1 Lizza, “The Abortion Capital of America.”
2 Carole Joffe’s Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade is an excellent account of doctors who risked everything to help women in need.
3 See Hoffman, “Isn’t It Enough To Make You Scream?”
4 Patient Power, which planted the seeds of the medical consumer movement, was far in advance of its time. It has taken years for the notion that patients have rights to take root in public consciousness, much less law, but recently that has begun to change. Second opinions have become generalized, alternative treatments are available, there are multiple patient advocacy groups, and doctors are rated on the Internet according to patient criteria. The New York State Department of Health has a set of guidelines called the “Patient Bill of Rights” requiring medical facilities to establish policies regarding the rights of patients and ensuring that all patients are informed of their rights and responsibilities. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) requirements protect patient privacy. The Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry was formed in 1997 to “advise the president on changes occurring in the health care system and recommend measures as may be necessary to promote and assure health care quality and value, and protect consumers and workers in the health care system.” As part of its work, Clinton asked the Commission to draft a “consumer bill of rights” (see “Consumer Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”). And in June of 2010 the Obama administration released the “Fact Sheet: The Affordable Care Act’s New Patient’s Bill of Rights” to help Americans navigate their health care coverage (“The Obama Administration’s New ‘Patient’s Bill Of Rights’”). In the case of doctors being gods, one could definitely make the argument that this particular god is dead.
5 Not long after, Rosie Jimenez, a twenty-seven-year-old single mother too poor to pay for the procedure at a private clinic, had an illegal and unsafe abortion. She became the first of many women to die as a result of the Hyde Amendment. At a 1979 meeting held by abortion rights leaders Gloria Steinem, Karen Mulhauser of NARAL, and Uta Landy of NAF, Ellen Frankfort, coauthor of Rosie: Investigation of a Wrongful Death, announced the formation of the Rosie Jimenez Fund, the first to provide direct subsidy for women seeking abortions without sufficient funds to pay for one.
6 As of today, there are only four states that voluntarily provide Medicaid funding for abortions.
7 This eventually became a double-edged sword as the state began to use the system of regulation and licensing to control and eliminate providers through TRAP laws (see chapter nine).
8 I went on to hold a second panel on women’s health in 1976. This one was sponsored by the Medical Group Council (Marty was the chairman) and titled “‘Challeng-ing the Medical Mystique’: How Can Consumers Influence the Health Care Delivery System?” May Lasker, Philip Strax, and Congressman Leo Zeferetti were participants.
9 Menstrual extraction is a method of self-help abortion that was developed and implemented by Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in 1971. It is a manually-operated suction technique using tubes and syringe that can be performed by lay people without medical expertise. Rothman and Downer called the technique ME to emphasize its innocuous use in suctioning out menstrual blood and tissue. ME was also considered an important tactical weapon in the abortion wars; if Roe were ever overturned, or states started to substantially restrict access, women would still be able to control their fertility.
10 Ross, “Abortion: Six Years After the Supreme Court Decision, The Conflict Rages On.”
11 Bellotti v. Baird was argued twice and ruled on after its 1979 hearing. The case involved a Massachusetts law that required minor girls seeking abortions to first obtain the consent of their parents, or a court order waiving that consent. The court’s eight-to-one decision in 1979 affirmed its previous ruling in Danforth, invalidating all state laws that require all minor girls to obtain their parents’ consent before getting an abortion. It gave states latitude to establish procedures to determine whether a girl is mature enough to make the decision. But it held that a pregnant minor is “entitled in such a proceeding to show either that she is mature enough and well enough informed to make her abortion decision, in consultation with her physician, independently of her parents’ wishes,” or that the abortion would be in her “best interest.”
12 FDA studies from the early eighties showed that of one hundred women who use aerosol foam alone, two to twenty-nine became pregnant in the first year; of those who used jellies and cream alone, four to thirty-six became pregnant.... When compared to the pill (two to three out of one hundred users became pregnant in a year), IUD (one to six) and the diaphragm (two to twenty, depending on proper use), the nonprescription spermicides seemed much less effective. (See Hoffman, “Birth Control: The Last Market That Needs Misleading Ads.”)
13 See Frances Kissling, “If War is ‘Just’, So is Abortion.” Also see Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous philosophical tract A Defense of Abortion (1971).
14 Erlanger, “A Widening Pattern of Abuse Exemplified in Steinberg Case.”
15 Faludi, Backlash.
16 Members included CARASA, Catholics for a Free Choice, Choices, NYS-NARAL, NOW-NYC, Planned Parenthood-NYC, Radical Women, Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, the Women’s Quarterly Review, Hunter College, the Puerto Rican Committee Against Racism, the Local 3882 AFT Organization of Asian Women, and Princeton University. Among many others, the individual members included Charlotte Bunch, Rhonda Copelon, Kate Millett, Grace Paley, Phyllis Chesler, Bella Abzug, and Ruth Messinger.
17 Benderly, “Feminists Fight Fundamentalist “Fetus Fetish”.
18 Ibid.
19 See Shelley, “A Sacrificial Light, Self-Immolation in Tajrish Square, Tehran,” for more on this subject.
20 Robin Morgan later hit this nail on the head with her book Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology.
21 Recipients of Diana Foundation grants included Andrea Dworkin, for her book Scapegoat; NOW of New York City; The House of Elder Artists (THEA); Community Health Care Network; Phyllis Chesler; and Edna Adan Ismail, director and founder of the Edna Adan University Hospital in Hargeisa and president of the Organization for Victims of Torture.
22 Karl Marx, from “Critique of the Gotha Program.”
23 Patrick Buchanan, one of the Republican candidates for President, told four hundred people at a New Jersey right-to-life convention that “the empire we are fighting is every bit the evil empire the Soviet Union was” (see Hoffman, “Abortion Providers: The New ‘Communists,’” in On the Issues).
24 I first met Norma McCorvey at the second national Pro-Choice March on Washington in 1989. She greeted me with a wan smile as activist lawyer Gloria Allred introduced her first as Norma McCorvey and then as “you know, Jane Roe.”
25 The New York Times, January 11, 1999: “GOLD-Martin, M.D., 80 years old, died the kind of death, in Fort Lau-derdale, Florida, on January 9, 1999, that he had always termed a ‘blessing’—one that came quickly and without great suffering. The lessons of his life can be measured by his achievements in the medical world and the gifts of loving compassion and generosity that he shared with all who knew him. As a physician, he practiced the art as well as the science of medicine, and his patients loved him for it. As a mentor, he inspired many young professionals to move beyond their limitations and live their dreams. As a man, he was honorable, honest, loving, witty, and kind. He will be deeply missed and very fondly remembered by his loving wife, Merle Hoffman . . .”