Butcher of Women: Abortion Tourism, Canadian Abortion Access and the Cautionary Case Study of Kermit Gosnell
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Texas Journal of Women, Gender, and the Law
Volume 25
'BUTCHER OF WOMEN': 'ABORTION TOURISM,'
CANADIAN ABORTION ACCESS AND THE
CAUTIONARY CASE STUDY OF
KERMIT GOSNELL
Dr. Frances E. Chapman*
We have to let young women and men know the tragedy
and the horror of illegal abortion... And young doctors espe-
cially must realize what it was like when abortion was illegal...
[Pre-Roe v. Wade] [w]e saw women who were desperate to ter-
minate an unwanted pregnancy, who would resort to whatever it
took to end that unwanted pregnancy, and sometimes they actu-
ally put their life on the line. They went to illegal abortionists.
They bled to death. They died of infection, or they did self-muti-
lation procedures in an attempt to end the pregnancy: coat hang-
ers in the uterus, slippery elm in the uterus, potassium
permanganate in their vagina - anything they could think of...
These women were left as reproductive cripples: Many of them
needed hysterectomies, many of them were left with pelvic ab-
scesses, left with infertility, so that at a time in their life when
they wanted children, they were unable to have those children.1
* Dr. Frances E. Chapman, Associate Professor, Bora Laskin Faculty of Law,
Lakehead University, Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada. Dr. Chapman received her doctorate
in law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Her major research interests
focus on criminal law defences and crimes against women. I am much indebted to the
research and editing assistance of my research assistant, Mike Grimaldi, JD class of 2017,
Lakehead Law. Thank you to Tracy Penny Light, Shannon Stettner and Kristin Burnett for
early comments of this material, and for the work on the related chapter - Frances E
Chapman & Tracy Penny Light, Functionally Inaccessible: Medical, Legal and Historical
Perspectives on Abortion in Canadian Abortion Politics: Twenty-Five Years After
Morgentaler.
1. Erica Pelletreau, Reflections of a Provider Before and Since Roe: From the Voices
of Choice Archive, 35 PESPFCTIVIEs ON SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HIALTH (2003). (In-
terview of Mildred S. Hanson who was interviewed for a multimedia project on doctors
who provided abortions before Roe v. Wade).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/tjwl25&div=4&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Butcher of Women: Abortion Tourism, Canadian Abortion Access and the Cautionary Case Study of Kermit Gosnell
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