Abortion In New York
Abortion, also known as pregnancy termination, up to the 24th week of pregnancy was legalized in New York (NY) in 1970, three years before it was decriminalized for the entire United States with the Supreme Court's passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. The Reproductive Health Act, passed in 2019 in NY, further allows for abortions past the 24th week of pregnancy if a woman’s health or life are at risk, or if the fetus is not viable.
The number of abortion clinics in New York (clinics for which more than half of all patient visits are for abortion) declined from 302 in 1982 to 95 in 2014, but increased to 113 in 2017, according to Guttmacher Institute. The abortion rate decreased from an estimated 39 abortions per 1000 women aged 15-44 in 1992 to 22 per 1000 in 2016, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
History
Madame Restell opened a business that performed abortions in the 1830s in New York City. Her business remained open for around 35 years and openly advertised its services, including in newspapers. She had branches in several other cities including Boston and Philadelphia, as well as employed traveling agents working for the company who sold her "Female Monthly Pills." Despite making a fortune from her business, her activities scandalized New York City society. New York state saw a number of women dying during the 1860s and 1870s as a result of using unskilled abortionists. Some of these deaths were highly publicized. They turned people's attitudes against abortions. In 1918, Margaret Sanger was charged under the New York law against disseminating contraceptive information. On appeal, her conviction was reversed on the grounds that contraceptive devices could legally be promoted for the cure and prevention of disease.
A group of science, health, and medicine experts met in 1955 in New York; their purpose was to discuss abortion in the United States. Their belief was that between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal abortions took place annually. Planned Parenthood Federation of America had a conference at Arden House in New York in 1955. The conference's purpose was to review the knowledge framework in the United States as it related to abortion. One of the accomplishments of the conference was that it published the "first objective and quantitative estimates of illegal abortions". The conference also provided participants with a first hand perspective on the state of abortion in the country from a presentation by a physician who had performed over 5,000 abortions.
In 1955, Sloane Hospital in New York created a hospital review board to approve all abortion requests. Consequently, the number of abortions performed at the hospital in the next five-year period for therapeutic reasons was half what it was prior to 1955. According to Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, hospital review committees taught doctors to only refer cases they thought would be approved, saying, "Many physicians are discouraged by telephone conversations or corridor consultation with a single Committee member." At Harlem Hospital prior to the legalization of abortion in New York, there was a positive correlation between neonatal and perinatal mortality, and the number of clandestine and nonmedical community abortions. In the 1940s and 1950s, abortions would be given to some women on mental health waivers at Mount Sinai if they indicated they had attempted to commit suicide as a result of the pregnancy. At one New York City hospital in the pre-Roe v. Wade period, a teenaged girl ask for an abortion citing suicide attempts as the reason; the hospital committee initially turned her down and hospitalized her where the girl continued to try to kill herself. They finally granted the waiver in order to stop the disruption the girl caused at the hospital.
Because of the nature of their abortion laws, New York City and the District of Columbia became destination centers for women in 1971 who were seeking legal abortions.
Legislative history
The first statute to criminalize abortion in New York State happened in 1827. The law made postquickening abortions a felony. It made pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor. New York repealed its 1830 law and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy. New York became the first state to create a therapeutic exemption that allowed women to have abortions if their life was at risk by continuing the pregnancy. In 1845, New York passed a statute that said women who had abortions could be given a prison sentence of three months to a year. They were one of the few states at the time to have laws punishing women for getting abortions. Susannah Lattin's death led to an investigation which resulted in regulation of maternity clinics and adoptions in New York City in 1868. In 1872, New York state made it a penalty to perform an abortion with a criminal sentence of between 4 and 20 years in prison.
