Below is the final piece in a series of features I wrote for the Roseburg News-Review when I was a full-time reporter.
I composed these in the spring and summer of 1990 to prepare readers for the November election, which featured two anti-choice initiatives: a full abortion ban, and mandatory notification of parents if a minor sought to terminate pregnancy. (Both went down to defeat.)
Not all of what I wrote was published at the time. Worse, none of the stories saw print until three months after the election (and after I had resigned from the newspaper in December 1990). I may provide that background in a separate blog commentary later.
But here is my interview with a retired physician who had practiced pediatrics in Roseburg for a decade and a half before Roe v. Wade, and was the only consistent provider of legal abortions in the entire county thereafter.
Once Dr. Harris had retired, roughly four years before my interview with him, abortions ceased to be available anywhere in Douglas County, as far as I could discern, even though women were legally entitled to them . . . and such was the case across much of the rest of the state then, and now, as well as in nearly 90 percent of counties across the United States today.
But here is my interview with a retired physician who had practiced pediatrics in Roseburg for a decade and a half before Roe v. Wade, and was the only consistent provider of legal abortions in the entire county thereafter.
Once Dr. Harris had retired, roughly four years before my interview with him, abortions ceased to be available anywhere in Douglas County, as far as I could discern, even though women were legally entitled to them . . . and such was the case across much of the rest of the state then, and now, as well as in nearly 90 percent of counties across the United States today.
Though Oregon is reportedly the only state in the U.S. that has never passed any limit on the right to choice since 1973, this year we enjoy the dubious distinction of being only one of three states who will have to vote once again on the issue. (The other two, who are considering more drastic constitutional bans on abortion rights, are West Virginia and Alabama. Six U.S. states host only a single abortion provider in the entire state, and Kentucky may lose that single one this year.)
Oregon Ballot Measure 106 would prohibit the use of public funds for abortions, which means wealthy women will continue to be able to control their family size and their destiny, but poor women will have to work that much harder to do the same. The long-term result will be more poverty, more crime, more alcohol- and crack-addicted newborns, and more government, welfare, and law enforcement to address them.
So these nearly two-decades-old stories of mine are unfortunately timely once again.
* * * * *
ROSEBURG DOCTOR OFFERS VIEWS ON CONTROVERSY
Having presided over more than 9,000 births and 200 legal abortions, retired Dr. Jim Harris knows a lot about the effect of pregnancy on women’s lives.
Before abortion was legalized, he helped many women with information about where to get one. He also assisted 200 others in the adoption process, a choice he much prefers.
“I feel that in most instances, abortion is morally wrong and should not be used as a method of birth control,” Harris said in an interview at his Roseburg home. “Doing the right thing is putting it up for adoption, as far as I’m concerned. You’re not giving it up, you’re providing for it to have a good situation when it otherwise would be in a horrible one.”
Harris said he started doing abortions about the time they were legalized. Most of his referrals, he said, came from other doctors, health care agencies, and high school counselors. “Just a few were my own personal patients,” he said.
“It’s a tolerable procedure, but it’s certainly not a pleasant one,” he said. “My assistants didn’t like to do them and I said: ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t like to do them myself, and I’m certainly not going to force you to.’ ”
“It’s a tolerable procedure, but it’s certainly not a pleasant one,” he said. “My assistants didn’t like to do them and I said: ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t like to do them myself, and I’m certainly not going to force you to.’ ”
One thing he remembers is the lengths to which patient and physician had to go to preserve secrecy. “Fear of others finding out about the pregnancy, the abortion, was the main concern of the patients, more than the fear of the procedure itself. Most of the time the main people they didn’t want to know about it were their parents and relatives or the boy’s family.”
Harris said he always “strongly” advised patients to inform their families, but many were afraid their folks would insist they “pay for their mistake” and make them keep the baby.
“I would hate to have legislated the requirement to notify the parents. The reason they didn’t want to tell their parents is because they’re so afraid their parents will talk them out of it. All they want is to get rid of this pregnancy. They would procrastinate too long to where it would be unsafe to abort, and end up keeping the child out of wedlock.
“I would love to have (the family) know and give support but … if she’s old enough to get pregnant, she’s old enough to decide how she wants to handle it.”
Harris is quietly indignant about people who say physicians perform abortions for the money. Nothing could be further from the truth, he said. Harris charged $175 and it was not cost-effective.
“I was losing money doing abortions. I was busy enough without the abortion business. These days, you almost have to charge every patient $50-$100 a visit just to cover malpractice insurance.”
