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Big Blue Book No. 474
                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST
                               by
                          Martin Avery
                         (non de plume)

     Intimate Sidelights on the Secret Human, Sorrow, Drama and
Tragedy in the Experience of a Doctor Whose Profession It Is To
Perform Illegal Operations.
                              1939

                     Haldeman-Julius Company
                     GIRARD  -- : --  KANSAS

                     1. EARLY DAYS AND IDEAS

     Sometimes I find myself thinking wistfully of the days when I
was young and sure of myself and my future, when I thought the
solid ground under my feet was a foundation for an air castle and
when right and wrong were very definite things, and black was black
and white was white and I would have nothing to do with gray.

     I had no such regrets, of course, when first I gloated
childishly over the neat little black and gold sign that announced
to the world that Martin Avery was a doctor of medicine and ready
to practice. I admired my small library of medical textbooks, my
shiny surgical instruments and I repeated over and over the
sonorous words of the oath I had taken. Much has happened to me
since then, much that I somehow feel compelled to put on paper.
Perhaps even after these years I want to prove that in my way I
have tried to be faithful to my youthful ideas.

     So this is a human-interest document designed to show troubled
women that they have companions in distress, I shall not clutter it
up with medical terms. I have no patience with doctors who think
they must sprinkle Latin in every sentence and generally talk as
though they were dictating a highly technical article for a medical
journal. I am not trying to be impressive nor am I trying to
preach. This book might be called "Sidelights on Tragedy." If it
will make a few less persons look disdainful or horrified at the
word "abortion," I will have succeeded in my purpose.

     I must have been a somewhat priggish Sir Galahad when I was
graduated from medical school. I saw myself curing the world of
nice, respectable diseases like measles and smallpox and perhaps
halting epidemics by quickness of thought or saving a rich man's
life by my miraculous skill as a surgeon.

     I had lived a fairly clean life, almost unbelievably clean it
seems to me now. But then I never had much money. My people were
farmers. That accounted for part of my pride. I thought Myself
mighty smart to be going up a rung in the ladder, from peasant to
professional man. Sometimes I thought it would be nice if I had a 
physician father to take me in with him and a long line of medical
ancestor's to give me an honorable tradition. But at the same time 
my egotism fed itself on the thought that I was the first of my
family to have guts and ambition and brains enough to escape the
soil for a white-collar profession.

     I liked to hear my mother refer proudly to "My son, the
doctor," and I liked to strut around in front of the neighbors. To
be sure, the white collar and the shiny instruments and even the
neat little office were mortgaged to my father, whose dirt-
encrusted hands had earned the money that sent me through school.
But I had visions of grateful patients showering me with gold. I
was an idealist in those days and I had plenty of illusions, too.

     The sad thing about my office was that it stayed empty as did
likewise my purse. I angled after connections as hotel physician,
and I tried to get a job as a city clinic doctor; but I had no
political pull, and, being a farm boy, no influence in any other
lines. Most of my few patients had little money and came to me
because they believed I would be cheap.

     So for a while I pursued my honorable profession by lancing a
few boils, prescribing for a few bad hangovers, treating a child
for a nail wound, issuing headache pills to a woman who went from
doctor to doctor seeking an audience for her complaints and dishing
out enough medicine for common colds to stock a drug store. I was
so anxious to display all my knowledge that I went in for complete
examinations no matter how trifling the complaint, tried to look
wise, clucked thoughtfully and shook my head.

     At times I wished to high heaven that I lived in England,
where I could buy a steady practice and not have to sit in my
office reading and re-reading medical journal's and wondering if
I'd soon lose any surgical skill I possessed for lack of practice.

     It amuses me now to recall how I felt when I first treated a
house girl who had gonorrhea. I treated the girl, and then gave her
a lecture in which, as I recall, I told her that because of my oath
I would protect her secret but that she was running a horrible
risk. I know now that she must have been choking with laughter, but
at the time I thought that she was mightily impressed. And I felt
quite the man of the world. In fact, I made up some impressive --
to me -- thoughts about how my profession brought me in contact
with the dregs of the world and how it was up to me to maintain my
purity of thought in spite of all the depravity I was forced to
see. I meant to deliver these noble sentiments to a pure sweet girl
whenever my practice grew enough that I could afford to seek this
marvelous woman who would be chosen as my wife.

     I still had this holier-than-thou attitude when a very pretty
blonde came to see me. She looked like a "nice girl," and this
shocked me all the more when she told me, in a frightened way, that
she was "caught" and she wanted an abortion. Her father was dead,
and she lived with her mother and her brother, a prominent
businessman in the town. I had heard of the girl as a well-known
college student and a gay member of the younger set. She was not a
social luminary, but she was a class ahead of me.

                               2

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     I made the finger examination and there was no doubt that she
was pregnant -- about two months along. She wanted a
"prescription," she said. She was ignorant about such things, but
a friend had told her that for a few dollars she could buy some
medicine that would cause a miscarriage.

     It seems odd to realize that I was shocked about this. I had
heard of girls who were "knocked up" and did something about it.
There had been plenty of such gossip in the farming community where
I had lived, and I'd heard methods of causing crude abortions
discussed among the medical students. In fact, I knew one medical
student who worked his way through his senior year as an
abortionist among the lower classes of the university town. He had
told me something about the method he had used, but I had paid
little attention and had disapproved of the whole business.

     I was stern and righteous with this girl and asked her why she
did not marry the man.

     She burst into tears. "I can't," she said.

     "Is he married?" I asked.

     She shook her head.

     "Engaged to another man?" I asked. Those were the only two
reasons that my mid-Victorian mind could conceive why any man would
refuse to marry her.

     "No," she said, "but he says that it is my fault. And I guess
it is. He asked me if I were doing anything about this, and I
suppose I was a fool, for I said that I was. I didn't know anything
to do. I asked a girl I know, and she told me to take a douche
anytime within 24 hours."