The New York State legislature amended their abortion related statue in 1965 to allow for more therapeutic exceptions. In 1970, not long before the Supreme Court made their decision in Roe v. Wade, first Hawaii and then New York became the first two states in the US to decriminalize abortion. This was done by removing all requirements to justify having the procedure done. Both states retained one requirement for women seeking abortions, that that was the abortion be performed by a licensed physician at an accredited hospital. New York repealed its 1830 law in 1970 and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy. This made New York the first state to make abortion legal if a pregnant woman requested it. In 1971, the state repealed its statute that said inducing an abortion was a criminal offense. State abortion law in 1971 did not have a residency requirement for women seeking to have an abortion. Between 1970 and 1973, the New York General Assembly attempted to repeal their law that made abortion legal. Governor Nelson Rockefeller successfully vetoed the repeal attempt.
Cities like Baltimore, Austin, and New York passed legislation to require Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) to disclose their status and that they did not offer abortion services, but organizations representing the CPCs have been successful in courts challenging these laws, principally on the argument that forcing the CPCs to post such language violated their First Amendment rights and constituted compelled speech. Whereas the previous attempts at regulating CPCs in Baltimore and other cities were based on having signage that informed the patient that the CPC did not offer abortion-related services, the FACT Act instead makes the patient aware of state-sponsored services that are available rather than what the CPCs did or did not offer. The law went into effect January 1, 2016. The state legislature was one of five states nationwide that tried, and failed, to pass a fetal heartbeat bill in 2014.
The state legislature was one of three states nationwide that tried, and failed, to pass a fetal heartbeat bill in 2015. They tried and failed again in 2016, 2017 and 2018. As of 2018, Florida, Nevada, and New York had laws prohibiting abortions after 24-weeks. As of May 14, 2019, the state prohibited abortions after the fetus was viable, generally some point between week 24 and 28. This period uses a standard defined by the US Supreme Court in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade ruling. In 2019, New York passed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), which repealed a pre-Roe provision that banned third-trimester abortions except in cases where the continuation of the pregnancy endangered a pregnant woman's life. The law said, “The legislature finds that comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion, is a fundamental component of a woman’s health, privacy and equality." The bill also allowed qualified health practitioners to perform abortions, not just licensed medical doctors.
Judicial history
The US Supreme Court's decision in 1973's Roe v. Wade ruling meant the state could no longer regulate abortion in the first trimester. Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York was before the US Supreme Court in 1997. Two abortion clinics in western New York had gotten injunctions to prevent anti-abortion rights protesters from blockading their facilities or engaging in other types of disruptive protests. The Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that "floating buffer zones" preventing protesters approaching people entering or leaving abortion clinics were unconstitutional, though "fixed buffer zones" around the clinics themselves remained constitutional. The Court's upholding the fixed buffer was the most important aspect of the ruling, because it was a common feature of injunctions nationwide.
Clinic history
In the 1940s, police would raid suspected illegal abortion clinics. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of abortion clinics in the state decreased by thirteen, going from 302 in 1982 to 289 in 1992. The number of abortion providers in New York was 266 in 1996. In the period between 1992 and 1996, the state ranked third in the loss of number of abortion clinics, losing 23 to have a total of 266 in 1996. In 2008, the states with the most providers were California with 522 and New York with 249. In 2014, there were 95 abortion clinics in the state. 44% of the counties in the state did not have an abortion clinic. That year, 10% of women in the state aged 15 – 44 lived in a county without an abortion clinic. In March 2016, there were 58 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state. In 2017, there were 58 Planned Parenthood clinics in a state with a population of 4,718,933 women aged 15 – 49 of which 49 offered abortion services.
A study was done involving 300 women approached by pro-life protesters at an abortion clinic in Buffalo, New York. It found that while some women were upset by the protesters, none of the 300 women changed their minds as a result of protester actions in relation to their decision to get an abortion.