It was important to have someone stand by and “hold their hand and reassure them. I’d never do it without having someone there to help and give moral support to the patient.”
Harris insisted that a loved one accompany the patient, with mixed results: “Often, the boyfriend would come in and didn’t want to stick around. He’d say, ‘When can I come back and pick her up?’ Then he never showed. We’d be closing the office at the end of the day and have to give her a ride home, which isn’t fair. Someone’s got to give her a little moral support.”
Harris refused to do welfare abortions: “I felt, ‘This is wrong; why should we pay?’ I wanted to see that they wanted it bad enough that they would pay for it themselves. I told her, ‘You have to have some responsibility for these things, young lady.’ Or the boy who was with her.
“Usually they’d call back the next day and say, ‘OK, we’ll get the money somehow.’ Which is fine, and I think that’s important.”
As a physician who enjoyed delivering babies, whether for happy parents or for adoption, Harris looks at abortion in the context of what he calls a much larger problem: irresponsible sex that increases the number of teen-age pregnancies, babies born out of wedlock, and parents who go on welfare and raise the chances the baby will end up on public support as well.
He feels the next worst choice is to have the baby and keep it, unless the mother is self-supporting and has a loving, supportive family. “Even then it’s a tough row to hoe, and I personally know of only two situations where the girl was successfully able to have and raise the child by herself with minimal family help,” Harris said.
Harris says a lesser evil is to have an abortion and continue on in school or work and avoid pregnancy until it can be a “wanted” situation. “It has been my experience that the girl who opts for abortion and gets on with her life has as good a chance of becoming a happy, useful citizen as her peers,” Harris said. “She usually is a bit wiser and makes better decisions with regards to future sexuality.”
Harris noted that when an unwanted pregnancy turned up in the family of a staunch anti-abortionist, some of them changed their tune: “All that went out the window and they insisted their own daughter get aborted.”
Harris said he rarely saw any sign of post-abortion guilt or depression. “The only thing they feel guilty about is the fact that she didn’t have the gumption to take nine months out of her life and put the baby up for adoption. They may get depressed because of the stupid situation, but not because they killed this young life, or potential life. What the Pro-Lifers try to do is make everybody feel guilty about it and force them into that worst category.”
Harris said the best solution to unwanted pregnancy is to have as healthy a birth as possible by avoiding tobacco, alcohol, or drugs and “seeing that the baby is adopted by a responsible, loving couple.”
Harris blames the advent of welfare for pushing many women from what he feels is the best choice (adoption) to one of the worst (keeping the baby with or without the father’s presence).
“It wasn’t hard to talk the girl into the right thing. But a day or two later I’d get a call because someone had told her: ‘You can’t give your baby away! You can’t desert your child, your own flesh and blood!’ And it was often some aunt, someone who just two years before had said (to me), ‘You have to do something; we can’t have our daughter giving birth!’ (Welfare) made the difference between doing the right thing and doing the worst thing, which is keeping the baby out of wedlock.”
Ideally, Harris would like to see no welfare money paid for abortions. He said he thinks the Health Department should have an abortion clinic -- “but they never will because of picketers!” -- and charge the client something.
Adoption services should be encouraged and supported, he said. Parents who want to adopt would pay for birth and legal costs “so that the only thing the girl has to put in is time, more or less.
“The pro-lifers and the pro-choicers aren’t really that far apart in what they feel: This is a little life that has some rights and we should do all we can to give it a life. Both sides really don’t like abortions and would be happy to see that option reduced or absent. Both pro life and pro choice should spend their time working together to educate and help the pregnant girls choose better options.
“To harass politicians and try to disrupt our whole legislation system by making pro life or pro choice the single reason for voting or not voting for a candidate is unproductive.
“Life is important -- maybe more important to me than to most other people -- but what’s also important is quality of life. And the quality of life of all of us is going to suffer if we continue to let those generations of welfare patients go on. These unwanted children are the ones who most often suffer abuse, incest, and teen pregnancy later on.
“In thinking back, now that I’m several years away from the pressure and soul searching involved in doing abortions, I still have no regrets for having done any of them. Successfully doing the abortion with minimal discomfort and being able to comfort and reassure the frightened, vulnerable young lady has its rewards.
“The only greater satisfaction I had in dealing with unwanted pregnancy was to see a pregnant patient, who had previously given up a baby for adoption, happily married and ecstatic because she was going to have a baby she ‘could keep.’ On one occasion, I recall that the husband of this happy patient was the father of both the adopted and the legitimate child. He was equally thankful and happy with the second pregnancy.”
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