The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated;

The continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the existing child (ren) of the family of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated;

There is substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.

Most American women qualify under the second condition. Unmarried, divorced or widowed women and victims of rape or incest, who are not specifically protected under any American abortion laws, have no trouble obtaining abortions in Britain. Doctors do not require a previous history of mental illness, nor do they require parental permission for women under 21.

IX

Mrs. Marianne Parker, an attractive young women with a Swedish accent, had just finished the first day of her graduate school comprehensives at Tufts. We talked about her experiences at Planned Parenthood with the unfortunate unpredictability of female physiology.

"Most people don't realize that a woman's fertility rate changes from month to month. A lot of women I spoke to said that because they didn't get pregnant last month, they didn't think they would this month. They don't know that emotional excitement, fatigue, or any number of psychological strains can reduce or increase fertility."

I asked her about the infamous rhythm method. "I consider using the rhythm method the same as using no contraceptive. The method is based on the assumption that all women ovulate on the 15th day of their cycles. It just isn't true. Some women ovulate the day before their period comes, or the day after it ends. And even if a woman ovulates on the 15th day, you have to consider that both the egg and the sperm can live for two days in the woman's body. That means even if you're absolutely sure which day you ovulate, there are five fertile days every month you have to avoid."

I asked her if she thought better birth control practices would mean less abortions. "Of course birth control is the logical way to avoid abortion. However, recent articles on the pill, reporting that it causes blood clotting and breast cancer, have scared many girls away. They're afraid of the pill, but they aren't informed about the other methods. So they use the rhythm method and get into trouble."

X

I remembered some of the "sex education" films I'd seen in high school. It struck me that none of them had contained any information on birth control. One movie on unwanted pregnancy, a melodrama called "Phoebe," carried with it the moral that the way to avoid pregnancy was to avoid sex until marriage. In the plight of poor pregnant Phoebe, afraid to tell her boyfriend or her parents, missing out on all the fun the gang was having, there was no mention of foams, diaphragms or the pill.

XI

Marianne pointed out, as did everyone I talked to the inequities of abortion practices. "One of the real problems with the law is that it punishes the young, unmarried, and relatively stable girls. If a girl doesn't have any obvious mental problems, isn't a heavy drug user and is not considering suicide, she has a harder time getting an abortion than if she had been seeing a psychiatrist for three years."

More important, though, was Betsy Sable's point on this subject. "The hardship cases are the real problems here at Planned Parenthood. These women don't have the money to go to England, and they don't have the pull to get into a local hospital without the staff psychiatrists consent. Most have never seen a psychiatrist in their lives, so that they can't possibly have a mental record. And they usually come to us after it's too late to have the operation performed locally. They're the ones who wind up in the back offices, in the hands of the burchers."

XII

"Even at Planned Parenthood, a lot of cases don't reach us. Planned Parenthood is a middle-class organization; the idea that someone will do an abortion for you legally is a middle-class idea." A visit to the PP office confirms this comment. The PP building stands isolated in a middle to upper class world. Across the street is Bonwit-Teller, adjacent is Brooks Brothers, in the neighborhood are Lord and Taylor, Peck and Peck and other unlikely hang-outs for those women who would be trapped by the abortion laws.

Getting an abortion is, in most cases, a question of getting the money. Women with influence (money) can get into local hospitals without a psychiatric record. Money means a private physician, and a private physician means pull within the hospital system.

Anyone who can raise the money can go to England. Anyone who can't, and can't get a legal abortion, is left with non-existent choices. She can try for an illegal (and only slighlty less expensive) operation in Puerto Rico. She can tap the spring of underground abortionists, risking sterilization or death in the hands of a quack. Or she can do it herself, with soap solutions, knitting needles, wire coat hangers, and other home-made instruments of torture.

XIII

Antiquated abortion laws and practices in the United States must share the responsibility for the high abortion death rate with the illegal abortionists. Abortion is the third biggest racket in the United States (behind gambling and prostitution). Although some competent doctors perform illegal abortions because they are convinced the laws are unfair, the majority of abortionists are incompetent money scroungers. However, under the present legal system, a woman is forced to turn to these people if she is to retain the right to make decisions about her life. The power in the present system lies in the hands of the legislators and doctors. A woman must accept the legislators' distinction between legal abortion and murder. She can do no more than present her case to a number of doctors and hope that they are merciful. She doesn't have the power to decide and do what she feels is right.

Restrictions on birth control distribution complicate the abortion dilemma. In Massachusetts, it is illegal for doctors to prescribe contraceptives for unmarried women, and illegal for druggists to fill these prescriptions. Many physicians circumvent this problem by inventing a medical excuse for prescribing the pill or by assuming that all of their patients are married. But only warped logic could fail to see that law restricting contraceptive distribution (especially in a state where abortion is viewed conservatively) forces women into the hands of underground abortionists.

Birth control and family planning are obviously the best abortion preventatives. However, more important is education; people must learn how to use contraceptives and what happens when they don't. Abortion is a forbidden topic, a dirty word, because it carries with it moral implications. Sadly enough, these implications do not just include the taking of a potential life.

XIV

Implicit behind abortion and birth control laws is society's fear and moral condemnation of "sexual promiscuity." The moral code implied by the laws is clear. Unmarried women are not supposed to engage in sexual inter-course. Women who cannot afford or are uninformed about birth control should not sleep with their husbands if they want to avoid having children. Any violator of the code is on her own. outside the protection of the law. If she dies in the hands of a quack, it's too bad but it's her fault. She has to suffer for her wrongdoing.