Statistics
In 1972, an estimated 100,000 women traveled to New York to have legal abortions. Over half of them traveled more than 500 miles to get a legal abortion in the state. In 1990, 2,443,000 women in the state had a reported unintended pregnancy. The highest number of legal induced abortions by state in 2000 occurred in New York City with 94,466, while Florida was second with 88,563, and Texas was third with 76,121. In 2001, New York City had the highest number of induced abortions with 91,792, while Florida was second with 85,589, and Texas was third with 77,409. Idaho had the lowest induced abortion to live birth ratio at 36 per 1,000 live births while New York City had the highest at 767. In 2003, the state of New York had the highest number of legal induced abortions with 90,820. Florida was second with 88,247, while Texas was third with 79,166. Idaho had the lowest ratio of induced abortions to live births at 42 per 1,000 in 2003 while New York City had the highest at 758 to 1,000. In 2010, the state had 45,722 publicly funded abortions, of which 0 were federally funded and 45,722 were state funded.
State abortion estimates differ depending on the data source (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) versus the Guttmacher Institute). According to Guttmacher Institute, there were 105,380 abortions in 2017, 110,840 in 2016 and 119,940 in 2014. According to the CDC, there were 87,325 abortions in NY in 2016, 93.096 in 2015, and 96,711 in 2014.
In 2012, New York City reported abortions (31,328) outnumber live births (24,758) for black children. Black and Hispanic abortions combined (54,245), account for 73% of the total abortions in the city in 2012, according to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Vital Statistics. In 2013, among white women aged 15–19, there were abortions 2660, 5860 abortions for black women aged 15–19, 4670 abortions for Hispanic women aged 15–19, and 760 abortions for women of all other races.
| Census division and state | Number | Rate | % change 1992–1996 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 1995 | 1996 | 1992 | 1995 | 1996 | ||
| Middle Atlantic | 300,450 | 278,310 | 270,220 | 34.6 | 32.7 | 32 | –8 |
| New Jersey | 55,320 | 61,130 | 63,100 | 31 | 34.5 | 35.8 | 16 |
| New York | 195,390 | 176,420 | 167,600 | 46.2 | 42.8 | 41.1 | –11 |
| Pennsylvania | 49,740 | 40,760 | 39,520 | 18.6 | 15.5 | 15.2 | –18 |
| Location | Year | Residence | Occurrence | % obtained by
out-of-state residents |
Ref | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Rate^ | Ratio^^ | No. | Rate^ | Ratio^^ | ||||
| New York | 1992 | -- | -- | -- | 164,274 | 39 | 582 | 3.2 | |
| New York City | 1992 | -- | -- | -- | 114,700 | -- | 909 | 2.8 | |
| New York State | 1992 | -- | -- | -- | 49,574 | -- | 318 | 4.1 | |
| New York | 1995 | -- | -- | -- | 139,686 | 34 | 525 | -- | |
| New York CIty | 1995 | -- | -- | -- | 95,205 | -- | 785 | 4.8 | |
| New York State | 1995 | -- | -- | -- | 44,481 | -- | 307 | 5.1 | |
| New York | 1996 | -- | -- | -- | 152,991 | 37 | 580 | -- | |
| New York City | 1996 | -- | -- | -- | 109,331 | -- | 889 | 6.1 | |
| New York State | 1996 | -- | -- | -- | 43,660 | -- | 310 | 4.9 | |
| New York | 2014 | 93,984 | 23.2 | 264 | 96,711 | 23.9 | 271 | 3.3 | |
| New York City | 2014 | -- | -- | -- | 67,620 | 34.8 | 575 | 7.9 | |
| New York State | 2014 | -- | -- | -- | 29,091 | 13.8 | 122 | 5.2 | |
| New York | 2015 | 88,762 | 22 | 374 | 93,096 | 23.1 | 392 | 5.1 | |
| New York City | 2015 | -- | -- | -- | 63,646 | 32.8 | 544 | -- | |
| New York State | 2015 | -- | -- | -- | 29,450 | 14.1 | 245 | -- | |
| New York | 2016 | 82,841 | 20.7 | 354 | 87,325 | 21.8 | 373 | 5.6 | |
| New York City | 2016 | -- | -- | -- | 59,854 | 31.1 | 519 | -- | |
| New York State | 2016 | -- | -- | -- | 27,471 | 13.2 | 213 | -- | |
| ^number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44; ^^number of abortions per 1,000 live births | |||||||||
Abortion financing
Seventeen states including New York use their own funds to cover all or most "medically necessary" abortions sought by low-income women under Medicaid, thirteen of which are required by state court orders to do so.
