Our main goal is control of population as we believe overpopulation is the major cause of most of the world's problems-energy, mass starvation, rising crime, etc. etc. This is particularly true of unwanted children. The Supreme Court's Ruling on abortions seems to be a step in the right direction, both to control unwanted births and to protect our freedom of choice. Our recent and continuing energy problems are as nothing compared to the mass world starvation if population growth remains unchecked. In closing, thank you for giving consideration to the above in your Hearings on the proposed amendments to the Supreme Court's Ruling on abortions. Very sincerely yours, MONROE SPEN, Executive Director. THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, DEPARTMENT OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY, MAGEE-WOMENS HOSPITAL, Hon. BIRCH BAYH, Chairman, Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR BAYH: I am writing this letter which I request that you and your committee include in your official hearing record of the subcommittee's hearings on Senate Joint Resolution 119 and Senate Joint Resolution 130 considering the issue of abortion. I am writing from my experience of twenty-two years in reproductive physiological research, ten years as a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist and faculty member and as chairman of the mid-atlantic region medical advisory committee of planned parenthood-world population and chairman of the medical advisory committee of the Pittsburgh affiliate of that organization. In brief, I believe that history and medical records have shown the need for the decision of abortion between a patient and her physician up to twenty weeks gestation, both for protection of the health of the individual and her family on the one hand, and for society as a whole on the other. The demonstrated improvement in public health figures in New York City and elsewhere with a decrease in the physical and mental complications of criminal abortion following the institution of legal abortion up to twenty weeks gestation have clearly benefited the individual in society. It is also expected that figures of incidence of child abuse will show a decline as legal abortion becomes more wide-spread in the fifty states. It is also quite clear from many reports that the economic and physical hardships caused by over-population in our own country as well as the rest of the world can only be lessened if legal abortion continues to be one method of family planning. Since life is already present in the ovum and sperm, I do not feel that abortion before a period of medical viability should be considered murder anymore than male or female sterilization. Thus, the "preservation of life" of the fetus before twenty weeks gestation must be balanced against the greater need for the mental, moral, and physical health of the individual, family and American society as a whole. If not made freely available to patient and her physician after proper counselling, abortion will become clandestine and revert to its former primary health hazard in the United States. DEAR SENATOR BAYH: I appreciate having the opportunity to submit a statement for the record with reference to Senate Joint Resolution 119 and Senate Joint Resolution 130, proposed amendments to the Constitution to prohibit abortion. I would like to precede my statement by telling you a little of my background and experiences. I come from a strong religious background. My parents were medical missionaries to China, and I have long been an active member of the Presbyterian Church. I am a physician, having received medical training at the University of Oklahoma and at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. My career has primarily ben in public health. I worked for two years in a City-County Health Department in Des Moines, Iowa, and then spent six years in medical research, primarily on cholera control in Bangladesh. Although my primary focus at that time was on infectious diseases, I became acutely aware of the population problem in that poor country and this led to my current position as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Population Dynamics at The Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Hopkins Population Center. My other professional activities include Chairman of the American Public Health Association Committee on Population and Member of the Medical Advisory Committee of Planned Parenthood-World Population. I have had direct and personal contact with family planning programs in the United States, particularly in the State of Maryland, as well as in many countries in the world, most notably Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, and Turkey. These experiences, with people of many nationalities and different cultures, working at every programmatic level from the highest levels in national Ministries to the lowest level field worker, in programs designed to assist people in controlling their fertility, have given me, I feel, a broad perspective from which to view the issues surrounding abortion. Let me begin by saying I am totally opposed to both proposed Amendments to the Constitution which would prohibit abortion. Human beings from time immemorial have sought means to control their fertility and induced abortion is one of the most ancient practices in most cultures throughout the world. Within our own cultural tradition it was not considered either immoral or illegal until the last century. As I am sure you are well aware, the legal restraints were placed on abortion in the late 19th Century primarily to protect the mother's health. Currently, of course, there is no justification for such constraints on the basis of health, since recent experience has proven that abortion done by properly qualified personnel is actually safer than child birth. The formal religious strictures on abortion most clearly enunciated by the Catholic Church are similarly of recent origin. I do not feel it is relevant to discuss or debate the basis for these convictions since I feel that every individual American is entitled to hold to his own personal religious beliefs. My concern is when these personal religious convictions are being proposed as a law to control the behavior of the majority of Americans who do not hold to these beliefs. The essence of the proposed Constitutional Amendments providing rights to the fetus from the moment of conception is irrational on the basis of the biological facts of life. If one wants to protect the fertilized ovum on the basis that it is a potential human being, then we should consider the fact that every living cell in our bodies also contains the genetic potential for a complete human being. That this is a fact has already been confirmed by experiments in frogs where nucleus was taken out of a frog's egg and replaced with the nucleus from the intestinal cell of another