Creating Choice A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control, 1961-1973

by Cline, David P.

• ISBN13: 9781403968135
• ISBN10: 1403968136
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-19
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Focusing on one Massachusetts community, David Cline uses the personal stories of those who sought abortions and of birth control and the health care professionals, clergy members, and feminist activists who helped them to reexamine the contentious history of reproductive rights in America in the last thirty years. His work brings together interviews with a variety of individuals--college chaplain moved to activism after one of his students died from a botched backalley abortion and another hung herself because of an unwanted pregnancy; members of women's collectives who ferried women to abortion clinics across state lines in a kind of modern Underground Railroad; a waitress who performed over 1,500 illegal abortions in her bathtub; and the women themselves who risked their lives. This fascinating collection is a much-needed contribution to recent scholarship on the reproductive rights movement as well as being an important new work of community oral history.

Author Biography

David P. Cline is an oral historian and journalist. He has worked for American Radio Works, the documentary division of National Public Radio, and currently serves as a Research Assistant at the Southern Oral History Program at the Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Foreword	vii
Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
PART ONE The Women: Survivors of Illegal Abortions	19	(40)
ONE Elizabeth Myer	29	(4)
TWO Dr. Robin Dizard	33	(4)
THREE Jean Baxter	37	(8)
FOUR Carol C. Wall	45	(6)
FIVE Dr. Meredith W. Michaels	51	(4)
SIX Dr. Susan Tracy	55	(4)
PART TWO Providers of Reproductive Health Care: Doctors, Health Educators, and Illegal Abortionists	59	(54)
SEVEN Dr. Merritt E Garland, Jr.	67	(8)
EIGHT Dr. Sam Topal	75	(8)
NINE Dr. Robert Gage	83	(8)
TEN Dr. Jane Zapka	91	(8)
ELEVEN Dr. Lawrence Siddall	99	(4)
TWELVE Lorraine Florio	103	(10)
PART THREE The Clergy and their Allies: Clergy and Affiliated Lay Abortion Counselors	113	(68)
THIRTEEN Reverend Richard Unsworth	125	(10)
FOURTEEN Reverend Samuel M. Johnson	135	(10)
FIFTEEN Reverend Franklin A. Dorman	145	(6)
SIXTEEN Rabbi Yechiael Lander	151	(10)
SEVENTEEN Elaine Fraser	161	(10)
EIGHTEEN Ruth Fessenden	171	(10)
PART FOUR The Feminists: Feminist Lay Abortion Counselors	181	(40)
NINETEEN Amherst Women's Liberation's Abortion and Birth Control Group	191	(18)
TWENTY Springfield Women's Health Collective	209	(12)
PART FIVE The Connectors: Uniting Medical Care, Activism, and Feminism	221	(36)
TWENTY-ONE Merry Boone	227	(8)
TWENTY-TWO Ellen Story	235	(6)
TWENTY-THREE Leslie Tarr Laurie	241	(16)
Acknowledgments	257	(2)
Notes	259	(14)
Bibliography	273	(2)
Index	275