Women's abortion experiences
In the 1920s, women in the New York City metro area would sometimes try to induce abortions using botulism. In some cases, doctors who suspected an illegal abortion had occurred for which the women were seeking medical treatment at home would refuse to attend these women. One woman who did this was Mary Parker of Brooklyn, dying of her illegal abortion in 1929 and leaving behind three children. Her official cause of death was listed as gangrene, not botulism poisoning.
Around 1947, a young nurse and her boyfriend with some medical training borrowed an apartment in New York City from friends. While the friends were gone, the boyfriend performed an illegal abortion on his girlfriend, leaving blood all over the floor and kitchen table.
During the 1940s and 1950s, nurses sometimes had to attend to women admitted to Bellevue Hospital because of botched illegal abortions. These dying women's final hours were often filled with talking to the police about the procedure as part of interview designed to eventually prosecute people performing illegal abortions. A few were so terrified that they did not tell the police the name of the person before they died.
In the 1960s, a woman named Mason attending Ohio State went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to seek information on getting an abortion. At the time, the Ohio-based clinic only provided information on birth control and offered reproductive healthcare. They quietly referred her to a clinic in New York City, and Mason then called to make an appointment where she was told the procedure would cost around US$150. With help from her boyfriend and her best friend as she only had US$50 in the bank, she worked covertly to get the money for the procedure; she stole glass bottles from a neighbor so she could turn them in for US$0.05 a piece to fund her abortion. Her friend also collected glass bottles from her own mother to get money for the abortion. Mason and her boyfriend then drove his Chevy Impala through the night to Manhattan. "I was pretty devastated by his reaction to kind of just treat it like it was my fault, that was the message I was getting. [...] I was just trying to keep my mind on the mission, basically, that I'm doing this because I want to and, regardless of how he is going to behave, I'm not going to pull the car over." When she finally got the abortion, it was quick but painful. She attributes her ability to get an abortion to her geography, believing if she had lived in a state like Kansas or Missouri, she would not have been able to get one.
Then 18-year-old Connecticut resident Vikki Wachtel went to New York City to get an abortion at Bellevue Hospital in October 1970, where she had post-abortion complications. Her abortion took place only 5 months after abortion became legal in New York State. Of her experience, she said, "The staff made us feel like we were about to commit a crime. [...] It was MY CHOICE to not have a child in 1970 and it must remain a woman's choice to do so on a national level. [...] These overreaching and restrictive laws will only make abortions more dangerous, not eliminate them."
Christine Marinoni had an abortion in 2010. She made the decision with her wife Cynthia Nixon after the couple learned that the fetus Marinoni was carrying was not viable.
Illegal abortion injuries and deaths
In 1962, around 1,200 women were admitted to hospitals in New York City's Harlem Hospital as a result of incomplete attempted abortions. In the period between 1972 and 1974, Texas and New York State had the largest number of illegal abortion deaths. Texas recorded 14 in this period while New York had 11 in a period where 63 deaths from illegal abortions were reported nation wide. In 1972, New York had 10 illegal abortion deaths. In 1973, it had 1. In 1974, the state recorded 0 illegal abortion death. The deaths in the District of Columbia and New York in this period demonstrated that even where abortion is legal, women face circumstances that drive them to have irregular, non-physician assisted abortions. There are a variety of factors for this including lack of education, poverty and distrust of the medical establishment.