frog. The egg then went on to reproduce a new frog identical to the frog that donated the intestinal cell nucleus. On the basis of these experiments, I would ask-if we are going to give individual cells constitutional rights, why limit it to the fertilized ovum, why not to every cell in the body, since the same potential is there? Another fact is the very nature of the reproductive process itself. Specifically, it is not very efficient. The best scientific evidence in humans now indicates that less than 50 percent of the fertilized ova survive to produce a live birth. The remainder are spontaneously aborted with the vast majority of these abortions occurring in the first few weeks of pregnancy. About half of these abortuses have been clearly shown to have severe genetic abnormalities, precluding any possibility of survival. On the basis of this latter observation, I find it incomprehensible how every conceptus from the moment of fertilization could be endowed with the full constitutional rights which our society has developed to protect and preserve the lives of living human beings. In particular, I am repelled by what I consider a truly barbarious proposal that each and every conceptus would be given equal, if not primary, consideration in cases where the pregnancy threatened the life of the mother, when we know for a fact that Nature herself will destroy half of these pregnancies in the normal process of human reproduction. Given this biological pattern of human reproduction, we know that we can do very little about spontaneous pregnancy losses during the early months of pregnancy, since most of these are genetically defective. It is only in the latter stages of pregnancy when the fetus becomes viable outside the human body that human intervention can make a difference in survival. It is at this point, when we are dealing with the fetus that can be viable independent of the mother, that the issue becomes a legitimate problem of social concern, since it is at this point where medical investment and concern for human life will make a digerence in human welfare. My concern and society's concern obviously does not stop with the birth of the baby, since social investment really makes a difference after this point in terms of the ultimate survival of the child. As an example, in the United States only 2 percent of live born infants will die in the first five years of life, while in Bangladesh 20 percent will die in the same period of time, and in much of Africa over 50 percent of the newborns will die in this early stage of childhood. I understand that one group of citizens opposed to abortion identifies itself as being in favor of "the right to life." As a health professional, I am also equally concerned about the right to life; however, my concern is directed primarily to the right to life of the 100 million newborns coming into the world every year, 20 million of whom will not survive even the first year of life because they do not have the basic necessities for human health and welfare that our society would consider a minimum requirement for a decent human existence. Induced abortion is indeed more than a medical and biological problem. It encompasses a host of complex legal and sociological issues. The majority decision of the Supreme Court was outstanding in its clarity in securing the rights of the individual as well as protecting the concerns of society. Fertility control was recognized as a basic human right by the 1968 United Nations Conference on Human Rights when they stated that, "Couples have the basic human right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and the right to adequate education in this respect." This right was reiterated by the American Public Health Association in 1969 when it reaffirmed this right stating, "It is generally accepted that individual women and couples should have the means to decide without compulsion the numbering and spacing of their children.. In order to assure the accepted right to determine freely the number and spacing of their children, safe legal abortion should be available to all women." This was reiterated in 1970 when the American Public Health Association adopted recommended standards for abortion services and stated, "Abortion services are an integral part of comprehensive family planning and maternal and child care. As such abortion and contraceptive counseling and services should be available together." The APHA has taken such a strong position because rights are not meaningful unless there is the opportunity to exercise these rights. In the case of safe medical abortions, the affluent in our society who could seek these in good conscience did not have difficulty in obtaining the services. It has always been the poor who were forced into unwanted patterns of childbearing by restrictive abortion legislation. We now have a situation under the Supreme Court decision of 1973 where each individual has a maximum opportunity to act freely within the dictates of his or her own conscience. If an abortion is desired in the first trimester, it can be obtained with the assurance of the high standards of medical care anl minimum risk to life. Clearly, this protection to the indiivdual protects society. At the same time, in the later stages of pregnancy when the fetus becomes viable, there is then the opportunity for society to provide the safeguards to protect these potential offspring. Under this decision, no one is compelled to act contrary to his own convictions. I find it difficult to comprehend how our society could come up with a better solution to this incredibly complex problem. The proposed Constitutional Amendments are clearly a retrogressive step bringing us back to a state where one group in our society is attempting by law to impose its personal system of morality or religious convictions on all of society. I trust your Committee and the Senate will recognize that the foundation for these proposed Amendments are primarily matters of personal religious belief which should not become matters of law. Sincerely, W. HENRY MOSLEY, M.D., Professor and Chairman. DRS. CROSSEN & WAGNER, P.S.C., DIPLOMATES AMERICAN BOARD OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY, Hon. BIRCH BAYH, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR BAYH: I would appreciate it if this statement of my medical opinion could be included in the minutes of your committee's deliberations. I am the physician who was the primary plaintiff in a suit contesting the constitutionality of the old Kentucky Abortion Law which went through the Federal court system and was one of the suits on the docket of the Supreme Court prior to its decision of late January 1973. My opinion is definitely not based on the feeling that abortion is the primary means for women to control their fertility. Continued improvement in contraceptive methods and education about sexuality, and responsibility in