In 1975, Dr. Kenneth Edelin was a household name in Boston. The young African-American doctor’s obstetrics residency had been interrupted when a secret grand jury, appointed by Assistant Suffolk County DA Newman Flanagan, indicted him for manslaughter. What Edelin had done, in 1974, was perform a legal abortion. The swamp of medical and legal technicalities that defined the case pointed to his innocence, but, in 1975, an all-white, all-male, mostly Catholic jury convicted him. The Supreme Judicial Court overturned the conviction in ’76, but not before the city had endured a bitter series of racial and religious battles related to the case.Dr. Edelin, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University, has recently published a book about his ordeal, titled Broken Justice. The Phoenix hasn’t yet reviewed the text, but, as the press materials suggest, current threats to Roe v. Wade, make Edelin’s early tussle with the anti-choice right a “cautionary tale” worth re-telling.
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- Cause for pause
The Ogunquit Playhouse’s final show of the season is a musical for the ages — for the ages, that is, of about 45 to 60.
- Hot ticket
Here's a hot flash for you: dying is easy (in the theatrical sense of bombing onstage); producing a successful show is hard.
- The Ch-Ch-Ch-Change
If men had menopause, going postal would be the rule rather than the exception, and we'd have to get our mail from carrier pigeons.
- Controlling birth
Not surprisingly, I am searching for yet another birth control pill that doesn’t wreck my life.
- A bitter pill
In W’s world unaffordable birth control pills may become the “weapons of mass destruction” that we couldn’t find, until now.
- The Pill + Me
My story with the Pill begins at the vulnerable age of 18; I’ll begin at the point when I knew something was wrong.
- Quiet warfare
On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire.
- As goes Gloucester?
Waves of chatter wash over the city of Gloucester, where 17 high-school students are pregnant.
- The kids in the hall
Someone is going to get pregnant.
- Repro on the Red Line
Safe sex just got a little easier for women in Cambridge and Somerville, who won’t have to go quite as far for birth control, emergency contraception, or testing for pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.
- Pop goes the new year
While some people might have spent New Year’s popping the cork on cold bottles of Cristal, I was sitting on Cowboy’s back, pinning him down with my knees as I popped pimples in the interest of “cleansing” out the bad, and being squeaky-clean for 2006.
- Less
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This Just In
, Health and Fitness, Medicine, Boston University, More
, Health and Fitness, Medicine, Boston University, Medical Specializations, Abortion, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Less
