cover image Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade

Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade

Carole Joffe. Beacon Press (MA), $24 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-2100-2

Despite the lingering image of ``back-alley butchers'' performing abortions in the era before the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized the procedure, not all doctors who provided abortion were incompetent or greedy. Joffe, a sociology professor at UC-Davis, interviewed 45 doctors--35 men, 10 women--who either performed illegal abortions or engaged in related activities such as providing backup medical services to patients and campaigning for legalization. She found her respondents to be competent, caring and motivated by conscience and compassion for women with unwanted pregnancies. The doctors' experience prior to Roe convinced them of the imperative need for legalization, and in the years after 1973, they not only faced harassment from the antiabortion movement but also engaged in a broader struggle--hospitals yielding to antiabortion pressure and shutting down services, hostile landlords, isolation and stigmatization within the medical community. Today some 84% of U.S. counties lack abortion facilities. Joffe's urgent report outlines the role the medical community could play in improving abortion services. (Dec.)