expressing sexuality, should always be the first line of defense in conception control. However, I feel that a woman must be allowed to control her own body and if contraception fails or is not used for one reason or another, this control must not be taken away from her by those who feel that they know better what is good for her. Abortion is a medical matter and the decision should only be between the woman and a physician who is willing to perform her abortion. It has been estimated that approximately 1,500,000 women per year obtained abortions before January 1973. There is no reason to think that this number will significantly decrease until contraceptives, and the use of them, improve. Women are now able to have this procedure under good and safe conditions. Mortality and morbidity are extremely low in comparison to the extreme hazards of life and health that women were subjected to before the Supreme Court decision. We know that these women, in their desperation, will have abortions, whatever the law. A Constitutional amendment to remove the legality of therapeutic abortions will only force them back to the unsterile, unskilled hands of the non-medical abortionist. I, respectfully implore that you, your committee, and the whole Congress look beyond the heated emotions of this issue and consider the consequences of such an amendment. Sincerely, Hon. BIRCH BAYH, PHILIP S. CROSSEN, M.D. WICHITA-SEDGWICK, DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY HEALTH, Chairman, Senate Sub-Committee on Constitutional Amendments, DEAR SENATOR BAYH: As physician and director of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Department of Community Health, I would like to make known my deep concern that the "right to choose" abortion decision handed down by the Supreme Court be upheld. My reasons for this are based on my experience and recent facts which have been noted in the medical literature. During my medical training, I was privileged to serve at the Los Angeles County General Hospital on a service called Infected Obstetrics. While on this service, I admitted five to ten women every night who had been "criminally" aborted with the resultant infection, sterility, and in several cases death. It was, of course, impossible to ascertain the degree of mental anguish suffered by those surviving such abortions. If a constitutional amendment to nullify the January 22, 1973 Supreme Court Abortion decision were to be successful, this would not eliminate abortions but only drive them back "underground" and into the hands of "butchers." Medical literature has demonstrated time and again that the risk of maternal death if pregnancy is allowed to go to term is far greater than that associated with abortion in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Also the risk to life from abortion in the second trimester is no greater than that of pregnancy and childbirth. By providing a legal and medically suitable environment in which to have an abortion, the chance of counseling and future utilization of contraception is greatly enhanced. The question of whether abortion is "murder" or whether a woman has “the right to choose" is one which will never be settled. However, all alternatives should be made available in order that each person can make a choice consonant with her beliefs. It is a firm policy at this department that the personal religious, and moral convictions of our staff do not enter into the counseling of females requesting problem pregnancy counseling. It is equally unfair for religious and special interest groups to impose their beliefs on the entire population. I would like to have these comments entered into the hearing record and would be willing to provide testimony for the Sub-Committee on Constitutional Amendments, Judiciary Committee at any time during the week of May 13, 1974. Sincerely, MERVYN F. SILVERMAN, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Community Health. MARINETTE, Wis., May 23, 1974. Senator BIRCH BAYH, Chairman, Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR BAYH: I would like this letter and the enclosed article "Positive Aspects of Abortion Reform” entered in the proceedings of your Sub-Committee on Constitutional Amendments. Although my article is over one year old, recent data has confirmed the preliminary results I cited. Abortion reform as outlined by the U.S. Supreme Court decision of January 1973, is the ideal approach in our pleuralistic society. To yield to pressures of a minority to conform to their views would be the utmost tragedy. Public opinion polls indicate a greater number of people favor the Court's decision than oppose it. I urge you to protect the non-sectarian nature of our government. Thank you. Enclosure. DR. WENDELL J. JOHNSON. POSITIVE ASPECTS OF ABORTION REFORM It is a distinct privilege to be asked to address the members of the Upper Peninsula Public Health Association. As an educator, I can say that the profession of Public Health is, and will become even more so a field of study for today's students with the bright prospect for a challenging career. In particular, the topics of Family Planning, Contraception and Abortion are rivaled in contemporary importance only by the venereal disease pandemic. Let me first say that I am not pro-abortion-nor do I advocate an antiabortion stand. The approach taken by people involved in working for reform is that this is a decision to be made by the woman with the medical advice of her physician. An examination of the legislative history of abortion might be informative. Many of the current state laws regarding abortion were enacted in the 1800's with the sole purpose of preventing medical risks to pregnant women. Before anesthesia (1846) and antisepsis (1867) any surgery was likely to cause death. Margaret Sanger, a public health nurse, an early crusader for birth control, and a native of Michigan, was motivated to greater efforts by a young woman who died as a result of her second self-induced abortion. After her first self-induced abortion the attending physician could only offer this woman the worthless suggestion that "Jake sleep on the roof." In the late 1960's, ten states liberalized their abortion laws. Other states are in the act of liberalizing, having referenda on and examining their statutes. Alaska, Hawaii and New York have come closest to an actual repeal of abortion laws. These legal revisions are being made not because of the new awareness of the problem of human numbers, but in the name of personal individual freedom for women to have complete control over their biological functions. To give you some ideas of the demand for these medical services, in California in 1971 there were 116,749 legal abortions in accredited hospitals. During the same period there were 330,000 births; about one abortion for every three births. Illegal abortions of which there are still many, were not accounted for. |