     Dumb as I was, I was shocked at this ignorance. Bit by bit she
unfolded a story that was new and pitiful to me then but which I
have heard so often since that I can supply it before the girl
opens her mouth.

     Katherine, as I shall call her, had fallen in love with a man
about seven years older than herself, a bachelor businessman. She
had gone absolutely crazy about him.

     The man was the sort who likes sexual freedom and gets panicky
at the thought of marriage. He had given Katherine a big rush, for,
of all reasons, her look of wholesomeness. He had said that she had
a "wholesome attitude" toward sex. As a matter of fact, she was too
deeply infatuated to have any definite attitude except to agree
with everything he said. A man's idea of a wholesome attitude
toward sex usually is one that leaves him absolutely free, while a
woman's idea is one that leads inevitably toward marriage.

     Because she wanted to appear worldly-wise, she denied being a
virgin. I was astounded to hear that, but I learned afterward that
a great many young girls do the same thing. Frequently they
themselves cannot explain why. Almost invariably, it is when they 
are having affairs with older men. They seem to believe that the
man will wonder why they have not had affairs before and will think
less of them. So they try to disguise their awkwardness and
ignorance; and since many athletic girls do not have hymens, the
man does not find it out.

     Katherine had talked vaguely about an imaginary previous
affair. She seemed to think that it would make her more interesting
if the man believed she was sexually experienced and had been
desired before. "A lot of men had made overtures to me," she told
me. "but I had managed to evade them. I knew that Don had had a lot
of affairs and told him some lies so he wouldn't think I was quite
so dumb."

     This, of course, released the man from any feeling of
responsibility and had also made him think that she knew about
contraceptives and could take care of herself. And she was too
inexperienced to know whether he was protecting her. It was an
example of the dangers of innocence and where ignorance was not
bliss.

     Naturally, when she did not insist that the man use
contraceptives, he omitted them. She told me that when she learned
she was pregnant, she had explained the situation to him and he had
advised her to go to a doctor. But I think now that she lied. A lot
of girls are overwhelmed with false modesty in such circumstances
and will go instead to girls as inexperienced as they are. Having
pretended to be worldly-wise, they are caught in a web of their own
lies.

     This girl was not as stupid as she seems in this narrative.
She had sense enough to realize just what type of man she loved.
Apparently he had made it plain that he did not intend to marry her
and he expected her to take her full share of the responsibility in
this affair. She couldn't tell her mother because mother was the
type who would "rather See her daughter in her grave" than have an
abortion and she probably would try to force the man into a shotgun
marriage. Katherine was sensible enough to see that the man would
evade this, or if he married her, would hate her for the trick.
Too, since she had lied to him about her virginity, she had thrown
away that hold.

     So she had gone to a girl friend and the girl had said
something about a mysterious medicine that would cause her to
resume menstruation. Then she had come to me, for, of all reasons,
the fact that she did not know me and I was new in town. She did
not want to go to her family doctor or any physician whom she knew.

     It was a case of the blind going to the blind. I was horrified
and told her that, of course, I could not perform an abortion I had
heard about some of the drastic medicines given in such cases and
I warned her against them. I told her that I could go to prison for
doing what she wanted, and I was against such things personally. I
probably sounded fierce, for I was afraid someone would find out
that she'd been to me with such a request, and I feared even that
would get me into trouble.

                               4

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     She left me a great deal more frightened than when she
arrived. I had told her that no decent doctor would perform an
abortion. And I had scared her pretty badly about using any home
devices. Also I'd added a little homily on her 'sins. I should have
been shot, but I felt righteous about the whole business. She had
some money. She'd been teaching school and saved several hundred
dollars and she offered me the whole sum if I would get her out of
the jam. I needed the money, but I felt a virtuous glow over
turning it down. I was living up to medical ethics. I was being a
good citizen and an honorable physician.

     So she went away, and I settled back in my empty office and
read medical journals and old magazines and treated a few persons
who came in with colds and indigestion.

     The next day her name leaped at me from the front page of the
daily newspaper. Her body had been found on the doorstep of her
home, at one o'clock that morning, by her brother as he was
returning from a dance. She had shot herself, and she died in the
ambulance on the way to, the hospital.

     The newspaper account said she had resigned her position as a
teacher because of a nervous breakdown culminating when she fainted
in the class room. Her relatives had noticed that she seemed very
nervous, refused to eat and was unable to sleep at night. They had
tried, without success, to arouse her interest in social life. She
had left no note -- just gone out in the yard and shot herself with
her brother's revolver.

     There followed several paragraphs telling how prominent and
popular she had been in school, how she had a promising future as
a teacher. Her family was. grief-stricken.

     It shook me pretty badly. I tried to console myself by saying
that she had not threatened suicide to me, that I was within my
rights, in refusing to help her, and it was unfair of her to ask me
to risk my future by performing an illegal operation.

     But I kept seeing that description of her. "She was a pretty
blonde girl. College mates described her as always being full of
fun and active in all school enterprises." She had belonged to
several clubs. I wondered which sorority sister had advised her to
"get a prescription."

     I wondered how her lover felt. I was filled with sudden hatred
for him, taking this young girl easily and selfishly and ruining
her life, talking to her glibly about her "wholesome attitude
toward sex." Now she was dead, and innuendoes would be whispered
about her nervous condition and her fainting spells and her lack of
appetite and her insomnia. Her relatives would feel bad about it.
It might even ruin their lives, too. Of course, her puritanical
relatives were partly to blame. Had they been more tolerant, they
would have helped her. It was her own fault, too, for being so
careless. She had trusted people and life too much. She had been
too confident in the decency of others.

