Our father was an obstetrician/gynecologist. Over the course of his career, he delivered countless babies, performed surgeries and counseled families. He also provided abortions. Before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, he treated women with perforated uteruses, septic shock, hemorrhages and other tragic consequences of illegal abortions and “back-alley” procedures, many of them performed by unsanitary, untrained hands.
After Roe, providing abortions became a part of our father’s practice. He also shared the joy of delivering a baby for parents who wanted to start or enlarge their family. He witnessed the anguish of women who became pregnant by partners who abused them, or by men who wouldn’t support their offspring. He likewise shared the relief that a woman felt when she terminated an unwanted pregnancy because she was about to start school, because she had more children than she and her husband could support, because she knew she wasn’t ready to be a parent yet, because she had been a victim of incest or sexual assault.
Later, Dad provided abortions in Nevada. Without naming names, he would tell us about conservative public figures who would thank him because he’d discreetly helped them when their mistresses or daughters became pregnant. He spoke with Mormon legislators who told him, “Gene, I don’t like the idea of abortion. But I hate the idea that the government should tell us what to do even more.”
Dad walked past picketers he knew by name to provide a medical service that was fundamental to his identity as a physician: to help his patients with one of the most difficult decisions of their lives. Protesters broke his clinic windows, threw stink bombs in the mail slot and put his name on a hit list. They assassinated one of his colleagues.
After he retired, Dad literally wrote the book on abortions ― “Surgical Abortion,” which helped train other physicians in safer, faster and less traumatic techniques that Dad developed after 1973. He reassured patients that the decision to have an abortion was not something to be stigmatized, but was rather a mature, courageous choice.
He used his famous humor to try to persuade abortion rights opponents ― most of whom were men ― of the implications of an unwanted pregnancy. His book has a section called “If a man could get pregnant,” where he put it this way: “If a man screwed up for one minute and as a result he swelled up for nine months, developed hemorrhoids, swollen…
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