A

EDELIN, KENNETH C. 1937-

ABORTION DOCTOR

The Case

Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin was found guilty of manslaughter in Boston on 15 February 1975. He was accused of the death of a male fetus after a legal abortion he performed at the Boston City Hospital on 3 October 1973. The prosecution charged that Dr. Edelin killed the fetus by depriving it of life-sustaining oxygen while it was still in the womb. The prosecution argued that the fetus was old enough to be viable. However, viability was questionable because the gestational age was somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four weeks. The defense maintained that Dr. Edelin could not have committed manslaughter because the fetus was not a person and therefore no person ever existed. Furthermore, the defense maintained, the law had never given rights to the unborn. The fetus never lived and therefore could not have been killed. Dr. Edelin was sentenced to one year's probation and continued to practice at Boston City Hospital.

Legal Issues

The Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade (1973) prevented states from interfering with a woman's right to an elective abortion. In his charge to the jury the judge said that Roe v. Wade protected Dr. Edelin from criminal conduct for having performed the abortion. But because Massachusetts had not taken legislative action to regulate abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy, in Dr. Edelin's case the laws concerning manslaughter and definitions of a person and fetus were "inextricably intertwined."

Impact

The verdict added fuel to the fiery controversy over abortion and made obstetricians much more cautious about performing abortions during the second trimester of pregnancy. The verdict was widely regarded as a victory for anti-abortion and "right-to-life" groups. After his conviction, doctors in many hospitals refused to perform abortions in the middle stages of pregnancy for fear they too might be prosecuted.

Epilogue

Nearly two years later the Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned Dr. Edelin's lower-court conviction by ruling that a doctor commits manslaughter only if he ends the life of a fetus that is definitely alive outside of a woman's body. In April 1979, four years after his trial, Dr. Edelin was named chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Boston University's School of Medicine.