In 1973, Norma McCorvey, better known as Jane Roe, wished to terminate her pregnancy because she was unable to financially support a child. However, at the time, Texas law stated that it was illegal for women to receive an abortion unless it was to save the life of the mother. McCorvey sought the help of two Texas attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. Weddington and Coffee both believed women should have the right to choose whether or not their pregnancy would meet its term. This 7-2 court case ruled that a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy, under the freedom of personal choice in family matters, as protected by the 14th amendment. One particular group affected by this decision that is not commonly thought of is physicians. Through legal, financial, and moral impacts, the way that doctors treat and approach abortions have changed dramatically since Roe vs. Wade.
Before the supreme court decision, there were many situations where doctors were faced with the decision to perform abortion services, in which some, their choice of denial left them with unfavorable effects. In the 1950s and 1960s, many women were diagnosed with German measles, which could severely damage the developing fetus, with effects such as deafness, blindness, miscarriages and stillbirths. Because of this, thousands of women with German measles requested abortions, however many physicians refused to meet their wants and the legality of the abortion itself was unsure. Women filed lawsuits against the physicians for malpractice when severely harmed children of theirs were born.
Slowly, they began to realize that the choice to abort wasn’t theirs to make, however that would later be changed, giving doctors less voice in the decision. Obstetrician and gynecologist, Alan Guttmacher, referred to abortion as the “doctor’s dilemma.” Guttmacher and other physicians experienced this dilemma when faced with the choice of performing an abortion. The laws at the time before Roe v. Wade criminalized most abortionists and didn’t allow them to make the decision they thought best for the patient. Before the ruling, doctors had contradicting opinions about abortions. Guttmacher believed that doctors had the choice to oblige or deny patients’ wants, both based on the specific patient and their needs.
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Now, since abortions are legal, doctors can provide them with more affirmation. Before the ruling, the legal issue was much broader, but now with a doctor’s increased freedom to make decisions, the issue becomes much more specialized, such as the question of when life begins. Kenneth Edelin, a physician at Blue Cross Hospital in Massachusetts, was convicted of manslaughter in 1975, from a legal abortion that occured in 1973. The trial ran in 1975, with a charge against Edelin for killing a live baby. Flanagan, the prosecutor, said, “The action of the defendant,“ he explained, ”is that he allowed an independent human being, on its own systems, to remain in that particular environment [in Alice’s uterus, after he had separated the placenta] for at least three minutes. These actions caused the death of a viable, independent human being- either born or in the process of being born.”
Edelin’s defense attorney, William Homans, said, “Edelin engaged in a procedure which, in his best judgment as a physician, was sanctioned not only by good medical practice but also by the law” (Schoen). This case caused jurors and witnesses to ponder how the abortion imminently meant the death of a fetus. A juror said, “I said it often in there, that he [Edelin] was doing an operation, that it was a hard fact but this [the death of the fetus] was involved in the operation. This was completely unpersuasive to the jury.” (Schoen). In the end, evidence from images showed that the fetus was already a living, and fully functioning baby, meaning that Edelin was guilty of manslaughter. This case shows an example of one of the many externalities doctors faced after the legalization of Roe vs. Wade, and how different interpretations of the ruling led to increased legal repercussions on doctors, most often in negative ways.
Other than the legal impacts that physicians faced, the financial effects on doctors who performed abortions also changed greatly after Roe vs. Wade. The current U.S. average abortion doctor makes around $105,461 annually. That is 41% greater than the U.S. average household income, which is approximately $61,372 annually- according to the 2017 U.S. Household Income Census Bureau. Paying for services provided by these physicians is not an issue for the middle class. However, the funding for abortions for the lower income women, which makes up approximately 42% of all abortions, are regulated by the government. This results in each woman’s cost of abortion being different.
The cost varies depending on the type of facility, procedure, and anesthetic that is used. Additionally, the average amount that women pay now is $350 at an abortion clinic, and $500 at a physician’s office, according to the National Abortion Federation. Before Roe vs. Wade was passed, abortionists’ income was based on greed. They charged $1,000 or more for an abortion, significantly higher than what an operation of the same substance costs now (Joffe, Carole E.).
Since Roe vs. Wade, the legalization of abortions has resulted in an increase in people performing abortions and technology used to operate. Because of this increase in technology and the prevalence of abortions being more common, abortions are now more accessible to lower income women. This makes the cost of an abortion decrease, meaning that physicians who perform these operations earn less income. The financial effects that Roe vs. Wade are significant and caused major strides towards affordable abortion operations that we see now in the United States.
