| Ran an Underground Abortion Referral Service
When abortion was illegal, women had no choice but to seek out back-alley butchers for what should have been a medical procedure in a sterile environment. If there was a botched surgery and the victim went to a hospital, the police were called and they wouldn’ t allow the doctor to provide a painkiller until the patient gave them the information they sought.
In 1962, there was an article in Look magazine that stated, “There is no such thing as a ‘good’ abortionist. All of them are in business strictly for money.” But in an issue of 7he Realist | published an anonymous interview with Dr. Robert Spencer, a truly humane abortionist, promising that | would go to prison sooner than reveal his identity.
He had served as an Army doctor in World War I, then became a pathologist at a hospital in Ashland, Pennsylvania. He went down into the shafts after a mine accident, and aided miners to obtain Workmen’ s Compensation for lung disease. At a time when 5,000 women were killed
each year by criminal abortionists who charged as much as $1500, his
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