having convulsions and was chewing her lip raw. It took her two days to die of blood poisoning. She left six children behind - and left me with firsthand knowledge of the injustice of illegal abortion.

"Fresh out of medical school in 1959, I developed a reputation for being the only doctor in this region who would treat women with bleeding, lacerations, and other complications stemming from back-alley procedures. Illegal abortionists would refer their clients to me in the event of complications. In addition to helping these patients, I offered legal abortions to women within the hospital system, which sanctioned the procedure if it was deemed medically necessary. I coached these women on how to get approval. 'Tell hospital officials you are destitute,' I said. 'Tell them you are devastated and will commit suicide if you can't terminate this pregnancy.' If Roe v. Wade were overturned today and if medical exceptions were still allowed, I would tell my patients the same things all over again. For the first time in my life, I would also perform illegal abortions. I didn't do so before Roe v. Wade because I was a divorced mother with four children to support. But today I have nothing to lose and believe reproductive rights are so important that I'm willing to risk whatever legal action or prison time I might face."

Jane Hodgson, M.D.

In 1970, Hodgson challenged a Minnesota law that banned abortion by providing an abortion to a mother of three whose pregnancy was affected by German measles, which can cause blindness, kidney failure, and cognitive problems in developing infants. She was convicted of a felony, but because the legal process dragged on until after Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, her sentence was overturned and she did not serve prison time. In 1990, Hodgson was the lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case Hodgson v. Minnesota, which unsuccessfully challenged parental notification laws. A founding fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a recipient of the PPFA Margaret Sanger Award, Hodgson is now 91 and a speaker for Medical Students for Choice.

"Over the course of my 60-year career, I've done a lot of volunteer work overseas in countries where abortion is illegal. I've seen women who had botched procedures soak their mattresses through with blood. I've seen countless other women die.

"People in the United States don't know about these horrors. Nor do they remember what women's lives were like here before abortion became legal. Before 1973, single women who got pregnant were fired from their jobs. Younger ones were sent to maternity homes for unwed mothers and their children were put up for adoption. Married women who got pregnant were forced to carry pregnancies to term regardless of their circumstances - even if they had so many children that they couldn't afford to feed another one; even if they had metastasized cancer; even if their fetuses couldn't live outside the womb because these fetuses had developed without a heart or brain.