Vol. 78/No. 3      January 27, 2014

BY SUSAN LAMONT
Kenneth Edelin, a Boston physician and life-long champion of women’s rights who gained national attention through a successful fight against an anti-abortion frame-up, died of cancer Dec. 30 at age 74.

In 1973 — the same year of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that decriminalized abortion — Edelin became the first African-American to serve as chief resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Boston City Hospital. Two years later he was charged with manslaughter over an abortion and convicted in a trial marked by racist bigotry. His defense campaign became intertwined with the fight for Black rights and school desegregation that was raging in the city at that time, strengthening both the struggles for women’s emancipation and against racist discrimination.

The attack on Edelin was led by local Democratic Party politicians, along with local Catholic Church figures, Massachusetts Citizens for Life and other forces, some of which also helped mobilize sometimes violent protests aimed at blocking school desegregation. Area-wide busing had been ordered by federal Judge Arthur Garrity in 1974 under the reverberating impact of the working-class struggle for Black rights that had overthrown Jim Crow segregation less than a decade earlier.

“Abortion should not be permitted under any circumstances despite the decision of the United States Supreme Court,” Raymond Flynn, Democratic state representative from South Boston and a leader of the racist anti-busing drive, wrote in a letter reprinted in the Boston Real Paper.

Edelin was one of only two doctors at Boston City Hospital who volunteered to perform abortions, sometimes working overtime and Saturdays without pay.

In April 1974 Edelin was indicted for manslaughter based on an abortion he had performed on a young Black woman. He was convicted in February 1975 and sentenced to one year probation.

The prosecution charged that in performing an abortion by hysterectomy, Edelin had deprived “a baby boy” of oxygen while it was “being born.” Edelin testified that the fetus was not viable, estimating that his patient’s pregnancy was at most 22 weeks along.

Michael Ciano, an alternate juror from East Boston, shed light on the racist character of the frame-up when he told the press about comments by a number of jurors, all of whom, including Ciano, were Caucasian. “That n----r is as guilty as sin,” said one, according to Ciano.

“The anti-abortion forces didn’t just stumble onto this case,” Edelin told the Boston Globe. “They had been watching me for about two years.” Edelin became a target when he and a few other doctors were featured in an article on fetal research in the New England Journal of Medicine in June 1973.

In September 1973 Edelin drew attention for speaking out in defense of a woman’s right to choose abortion at a city council hearing organized for the benefit of “right to life” groups.

At the same time Edelin was indicted, four of those participating in the fetal research project were charged under an 1814 statute against “grave robbing” and “illegal dissection.”

‘I believe in a woman’s right’

Evonne Gilbert, the woman who had the abortion, volunteered to testify for Edelin. “I was grateful for the offer,” he wrote years later, “but decided that her privacy was more important than having her take the witness stand.”

Buoyed by Edelin’s conviction, capitalist politicians and hospital administrators in other states took steps to restrict abortions.

On Feb. 17, 1975, two days after Edelin’s conviction, supporters of women’s rights responded with a march of 2,000 through downtown Boston.

Boston NAACP President Thomas Atkins, a leader of the Boston school desegregation battle, condemned the conviction in a Feb. 20 news conference and called on NAACP chapters around the country to defend Edelin: “The weight of the evidence in the case was so overwhelmingly on the side of the doctor that we can only explain the verdict as having been motivated either by religious bias, racial bias, or both.”

The Philadelphia Tribune and other Black community newspapers spoke out against the verdict. “In the two years since the Supreme Court’s historic ruling, deaths resulting from abortion operations have declined by 81 per cent, but Dr. Edelin’s conviction may force many women back into the arms of the quacks and butchers who used to snuff out women’s lives in backrooms and dark alleys,” a Feb. 22 Tribune editorial stated.

Edelin fight gains broad support

On May 3, 1975, 1,000 supporters marched to the Massachusetts Statehouse, chanting “Defend Dr. Edelin, defend abortion rights.”

The demonstration culminated a week of activities called by the Coalition to Defend Abortion Rights. “The week of activity has been publicized through large-scale leafleting, appearances on numerous radio talk shows, articles in all the major press, and even a booth at Jordan Marsh, Boston’s largest department store,” the Militant reported.

A few weeks earlier, the racist anti-desegregation outfit ROAR — “Restore Our Alienated Rights” — had broken up a rally at Boston’s Faneuil Hall in support of the Equal Rights Amendment — a proposed constitutional amendment prescribing equal rights for women that never passed — and threatened to do the same to future actions in defense of women’s right to choose.

“If you’re really for women’s rights you have to be against forced busing,” a ROAR leader said after the attack.

But broad support for the May 3 rally combined with well-organized marshaling by demonstrators resulted in a successful action with no disruptions.

The public campaign to defend Edelin continued until his conviction was overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1976.

Edelin remained a staunch proponent of women’s right to abortion. He became chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Boston University, serving until 1989, while also director of Ob-Gyn at Boston City Hospital and managing director of the Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center in Boston’s Black community.

Edelin served as chairman of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1989 to 1992. During his tenure, he wrote in 2007, the group “fought back with marches, demonstrations and promised that we would not allow ourselves to be censored.”

In 2007 he published the story of the fight against his frame-up, Broken Justice: A True Story of Race, Sex and Revenge in a Boston Courtroom.

“For me, the struggles for reproductive rights for women and Civil Rights for African-Americans are intertwined and at the same time parallel,” Edelin wrote. “The denial of these two rights is an attempt by some to control the bodies of others. Both are forms of slavery. We must never let slavery in any form return to America.”

“The rights of women to make choices about their pregnancies and doctors to be able to offer their patients the most appropriate care continues to be under attack,” he wrote at the end of the book. “Recent Supreme Court rulings have further restricted a woman’s right to choose.”
 
 
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