WHEN THE TRUTH IS FOUND

In 1972 I was a third-year medical student doing my first clinical experience in obstetrics and gynecology at Cook County Hospital, a large facility in inner-city Chicago.

Abortion was still illegal, and women who were pregnant and desperate would seek ways to end their pregnancies. Those with resources could find ways to safely terminate a pregnancy, but others — including those in the mostly poor, minority communities served by our hospital — did not have that option. They turned to methods including self-medicating with a number of toxic chemicals, attempting to introduce something into the uterus, and seeking someone willing to perform an illegal procedure.

These methods often had disastrous consequences for the women involved — consequences that we saw firsthand when they were brought into the hospital.

A section near the emergency room was set aside for triage of these patients. I saw chemical burns, as well as perforations of the bladder, vagina, uterus, and rectum. Some women came in with overwhelming infections or in septic shock. The role of triage was to determine who needed immediate surgery and who could go to the ward.

At that time, Cook County had a 40-bed Septic Abortion Ward. It was a large room with the beds separated by curtains. The role of the medical student — my role for the week I was there — was to push a large cart of antibiotic solutions around the room, hang the antibiotics and connect them to the IV line, and take the patients’ vital signs. When one of the patients died, I was to call the diener — the morgue attendant who collected the bodies. A death in this ward was a common occurrence.

One year later, Roe v. Wade was decided and abortion was made legal. It took a while for everyone in the community to learn that they could now safely and legally terminate their pregnancies. But within a year or so, the Septic Abortion Ward at Cook County Hospital closed — it was no longer needed.