                               5

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     In the back of my head there was a nagging thought that I,
too, was to blame. I might have found someone else to help her. I
might have made arrangements. I was not so stupid that I did not
know of a doctor whose legitimate practice was small but who, drove
around in a big car with a chauffeur and had plenty of money. It
was common talk that he did a lot of illegal operations. He was a
pretty good surgeon, too.

     It was all a mess, and I resented being dragged into it, and
being made to feel guilty over the death of a strange girl.


                      II. MY FAMILY SPEAKS

     I went out in the country to see my family every Sunday. This
meant that I got a good meal and my depressed spirits were helped
by my mother's soothing prediction that soon her boy's practice
would pick up.

     The next Sunday the conversation happened to turn to the
suicide of Katherine J--.

     "The poor girl," my mother said. "Sounds like she was in the
family way."

     She clucked her tongue sympathetically. "I wish you had seen
her," she said. "If she'd come to you, you could have sent her to
old Ma Gooding, the one folks call Feather Sally, because she uses
a goose feather. Lots of good doctor's send patients to Feather
Sally, and she's never lost a one. Good money she makes, too."

     I was shocked.

     "She did come to me," I said indignantly, "waving her money in
my face as if I were a quack she could buy with a few hundred
dollars. But I refused to have anything to do with it. That's a
prison offense."

     My mother looked at me queerly. "And it's no prison offense to
drive a girl to suicide?" she asked.

     "It was her own lookout," I said, "She couldn't expect me to
risk my future with a criminal operation in order to get her out of
a jam."

     "If you keep on turning down hundred-dollar fees, it doesn't
look as if you're going to have much future," my father said dryly.
"The drought hit us pretty bad son, and we're needing money out
here, too. Doesn't pay to be too choosy about how you earn it. Old
Doc Kennedy over at Clear Creek makes plenty of money that way.
Specializes in it. You'd be surprised to know the names of some of
his patients, too."

     I felt like a badgered animal. It was not until years later
that I realized that only youth is moral in the accepted way. Youth
judges more severely and expects more rigid living up to standards.
Old age is more tolerant; it has learned to compromise and give
only lip-service to awkward convention.

                               6

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     And like most youths I had the idea that my parents were very
strict. It was a shock, now that they had admitted me to adulthood,
to learn some of their views.

     "Folks call it murder," sniffed my mother. "Ain't hardly
nothing more'n a germ at first. Ain't no more murder than doin'
something aforehand to keep from having children. As far as that
goes, it ain't really no more murder than bein' an old maid and not
havin' nothin' to do with man at all. If you want to argue, you can
always say that every woman could bear a child, and it's murder if
She don't do it. Talk about the child's right to be born! The child
ain't saying nothin' about it. How do all these preacher's know the
child wants to be born. I've seen some cases where if the child
knew what was coming to him afterward he wouldn't want to be born.
Her voice softened. "Poor unwanted little mites. No money and no
name and not much chance in the world."

     "It was a case of professional ethics, mother," I said. "Of
course, quack doctors do a lot of underhanded business. And
probably they risk the girl's life by crude methods. But good
doctors avoid such things."

     "Maybe," 'sniffed my mother.

     "Some of these days the laws may be changed," I said, "and
birth-control methods and abortions may be legalized. But until
then, I must obey my oath and abide by the medical code."

     This did not impress my parents. Country people are not much
in favor of laws. Laws to them mean disagreeable taxes, game laws
which preserve the quail and ducks for the benefit of city folks
who swarm over the land, shooting at everything that appears on the
horizon, foreclosing of mortgages and other unpleasant
interferences with their lives.

     "Human beings come before laws," my mother said. "Some of
these laws are made by folks who want to kick others in the gutter
so's to make themselves seem higher up. I ain't never had no use
for such folks. Pull themselves up by pushing others down. I've
known some mighty good women who had convenient miscarriages and
women who were in trouble and later on made fine marriages and good
wives."

     She sighed. "If I'd known that poor girl, maybe I could have
told her something to do. They're more ways of killing a cat than
choking it with butter."

     My father laughed. "Ma could tell her," he said. "She'd have
had her jumping off porches and riding houses and merry-go-rounds
and climbing up and down stairs and taking hot baths and purgatives
and God knows what all."

     My mother smiled. "That's all right for you," she said. "Many
a time you've been thankful I wasn't so green."

                               7

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     "I never could stand to see a poor young girl bringin' a
fatherless babe into the world," my mother went on. "Of course, 
sometimes they love the children just as much as if they were born
in wedlock and sometimes they make good marriages later on. But the
run of folks are hard on them, and it's bad trying to live down
your mistakes."

     My father, however, was more upset by the idea that I had let
a hundred or so dollars slip out of my hands because of ethics.

     "It's dangerous," I said. "Suppose I'd done a bad job and
she'd died because of the operation. Her folks would claim that I
murdered her."

     "She killed herself anyhow, didn't she?" my father said.
"Looks to me like it's six of one and a half-dozen of the other."

     It was a relief for me to get back to my bare room in a cheap
Lodging house in the city. My pleased glow of virtue had departed,
and I remembered the boy who had worked his way through school with
abortions and a young interne who frankly had announced that he
meant to specialize in illegal operations.

     "They're the easiest way for a young doctor to get started,"
he had said. "And they're no more dangerous than, performing any
other operations. I'll wait until I get a little money saved and
then I'll be respectable. It takes money to be high and mighty."

     Some nagging prick of conscience forced me to go to Katherine
J's funeral. I eyed her weeping relatives with scorn. A little of
the love they were parading in public would have saved the girl's
life if they had exercised it in private. Some of the money that
went into the flower's, the elaborate coffin, the big monument,
could have sent the girl away on a "vacation" and brought her back
whole in body, and presently her heart would be healed. Later on,
I was to learn that while broken hearts cannot be cured by a
doctor, a little surgical or medical aid for the by-products helps
along a lot.