Susannah Lattin was an American woman who died of a postpartum infection at an illegal maternity clinic at 6 Amity Place in New York City, operated by Henry Dyer Grindle. Lattin became pregnant by George C. Houghton; he was a clerk at Whitehouse's boot and shoe store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn. He paid $50 to Dr. J.C. Harrison to perform an abortion, but Lattin did not go through with it. She was still hoping that Houghton would marry her. Houghton then quit his job and moved to Philadelphia, to escape the situation. Lattin next went to her cousin, George H. Powell who worked as a butcher at the Washington Market to help her. He pretended to be her husband and arranged for her, as "Mrs. Smith", to see Dr. Henry D. Grindle, who ran an unauthorized "lying-in" hospital that allowed pregnant woman to have their children and have them illegally adopted. The doctor wanted her to pay $150, but she could only pay $100 and he accepted it. Lattin checked into the lying-in hospital on August 5, 1868, then a few weeks later she delivered a healthy baby boy who was adopted anonymously without any record kept of the adoptive parents. Around August 18, 1868, she developed a postpartum infection. The medical student who attended to her realized Susannah was in serious condition and was not likely to survive, and he persuaded her to tell him her real name so he could notify her family. The message got to her parents after she had died. Coroner Aaron B. Rollins investigated the death.
Intersections with religion and religious figures
In 1990, John Cardinal O'Connor of New York suggested that, by supporting abortion rights, Catholic politicians who were pro-choice risked excommunication. The response of Catholic pro-choice politicians to O'Connor's comment was generally defiant. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi asserted that, "There is no desire to fight with the cardinals or archbishops. But it has to be clear that we are elected officials and we uphold the law and we support public positions separate and apart from our Catholic faith."
Abortion rights activities
Activities
Café Altro Paradiso in New York City held a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood on May 19, 2019 to support the organization's abortion services.
Protests
#StopTheBans was created in response to 6 states passing legislation in early 2019 that would almost completely outlaw abortion. Women wanted to protest this activity as other state legislatures started to consider similar bans as part of a move to try to overturn Roe v. Wade. One protest as part of #StopTheBans took place at Foley Square in New York City on May 21.
Views
Women in Film Executive Director Kirsten Schaffer said of Georgia and other states similar restrictive abortion bans passed in early 2019, “A woman’s right to make choices about her own body is fundamental to her personal and professional well-being. [...] We support people who make the choice not to take their production to Georgia or take a job in Georgia because of the draconian anti-choice law. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of pro-choice states that offer meaningful tax rebates and production incentives, and encourage everyone to explore these alternatives: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Washington.”
Anti-abortion views and activities
Activism
In 1873, Anthony Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made it illegal to deliver through the U.S. mail any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material. It also prohibited producing or publishing information pertaining to the procurement of abortion or the prevention of conception or venereal disease, even to medical students.
Activities
In April 1992, anti-abortion activists organized the “Spring of Life” protests in Buffalo. This was one of three large anti-abortion protests that received extensive media coverage.
Violence
There was an arson attack at an abortion clinic in New York in 1979 that caused around US$250,000 in damage. An incident of anti-abortion violence occurred at an abortion clinic in New York City, New York on December 10, 1985. Another occurred at an abortion clinic in Syracuse, New York on May 23, 1990. Another act of violence happened at an abortion clinic in Buffalo, New York on April 18, 1992. Dr. David Gandell of Rochester, New York sustained serious injuries in October 28, 1997 after being targeted by a sniper firing through a window in his home.
Between 1993 and 2015, 11 people were killed at American abortion clinics. Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death with a high-powered rifle at his home in Amherst, New York on October 23, 1998. His was the last in a series of similar shootings against providers in Canada and northern New York state which were all likely committed by James Kopp. Kopp was convicted of Slepian's murder after being apprehended in France in 2001.
See also
- Abortion in the United States
Footnotes