PPFA Abortion Conference, 1955
Illegal Abortion in the United States

"The sooner the public is acquainted with the basis facts and implications of abortion in the United States, the better. Only through widespread knowledge of the situation can responsible public action be taken to correct the conditions that underlie the high incidence of illegal abortions in this country."
Frederick H. Falls, MD
Past President, Am. Assoc. for Maternal and Infant Health
Past President, AMA Section of Ob/Gyn

Presentation by Alfred C. Kinsey, SCD
Director, Institute for Sex Research, Inc., Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Kinsey first said that in order to measure the frequency of any illegal activity, one first had to gai the trust of the population being studied.

"We worked," Kinsey said, "with one lower-level Negro community in a large Midwestern city for two full years before we felt that we had won the confidence of that community, and for six more years before we had the sort of sample that we wanted from it." He then went on to describe statistics on a sample of "white, non-prison females in our sample." Of those who had abortions, 87% were done by physicians, and 8% were self-induced. Of single white sexually active women, 20% had admitted to abortions.

Kinsey also touched on racial differences, saying, "The Negro is securing inducd abortion less often in comparison to the white female. This is partly a matter of sociology. The birth of a child prior to marriage is ot the social disgrace among the socially lower-level Negroes that it is among college girls, and this is somthing that touches upon a reality we must take into account. I have had a twenty-two-year-old Negro girl come in to see me .... [show] me her six-year-old chilld, and [exclaim] fondly over her. ... [The] first information I get is that she has never been married. No, she never lived common-law either." The young woman then proudly told Kinsey that she had another baby on the way.

"Then," Kinsey continued, "in the next twenty-four hours, I may go into a college and take the history of a college girl who is pregnant, and who says she is ready to commit suicide if she can't scure an abortion! That is the product of our education that is not teaching us how to avoid abortions, but to become hysterically disturbed over premarital pregnancy."

An interesting observation.

A discussion then esued about the details of the demographics of Kinsey's study.

The presentation was then turned over to

G. Lotrell Timanus, MD
Rehoboth Beach, DE

Timanus first launched into a detailed breakdown of his own criminal abortion patients, of whom he kept meticulous records. He then lamented that of the 353 doctors who referred patients to him -- some of them, Timanus claimed, with letters recommending abortion -- none stood up to testify for him when he was arrested.

Various participants then added their own comments about illegal abortion:

Milton Helpern, MD
Chief Medical Examiner, New York City
"[In cases seen at autopsy], there is apparently considerable variety in common use today in a large urban community, but most are cases in which the indications are clear that a physician curetted the patient more or less according to standard procedure. We see a number of deaths due to self-induced abortions, some of these involving the insertion of various objects, medicinal substances or injection of fluid into the uterus, or the insertion of corrosive chemicals. In some cases, the agent used and its effects are clearly seen. In others you are at a loss to say exactly what was done, except for obvious evidence of induction either by the victim or by some other person."

Helpern later gave some statistics for abortion deaths in New York City, from what he indicated were randomly chosen years:

(Here we were seeing a steady and appreciable decline in abortion mortality, all without aid of legalization.)

Helpern went on to say, "Ten or fifteen years ago, when fatalities from abortion were frequnt, one could study the entire pathology of abortion within a few months' time, there was such a variety of cases. Now the deaths are few and far between, and that is a good thing to know."

When questioned about suicide among pregnant women, Helpern said, "There is only a small number of suicides in women in which we find pregnacy."

Louis B. Hellman, MD
Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, State University of New York, Brooklyn
"I am sure that those of you who deal with large numbers of patients realize that there are styles in inducing abortions just as there are styles in women's clothes, and we happen to be in the midst of an epidemic of one kind of tablets. Why pople should feel that these little tablets induce abortions, I don't know. Although they only cost aroud ten cents, they are sold to women at ahnywhere from a dollar to five dollars per tablet. They are highly poisonous, and when inserted, they produce bleding and ulceration, sometimes severe hemorrhage, but never abortion."

Hellman also reported that "in the group I deal with, three quarters or more of a group of 70 abortions that were suspicious enough to be reported to the legal authorities were self-induced."

Robert B. Nelson, MD
Chairman, Sub-Committee on Maternal Welfare, Medical Socity of the District of Columbia; Medical Director, Planned Parenthood Association of the District of Columbia
Nelson mentioned his concern that antimetabolites (such as are now becoming popular as "medical abortions") might become popular as abortifacients. He considered these drugs dangerous for this use despite some early studies done on women who were scheduled for therapeutic abortions.

Nelson reported that from 1940 to 1943, the District of Columbia saw zero to five abortion deaths per year, and that "the majority were du to self-induced abortions. ... I think the matter of self-induced abortions is extremely important. At least, in the Washington area, what information we have would indicate that those who get into serious trouble are self-induced. Any steps you took to suppress abortion further might conceivably raise the self-induced rate and consequently the death rate." (It is interesting to note that carte-blanc legalization seemed to pretty much replace self-induced abortion deaths with legally-induced abortion deaths.)

Christopher Tietze, MD
Director of Research, National Committee for Maternal Health, New York City
"I would like to suggest one possible explanation why the single patients were in worse shape than the married patients: They waited longer before seeking help. A married patient has only to dissimulate the fact that her abortion is not a spotaneous on, whereas a single patient is motivated to hide not only the abortion but the pregnancy itself, and therefore she resists hospitalization for a longer time.