     Since then I've seen many girls, who were as tragic in speech
as Katherine, laugh about the whole episode a year later. By then
they had put it down as a valuable lesson and forgotten the horror
and fear they first felt.

     After the funeral, I drifted into a coffee shop and
encountered a doctor I admired.

     "You look low," he remarked.

     "I've been to a funeral," I said, and gave the girl's name.

     He nodded. "Nasty business. I suppose it's the old story."
"Yes," I looked at him. "I guess you see plenty of them," I went
on.
                               8

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     "Not so many now," he said. "I get about two patients a year
who want abortions. I got more of them when I first started to 
practice. I guess they thought that, being a young doctor, I'd need
the money. But luckily I made money from the start. I had plenty of
friends, and so I didn't need to take the risk."

     "What do you do about the ones who come to you now?" I blurted
out.

     He gave me a keen glance. "Give them an examination and tell
them whether they're really pregnant. Chances are they're only
delayed by something. Up until three months, it's not easy to tell,
especially with the finger examination."

     This, it might be added, was before the rabbit test was widely
used. Nowadays it is possible to tell immediately by injecting
urine, into the rabbit and examining its ovaries 36 hour's later.

     "Then," the doctor went on, "I say nothing more unless the
Patient obviously is ignorant of anything to do, I may drop a hint
about the proper doctor to go to. Usually I don't do this, because
most people have ways of finding that out for themselves. However,
of course you know that some doctors make a good deal of money with
such recommendations and split fees. If I do drop a hint, I make
sure that I can trust the doctor."

     "It's a problem," I said frankly, "I've been wondering what to
do about such business. People come to me for medical aid and I
have to refuse treatment. We are permitted to treat venereal
diseases and we can be called in after miscarriage --"

     He grinned. "Of course. You know the stock alibi. You were
called in, and it was obvious that something had been done to cause
a partial abortion and your aid was needed to save the girl's life.
As soon as the uterus is punctured or the fetus is expelled, the
abortion is a fact. No one can prove anything against you as long
as you and the patient keep mum."

     "Understand," he went on. "I'm not taking sides. I'm not the
type of doctor that crusades for birth-control legislation. A
successful doctor -- of my variety -- can't afford to. I admire the
kind of doctor who does -- but he usually doesn't make any money.
Whenever anyone asks me, I give them what birth-control data I can,
which isn't much. Anyhow, they probably won't follow instructions."

     "Maybe the laws will be changed," I suggested.

     "I'm not very hopeful about legislative reform," he said. "In
my opinion, the whole business will work out for itself.
Information will be spread more widely. To me, it seem's better to
send a girl to a good surgeon than to let her get an infection by
going to a quack or trying some crude home method. I knew one poor
girl whose sweetheart kicked her in the abdomen and almost killed
her."

     "Of course," I said weakly. "It's the women's fault."

                               9

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     "I blame the men more. Some of these men are just like
animals. They don't give a damn what happens to the woman. They may
know all about contraceptives; but they don't want to use them, and
some of them think it's fun to fool the woman. But even those men
aren't so bad as the ones who carry disease and won't warn the girl
or take any precautions. A girl may escape pregnancy but she'll
probably get a dose. I'd Like to see all venereal-disease carriers
quarantined or branded. And if they're incurable, they ought to be
sterilized or shut up."

     I grinned to myself. The doctor, in spite of his suave
exterior, was like all good doctors, a bit of a crusader when you
got him on his pet subject.

     "They send habitual criminals to prison," he went on. "But a
man can get dose after dose of a disease and remain at large. He's
just as dangerous, if not more so, to the community than a habitual
burglar. He's worse, in my opinion. A burglar only rob's people
who've got plenty of dough. But a man probably will give a dose to
some poor dumb girl who hasn't sense or money enough to get proper
treatment, and she may die or be ruined for life. Reformers talk
about sterilization of criminals and the insane, but I'm in favor
of sterilization of any man who's had a disease more than twice. A
man can get a dose once without really being to blame. But if he's
got any sense, he takes care of himself after that."

     He seemed to weary of the subject then, and I went home a
mighty thoughtful young doctor. I'd been so busy passing exams and
skimping along on my allowance that I'd never gone in for many bull
session's. Anyhow, a lot of the stuff that we talked at medical
school seemed haywire now. I'd gone around with a bunch of young
idealists who talked about being second Pasteur's and great
surgeons and doing good for humanity and in the back of my mind I'd
always seen myself saving a millionaire's life and bringing young
beauties back from sure death by tuberculosis.

     But I was getting rid of my fancy ideas mighty fast.

                       III. I TAKE A CASE

     Two or three days after my talk with the old doctor, a well
dressed man came into my office.

     "There'll be a girl up here pretty soon for treatment for
gonorrhea," he said bluntly. "I'm paying for it. She's a dumb cluck
who got mixed up with one of my employees. He won't pay for it, but
something had to be done for the girl, and I told her I'd have her
cured if she wouldn't see him again.' You fix her up and send me
the bill. I don't want to give the girl the money because she might
spend it on something else or quit after one treatment. See that
she's clean, but if she comes back with another dose I won't be
responsible for any more bills."

     He gave me his card and the girl's name. He was managing
editor of one of the local newspapers.

                               10

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     "See if you can get any sense into her head," he added. "I
don't want any more trouble with her."

     He went out then, looking irritated, and I grinned. I figured
it was one of those "A-friend-of-mine" stories in which the
personal pronoun is soon brought into play. I wondered a little why
he told such a clumsy lie.

     But when the girl came in, half-frightened, half-angry, I
learned his story was the truth.