Morally, physicians who performed abortions before and after Roe vs. Wade have taken a turn. Before Roe vs. Wade, performing abortions was illegal everywhere in the United States. Because of this, women would go to great lengths to receive abortions, sometimes even getting abortions from criminal abortionists. A common term used for this group of people is the butcher. The term butcher is associated with these individuals because of how they treat their patients. These “doctors” often had medical degrees but lacked experience; they were mostly exploitative criminals, sometimes sexually abused their patients, and occasionally, because of their ineptness, the procedure would occasionally end fatally.
There were also a group of individuals- most without a medical degree- known as “physicians of conscience”. These doctors risked imprisonment and their medical license because of their compassion towards the women with unwanted pregnancies who faced an untenable situation and their vulnerability treatment by butchers. (Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe vs Wade). Because doing this was illegal, doctors would be given a choice- according to their own morals- whether they wanted to perform abortions and break the law or deciding that performing abortions was unjust. After the court case, Roe vs. Wade, since abortions have been made legal, performing them does not require doctors to risk much for themselves.
Nowadays, doctors are being asked more thought-provoking questions such when life begins. Science has not been able to answer this question. The answer to this question varies depending on the person and their morals. Some take the stance that a fetus nor an infant is considered a human being because it does not possess a consciousness of itself. Michael Tooley is a philosopher who describes his views about when life begins in the article ‘Abortion and Infanticide.’ Essentially he argues that performing an abortion in the first 6 weeks and killing the infant within a year of birth are really just the same thing. His argument was, one must be able to identify some moment where the moral status of the organism in question changes.
There is nothing inherent about birth that it should automatically be hailed as this defining moment. A more justified moment, Tooley argues, is the moment at which the human child gains consciousness. At this moment, not directly at birth, should the child be considered an actual person, entitled to all the rights, particularly the right to life, that human adults are entitled to (Tooley 1999).
A recent scandal with a doctor who had different morals was a court case with American former physician, Kermit Gosnell. He performed abortions way past the legal abortion time which was six weeks in the pregnancy, in Pennsylvania. He believed that infanticide should not be a crime. He had similar views to Michael Tooley- the philosopher- into believing that life should not begin until the child has gained full consciousness. (Journal of Medical Ethics 2014, David P. Lang). Now that abortions are legal, doctors begin to ask themselves more provocative questions based on their own morals.
The general public consistently overlooks the impacts of Roe vs. Wade on doctors. From moral, financial, and legal standpoints, the livelihoods of abortion doctors have dramatically changed from the court case when it was decided in 1973, to how we view them now. All of the experiences from these doctors, before and after Roe vs. Wade, show us the difficult history and the uncertain place that abortion services have had within the medical establishment as a whole and how these have changed today.
Works Cited
- Dudley, Susan. “Economics of Abortion.” National Abortion Federation, 2003
- Guzman, Gloria G. “Library.” Census Bureau QuickFacts, United States Census Bureau, 1 Oct. 2018, www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/acs/acsbr17-01.html.
- Higgins, Melissa, and Joseph W. Dellapenna. Roe V. Wade : Abortion and a Woman’s Right to Privacy. Abdo Publishing, 2013. EBSCOhost, proxygsu-scob.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=472126&site=eds-live&scope=site.
- Miller, Mark Crispen. “The Search for an Abortionist: The Classic Study of How American Women Coped with Unwanted Pregnancy Before Roe v. Wade.” Google Books, books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=s3mdAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT58&dq=before%2Broe%2Bvs%2Bwade&ots=LXizn23gGD&sig=cOpcJ6kuMv6ee_bbPZxg7D2sd6o#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- “Preface.” Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v. Wade, by Carole E. Joffe, Beacon Press, 1995, pp. Vii-viii. https://books.google.com/books?id=WSHH2jzmYEQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
- Reagan, Leslie J. “Rashes, Rights, and Wrongs in the Hospital and in the Courtroom: German Measles, Abortion, and Malpractice before Roe and Doe.” Law & History Review, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 2009, pp. 241–279. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1017/S0738248000002017
- Schoen, Johanna. Abortion After Roe : Abortion After Legalization. The University of North Carolina Press, 2015 .EBSCOhost,proxygsu-scob.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=978167&site=eds-live&scope=site.
- Tooley, Michael. “Bioethics.” Google Books, 1983, books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=S2dcCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA23&dq=%22Abortion%2Band%2BInfanticide&ots=o69jb5aaI-&sig=FhWwKuMG6OZYVbGCAB9WyMYfRsA#v=onepage&q&f=false.
