The Pre-Roe Pro-Life Movement in Minnesota and New York

Physicians’ elevated status from anti-abortion legislation was magnified as
medicine advanced and developed new treatments for the previous threats to maternal
health. 18 The decision to perform an abortion was often entirely left to the discretion of
individual physicians, thus creating a large variation in the circumstances under which
abortions were performed. To remedy the disparities, hospitals established abortion
committees to assemble uniform guidelines for the abortion decisions in the 1950s. 19
Abortions became more difficult to obtain, especially as some hospitals reverted to
systems deemed especially controversial and discriminatory against poor, less-informed,
and less-connected women seeking abortions. 20
In addition, significant medical
advancements made during WWII and exponentially in the post-war years increasingly
convinced many that state abortion laws were becoming “archaic.” 21
Not only did
doctors identify “new” fetal deformities (such as Down’s Syndrome in 1959), but they
also found new ways of detecting these deformities early in the pregnancy. These
medical advancements convinced physicians that nineteenth century abortion laws were
inconsistent with twentieth century social thought and medical and genetic technology.
All this led to the post-war mobilization of physicians, educators, and medical
organizations to the pro-abortion cause, striving for equal treatment and protection for all
under the law.
Two highly publicized causes of fetal deformity, the 1962 thalidomide drug
scandal and the 1965 rubella epidemic, shifted this awareness from the medical to the
public sphere, thereby convincing the broader citizenry the law needed revision. These
18 Ibid., 54-55.
19 Ibid., 55.
20 Ibid., 57.
21 “Abortion Law Isn’t Moral – Dr. Hodgson,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, 18 November 1970, 1A,
Box 1, Folder: Hodgson, Dr. Jane Legal Case 1970-1973, Katherine Taylor Wood Papers.
17