     One of the reporters had seduced the girl, whom I shall call
June. She was a pretty business-college student, dumb but
attractive in a virginal fashion. It may have been that very docile
innocence that attracted the man. He played around with a
sophisticated, hard-drinking crowd and it probably was, amusing to
find a girl who didn't know the ropes, didn't drink, didn't smoke,

     June, on the other hand, had heard about Jim, the reporter,
and she was fascinated by his reputation as a dapper man-about-
town. Jim was a handsome and entertaining scoundrel. He said that
he did not know she was a virgin until he had already started the
sex act. This may have been true, but it did not stop him then.

     Afterward, he either was conscience-stricken or decided that
it was dangerous to play around with her. Innocence may be
dangerous not only to the girl but to the man. At any rate, he did
not see her for about a month.

     But June was seized by the crazy infatuation which many young
girls feel for their first lovers. She telephoned Jim, she wrote
him notes asking why he was angry with her, what had she done? She
wept. She reminded him that, although a virgin, she had gone to bed
with him.

     Jim told his boas that he firmly intended to stay away from
June. Whether he was deeply attracted and some remnants of chivalry
motivated his refusal to see her or whether she bored him, I don't
know. But in the meantime he had been playing around with girls
equally dumb but not so innocent, and he got gonorrhea. He was
forced to tell his wife and to refrain from any intercourse with
her. But apparently his scruples did not apply to the young girl he
had seduced, for he went back to her. She got the disease and the
whole thing began again with the girl pursuing the reporter and
asking for medical treatment. The badgered newsman had gone to his
editor for sympathy.

     But his editor cursed him and told him to do something to keep
June from calling the office and coming down to the newsroom. Jim
refused, saying that he didn't have the money and anyhow the girl
had been with plenty of other men since he first seduced her.
Whether this was true, I do not know. It may have been. Frequently
girls who have just lost their virginity become promiscuous if
their first lovers desert them.

                               11

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     Such girls seem to feel that since, they have lost their much-
guarded chastity it doesn't make much difference what they do and 
they weakly succumb to any man who comes along. It takes some time
for the girls to recover their emotional balance and become
discriminating. June denied that she had been with any other men.
And Jim admitted that he was diseased when he was with her.

     So the editor went to June and agreed to pay for her
treatments if she would promise never to see any of his reporters
again. She was grateful but at the same time she was a little
indignant about it. The editor had not minced words in describing
her lover, and she resented being forced to face the fact that
there was no romance in her seduction. She wanted the treatments,
but at the same time she would have liked to save her vanity.

     Since then, I have noticed the same traits in many girls. They
will try to find excuses for their first lovers, and say that it
"wasn't all his fault." They generally have remarkably few
illusion's about later lovers, but they want a little glamour over
the first affair.

     One intelligent girl talked to me about it. "It's a matter of
vanity for women to lie to themselves about their sweethearts," she
remarked. "The worst thing about breaking up an affair is that I
finally have to admit to myself that I have been kidding myself all
along. You see, I know that I am only an average girl and therefore
will attract only an average man. I know there are exceptions, and
sometimes you see a fine man absolutely crazy about a very
commonplace girl. But I, of course, have an ideal man in mind.
Whenever a man falls in love with me, I try to see my ideal
characteristics in him and I exaggerate those I do find. I try to
convince myself and my friends that he's a better man than he is.
When we break up, I have to see him as himself. That hurts, because
it shows me that I'm not attractive enough to get the sort of man
I want and hold him."

     But to go back to June. I sent my bill in to the editor and he
paid it promptly. June's spirits grew better as her cure
progressed. This time I gave no lecture on morals. Instead I tried
to teach her a few principles of hygiene.

     "Listen," I said, when I had pronounced her cured, "there is
no Santa Claus in this sex business, even if your case does look
like it. You were darned lucky. There are not many men who would do
for you what this editor did. It wasn't for the good of his soul,
either. He couldn't afford to have one of his men in a jam. So
don't go around expecting good Samaritans to yank you out of the
gutter. And don't try to get out of your class. You thought it was
romantic to have a love affair with a social butterfly, a dashing
columnist. But look what happened. A stranger got you out of your
jam. He did it because you were making a nuisance of yourself. If
you'd been in this guy's class, he would have taken more
precautions. He didn't give his wife a dose, but he figured you
didn't count. And to him you didn't. So you play in your own back
yard."
                               12

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     She nodded. Later she married a clerk and they have three or
four kids. I don't know whither she ever told him about her first
affair. If she was smart, she didn't.

     The editor was pleased, because she kept away from his men And
two or three weeks later he sent me an abortion. This time didn't
quibble, I did it.

                   IV. WHY I AM AN ABORTIONIST

     Since then I've performed hundreds of abortions and when I did
all the work I've had no fatalities. Of course, I've been called in
on bungled jobs when it was too late; there was infection or a
hemorrhage and death was a matter of hours.

     I have changed from the surgical operation, in which the womb
was scraped, to use of heat, bacteria and exercise to cause a
natural premature birth with very little danger. I discarded the
finger test for the rabbit test of pregnancy. My prices went up as
the danger went down.

     I don't regret the fact that I have risked prison terms
constantly. As I went up the financial scale, I tried to use more
discrimination and to work for the sake of humanity. I have refused
to abort young society women who merely wanted to save their
figures, who shrank from the responsibilities of children. I have
turned away young women who could afford to marry and who I felt,
should mate legally and carry on the race. I have seen women whom
I felt needed children to make their lives fuller and who were
merely lazy or afraid of pain. And I have performed operations
later regretted by the women when they wanted children and for some
reason could not have them. That has made me more careful.

     I am not bragging that I really made the world better. I am an
older man now and a little tired and a bit inclined to be cynical.
Perhaps all these things would have worked out anyhow. But I
believe that I have saved valuable members of the race from
disgrace or from suicide, that I have kept families from being
wrecked. And I have not had a repeat case in years,

     The reformers argue that we must pay for our sins. But I do
not know that I agree with their definition of sin. There are times
when our instincts are too strong for us. There are accidents.
There are many cases in which it does not seem to me that I should
judge. I do not believe in populating the world with unwanted
children. I do not like to see the women suffer when the man
escapes without even blame. If there is some disease or some taint
of insanity, I do not believe in allowing the child to be born. And
if the birth of the child is going to wreck even one adult life, it
seems to me kinder to stop it. The people who yell "child murder"
have almost invariably never been faced with the problem.

     Criminologists say that crime is caused by children being born
into families where they have no opportunity for proper upbringing.
The children turn to stealing to get money for luxuries, even
necessities. They run in the streets because they have no
playgrounds. Their minds are warped in childhood. I believe it to 
be an act of crime prevention to halt any such children coming into
the world with the stigma of illegitimacy and a mother who is going
to have a much harder time making a living after the child is born.

     I am always irritated when I hear politicians talk about as
being the only land of equal opportunity. It isn't. Illegitimate
children had far better chances in the medieval days when "natural"
sons and daughters were the "natural" thing.

     I have never been in favor of forced marriages. In this
complex world the married couple starts out with enough problems
without being handicapped by an unwanted child and probably
unwanted mates.

     A great many cases have been like that of poor June, who fell
in love with a married man of a class slightly superior to her own.
Had she been slightly above him socially, the chances are that the
man would have obtained a divorce and married her. At least he
would have given her much better treatment. I get many girls who
have had affairs with their employer's, either married or
unmarried. The men do not want to marry them. Frequently they blame
the girl, for a great many men seem to think that it is up to the
girl to protect herself.

     I have heard men who considered themselves ethical in sexual
matters say that they believe the women should protect themselves.
Some of them excuse this by saying that women cannot trust the men
and so they must get accustomed to taking their own precautions.
Others frankly admit that they will not use anything that
interferes with their pleasure.

     A fellow doctor, one high in his profession and a man who
gives birth-control advice to his patients, once told me that he
received his pleasure from the thought of the risk.

     "If my wife is even a week pregnant, my pleasure is gone," he
said. "And I wouldn't touch a woman if I knew she was using any
sort of protective device. Man is still primitive enough to want
copulation for conception."

     He might have added that man is still primitive enough to want
to shirk all responsibility for the act and perhaps civilized
enough to regret any consequences.

     For these reasons I advise my women patients to take their own
precautions. One girl told me that she was shocked when her lover
asked her if she never used any contraceptive devices. He had made
love to her several times and she thought that he was protecting
her. She came to me for a pregnancy test. Fortunately she was all
right. But she was indignant and disgusted with the man.

     "I thought he was a swell fellow," she said. "I'd had only one
love affair and then the man took care of everything and I supposed
this man would do the same. He's shocked now because I won't see
him any more. But I hate to ask him to do anything and I'm afraid 
to risk dating him unless this is arranged beforehand. Suppose I
get a little tight? Anyhow, I can't carry around a medical kit when
I go on a date. And it's more awkward for the girl to do such
things than for the boy."

     She laughed a little self-consciously. "It sounds silly to
talk about modesty at a time like this. But these affairs usually
aren't deliberately planned. It's one thing for a man and girl to
have a steady affair and go to a hotel room with a private bath or
to an apartment where they can have everything handy. It's quite
another thing to go to a dance and have a hot petting scene on the
way back. I take this business seriously and I'm not promiscuous.
I don't mean that I've got matrimony in my eye all the time, but if
I let a man "make" me I mean for this to be an affair of fairly
long duration and I'm fond of the man. But there has to be a first
time for it; and I'm not sure when that's coming and maybe I won't
get an opportunity to protect myself. Girls in an excited emotional
state aren't noted for using their heads."

     "And another thing," she continued. "My generation may sound
hard-boiled and as if we knew what it was all about. But most of my
girl friends are pretty dumb about sex. We think we're smart
because we keep a few college boys from "making" us. And we joke
about the trade names of contraceptives, but you'd be surprised how
little practical knowledge most young girls have. A girl told me
the other day that she'd die of shame before she'd go to a doctor
and ask him about feminine hygiene. I told her that she might die
of shame if she didn't. There are a lot of jokes about how a girl
can't be raped, but if she's a little tight she hasn't got much
resistance. And most girls get panicky when they find themselves in
a difficult situation."

     The answer to all this of course would be that a girl who
can't take care of herself shouldn't take a drink and shouldn't go
out with men she can't trust. But at the same time it seems to me
that men would find it easier and better to use a little
discretion. Where do they expect the girls to get any knowledge of
birth Control? Their mothers certainly aren't going to tell them --
not if they're nice girls. The girls are afraid to ask a doctor.
The other girls they know are just as dumb. They can't believe the
advertisements they read -- if they do they'll probably get caught,
either because they don't follow the direction's or because the
stuff isn't any good. They may ruin themselves with too strong
douches or they may trust some preparation applied too long before
or too long after the sex act.

     Anyhow, the girl usually wants this whole business sentimental
and glamorous. She wants to be swept off her feet. Otherwise she
feels a little guilty about it. So she doesn't precede her moment
of grand passion with a questionnaire on hygiene. Furthermore, the
inexperienced girl has no way of knowing whether she can trust a
man. Usually she finds out that she can't when it's too late.

     A lot of the fault lies with young boys who got their first
sex experiences with older women who knew enough to guard
themselves, or with prostitutes. From the talk of youths who come
into my office, I've decided that they don't have sense enough to
take care of themselves let alone protect the girl. They're not 
bothered by false modesty, but a lot of them think it's smart to
fool the girls, either by lying to them or using some cheap trick
to make their precautions useless. The older men have more sense,
but some of them are selfish and not much concerned with protecting
a girl, or they find it hard to believe that a young woman can be
ignorant of matters so vital to her.

     I haven't any answer to the problem. Gradually hygiene classes
are becoming more liberal, but they still fall far short of what is
necessary. Doctors do what they can, but we can't go from house to
house instructing girls and boys. Like lawyers, we're usually
called in when the damage has been done. I'd like to see all high
school students given compulsory sex education.

     One doctor I know says that there should be a stiff penalty
for spreading venereal disease. I asked him how he was going to get
witnesses to testify, and I said the medical profession had better
clean house first. I pointed out that doctors have been run out of
small towns for introducing disease-stricken, cheap prostitutes who
spread the disease and brought business to the physician.

     "It's just like blackmail," I said, "The ones who are really
hurt by diseases are the nice girls, and they'd never testify
against a man. The list of men I've had in for treatment would
sound like a Who's Who of the town. You can't regulate sex. We've
just got to do the beat we can. Even if there were a fool-proof
contraceptive, which there isn't, people would forget to use it or
they wouldn't know about it, or they wouldn't believe in it."

     The most cheering thing to me is that doctors are getting more
skillful in such matters and the present generation is becoming
wiser regarding the need for knowledge. Anne, who said she would
feel foolish interrupting an ardent love scene to arrange for her
contraceptive, did not allow that false modesty to keep her from
dashing down to my office immediately for a pregnancy test instead
of waiting and worrying for several weeks until time for her
menstruation.

     More and more women are making a practice of monthly visits to
the doctor to make sure that nothing has gone wrong and to get
early aid if anything has.

     In the last few years I have had fewer women patients who had
to be told that they had waited too late; that it was too dangerous
for them to have an abortion and they'd better arrange matters so
they could have the child and have it adopted. Fewer women spend
months of mental agony hoping that something will happen to cause
a miscarriage or trying dangerous home devices. The doctor's bill
may sound steep, but it's cheaper than risking an injury by home
use of sharp instruments or by violent blows in the abdomen.

     I get more women whose menstruation has merely been delayed by
natural causes but who know it is wise to go to a doctor as soon as
they are a week or 10 days overdue. A hot bath, a few drinks, a
strong purgative or a simple prescription saves them from a lot of
worry and from dangerous patent remedies. A woman who is
persistently irregular needs medical treatment, anyhow.

                               16

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     While I admire these self-reliant young women, I see a danger
in their new attitude. I do not mean the risk of promiscuity that
moralists raise whenever the birth-control question comes up.
Promiscuity, I believe, is a matter of taste and character and not
knowledge. Too, a woman who takes the trouble to inform herself on
these matters and who spends money to protect herself is going to
be smart enough to use discrimination. She's not going to be as
casual as the dumb girl who doesn't know what she's getting into.

     Nor do I howl race-suicide and say that the country will go to
the dogs because all the big families are in the lower classes. The
lower classes have always had big families. Let them share in the
knowledge, too. Many of the women would be grateful for birth-
control data.

     But I will give you an example. Not long ago a young girl came
in to see me. She was about 29, attractive, intelligent, earning
her own living. She wanted an abortion. She had the money to pay
for it and she said she wanted the best one she could get.

     I always ask the history of these cases, but it happened that
I knew this girl. Her lover was a young businessman in the same
town, handsome, healthy and with a promising future.

     "Why don't you marry, Dorothy, and have this child?" I asked.
"I know that when you started this affair your lover was still
married, although he was separated from his wife and the divorce
was pending. But now there's no obstacle to marriage. You're both
earning good salaries. You could afford a child. It would be better
for you. It isn't natural for two adults such as you and Bruce to
continue living with your families and have a clandestine
relationship. It's hard on you. It's making you nervous."

     She shrugged her shoulders. "I know," she said. "But Bruce is
panicky about marriage. He had one, and it failed. And he hates
responsibility. I'm not sure that I'd be a good wife, either. I
don't want children and I hate domesticity."

     "You're spoiled," I told her. "And even if it weren't for the
child, you ought to marry. Marriage isn't such an outdated
institution as you young folks seem to believe. There are plenty of
reasons for it, especially from the woman's standpoint. You've got
too much to risk. Here you are sneaking into my office and jumping
whenever you hear a door slam. And if I do this, you'll have to
stay in hiding for about 10 days, I don't think there's any danger,
because you're a healthy young woman. But you'll have to keep it a
secret, of course, and that's going to be a strain."

     "I know all that, too," she replied. "But Bruce and I agreed
long ago that if anything happened I was to get an abortion and
we'd split the expenses. I can't go back on that now. I'm not going
to pull the weeping-woman stunt and sandbag him into marriage. I'll
admit I'd like to be married. I'm tired of this hole-in-the-corner
business. I'm as much to blame as Bruce is for what's happened and
I'm not going to have him suspect that I arranged this to trick him
into marriage."
                               17

                  CONFESSIONS OF AN ABORTIONIST

     "You don't need to Sandbag him, as you phrase it," I
protested. "If you're in love with each other, surely you want
something more than this. You can't go on forever having just an
affair. You can be subtle about this and arouse his sense of
possession. A lot of the happiest marriages didn't start with
romantic proposals on the bended knee. People need to have a few
responsibilities. A little encouragement and he'd be proud of the
child and proud of his marriage. And a child would hold you
together."

     "Maybe," she said, with a touch of bitterness. "And maybe not.
He had a child by his first marriage, and his wife had an abortion
when she was pregnant the second time. Children didn't hold that
marriage together. Maybe he'd be proud of me; maybe not. But I'm
too proud to make the first move. I've bragged too much about how
I, can take care of myself and how I want to stand on my own feet."

     She smiled at me. "And don't say that Bruce isn't any good
either, doctor, I happen to love him. I'll admit that he has his
faults and he's selfish. Maybe that's the fault of his first wife.
Maybe it's my fault for spoiling him. She wanted too much and asked
for it and I ask for too little. Maybe sometime we will marry. But
I'm not going to play the helpless innocent to arrange it. I don't
blame him for not wanting to marry me. His family disapproves of me
because my reputation isn't exactly unspotted. His friends don't
like me. It would make trouble if he married me -- so why should
he? This way he can take sex as an adventure."

     "It's an unhealthy state for you," I said. "You're getting to
be an emotional, nervous type."

     "I know," she interrupted impatiently, "and wondering what's
going to happen all the time doesn't make me any more calm. But
then neither does having a series of casual dates and keeping
almost strangers from 'making' me. That or an affair are the two
choices I have until some man decides to make an honest woman of
me. And i'm too proud to use any of the old gags to get a proposal.
I'm used to working as a man and getting a man's salary and being
respected as an equal."

     "You're not an equal now," I told her. "Your lover is paying
half the expenses but you are the one who'll be away from work,
who'll suffer the pain, the fear of discovery. In sex, you'll never
be man's equal. You've got to turn your weaknesses into strength.
But it's your own business, of course."

     "Sure," she said, "and if you don't want to do this, doctor,
I'll go out of town to a strange physician and use a fake name and
a fake story."

     "I'll do it," I promised, "but I don't want you back again as
a customer."

     I didn't either. At first, as I said, I did abortions for the
money in them. Later I did them because I felt I was doing the
right thing. Maybe in this case I made a mistake. The girl got
along fine. But later on she told me that after it was all over, 
her lover said that he wished she hadn't had to do it, "And then,"
she added bitterly, "he said very quickly, 'but of course I knew
that it would be impossible for you to have the child.' And I
agreed that it would have been. You see, he didn't add that he
wanted to marry me."

     But if all doctors had refused to perform the illegal
operation, he probably would have married her. And they might have
been happy. On the other hand, she might have tried some home
method and inflicted an irreparable injury.

     That's one type of patient. There was another in which I had
no qualms at all. A young teacher with a promising future came to
me. She was about 32, and did not have a very attractive face, but
she had one of the most beautiful bodies I have ever seen. And
bodies are no novelty to a doctor.

     Furthermore, she was naturally a passionate woman. But because
of her position she had to be very discreet and lead a circumspect
life. She told me that she had had sexual intercourse only two or
three times in her entire life.

     That summer she had gone to a farm to spend a week. A cousin,
who was almost an idiot, was staying there. He came into her room
one night. The teacher had one of those sudden bursts of passion
that occasionally overcome women who are forced to live suppressed
lives. She had intercourse several times with her cousin. And,
unfortunately, she was caught.

     Even had the man been fit mentally to be a father, it would
have ruined the woman's career to give birth to the child. She
would have had to marry her cousin, and that would have forced her
resignation.

     "I hate him now," she told me. "I'd rather die than marry him.
I just went crazy, that's all. And disgrace of any sort would ruin
me in my profession. I couldn't go somewhere else and start all
over again. Teachers can't do that. The Slightest stain on my
character would prevent me from getting another job."

     "Stop worrying," I said. "Everything is going to be all
right." Later on she married a fellow teacher. She came to me
before the marriage.

     "I haven't told him about it," she explained. "He knows I'm
not a virgin and he can't expect me to be -- at my age. That
doesn't make any difference. But I wonder if I should tell him the
whole story."

     "Don't," I advised her. "You paid the penalty for it. There's
no reason why you can't have children. No one can prove that you
had an abortion. Forget the whole thing."

                     V. THEY AREN'T SO EASY

     But those sample cases were several years after my first
abortion. I'll admit I was a little panicky then. I was an 
inexperienced doctor and such operations were more dangerous then.
The death rate among women with abortions was much higher than the
deaths in childbirth. If the girl died, I would go to prison and my
life would be ruined. But I needed the money.

     "I might as well go to prison as starve," I thought, and I
went ahead.

     This girl was far different from the poor teacher who had
killed herself. A married man had got her into trouble and was
paying for her operation. She didn't seem worried about it. In
fact, she seemed rather proud of her affair with a prominent man.

     "For God's sake, try to get it through her head that this is
serious business," the intermediary said. "I know that you'll keep
your month shut, but that fool girl hasn't any sense. Tell her
she'll go to jail. Tell her anything to keep her from talking."

     Her lover was married to a wealthy woman, and it was necessary
to keep the story from the wife.

     "She'd divorce him in a minute," the editor who brought me the
case said. "She's 'strait-laced. And to do X justice he isn't the
playboy type. He's got several children and he's crazy about them
and he loves and respects his wife. He went on a party with two or
three other businessmen. It started out as a stag drinking party
and someone suggested that they bring in some women. They did, and
this girl, Dot, was one of them. She was X's girl. Everybody got
drunk, and it wound up as a hotel party."

     I grained. "The usual story. Only this time. it was a man who.
got betrayed."

     "Exactly. X said that Dot, was a good sport. She isn't a
chippy or anything like that. She just went along for the party,
and it wasn't her idea to stay all night and she wasn't paid for
it. X is about 40 and he's always behaved himself pretty well. He
was flattered at a young girl liking him and he said that he wanted
to see her again. He forgot all about it, and then she telephoned
him. He felt that he owed her something for keeping quiet about the
party so he went out to see her, thinking that he'd take her a box
of candy and apologize again for the jam they'd been In. After
that, he saw a lot of her. He told me that he knew she was cheap
and ignorant but somehow that was what fascinated him. He'd seen
too much of over-civilized, inhibited women, and it was a relief to
find a girl who was pleased with whatever he did for her, who
enjoyed sex for itself alone and who gave him a good time. Pagan is
too lovely a word for it and animal sounds a little too vulgar. But
whatever she had, it went over with X."

END*************************************************************************