“It was organized like an underground railroad. I didn’t have direct contact with the patients until their appointments. The women would contact a member of the clergy who was one of the referral group. The priests set up the appointments. Only they knew who I was, and they were scattered across the country — Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, all over.

“The women came by car, by bus, and by train. They hitchhiked and they walked. Everyone had to go through the referral to get to me. But once we were in contact, I told every woman my name, my telephone number, and my address. Each one came to my office and checked in like any other patient that saw me at my primary-care practice. It was a matter of trust.

“I basically taught myself how to do abortions. Complications were what could get you, the hospital would get suspicious. I had to learn to have a very low complication rate. Honestly, the hardest thing about it was that the women were so desperate. I couldn’t say no. It became my life, it was day and night.”

Dr. Sadja Greenwood

First abortion performed: 1968

Retired in 2000

“When I was 20 I had an illegal abortion in New York City. Thankfully, my father used his connections so I went to a doctor’s office and had it done by an ob-gyn. I really saw the gap between people that had means and people that didn’t. I got mine in a safe, sterile doctor’s office, and other women weren’t as lucky. Later, when I was in medical school, I saw a woman die of an illegal abortion. It’s something I still think about to this day.

“I provided my first abortion in the late ‘60s; 1968 was the year 100,000 teens came to San Francisco with flowers in their hair. Although the Pill had been legal since the early ‘60s, a lot of kids were getting pregnant. So, we started the first teen clinic at a Planned Parenthood where I worked. It was decorated by the teens themselves, with Indian textiles on the ceiling and their photography on the walls. Anyone could come. We didn’t have appointments, because appointments didn’t work. It was marvelous while it lasted and it lasted quite a while.

“The year before, abortion law had been liberalized in California. You had to go before a hospital committee and get approval, or you could get two psychiatrists and a gynecologist to approve your abortion by saying your mental health was at risk. We had a pregnancy counseling service composed of nurses, rabbis, psychiatrists, and a liberal gynecologist. Pregnant clients, whether they were teens or not, could get abortions.

“I performed the abortions in the hospital, which was legally mandated at the time. The women were unbelievably relieved that they didn’t have to try find someone who would do it on someone’s kitchen table.

“When Roe passed, it was just fantastic. The next day, we rolled one of the vacuum pumps [used in most first-trimester abortions] out of the UCSF hospital and took it over to Planned Parenthood so we could start doing abortions there. Abortions cost $25 back then.

“After Roe, I didn’t think about the backlash. We were so busy fixing things and setting up good services. I just want people to realize that it’s not a question of whether abortion is legalized or not, it’s a question of whether women are going to have one that’s medically safe or terribly unsafe. Every society that we know of, there have been abortions. Women are just as desperate not to have children as they are to have children.”

Dr. David Grimes

First abortion performed: 1972

Retired in 2014

“Abortion in the U.S. has become a victim of its own success; an entire generation of Americans have grown up without seeing or understanding what the dark days of before Roe were like. Without understanding that history, you can’t fully appreciate what the right to choice means.

“When I was in medical school in North Carolina, I got a page one night to tend to a patient with a 106 degree fever. I assumed that number was made in error. It wasn’t. When I examined her I found a red rubber catheter protruding from her cervix. Another day, I was paged for a young co-ed in septic shock with barely any blood pressure. There was a fetal foot protruding from her cervix. The first had gotten an illegal abortion, the second had tried to do it herself.

“In North Carolina, the laws changed in 1970 and we became a provider. I did my first abortion in 1972. During Vietnam I served my military requirement at the CDC, working in the Abortion Surveillance Branch where we tracked the public-health benefits of legal abortion. We had access to really unique data and quickly established the safety of abortion as an outpatient procedure.

“The evidence is clear and incontrovertible that abortion is a safe and an important part of women’s health and yet we still see this broad campaign of deception. You’re actually twice as likely to die from an injection of penicillin than an abortion, but no one is suggesting penicillin injections happen in a surgical ward.

“The North Carolina General Assembly has been voting in further restrictions to abortion practice. There’s no need for that. There hasn’t been a death from abortion in this state in decades. I’m a licensed boat captain — that’s what I like to do in my spare time. Last year, 23 people died in boating accidents in North Carolina. If the General Assembly truly cared about safety, they could make wearing life jackets mandatory. Boating is much more dangerous than having an abortion.”

Dr. Warren Hern

First abortion performed: 1971*

Still practicing “As a medical student in the early ‘60s, I was regularly taking care of women who were suffering and dying from the complications of illegal abortions. There was a woman who had been turned down for an abortion at a nearby hospital. She went home and shot herself in the uterus and then drove herself back to the hospital. “I wanted to be an epidemiologist. That was my plan. But, after the Roe ruling came down I got a call from a doctor asking me to join in starting a nonprofit abortion clinic. I agreed to get involved; for the Roe decision to mean anything it had to be implemented. After about two years I took out a loan and opened my own practice on January 22, 1975, the second anniversary of Roe. That first week I did three abortions and the practice grew from there. I’ve done it for 40 years now. “From the beginning, I got death threats. I was living in my house up in the mountains and I started sleeping with a rifle by my bed. I was amazed. How could this be controversial? It was the first time in human history women were able to end pregnancy safely. The death threats were very clear, but I don’t let the anti-choice movement intimidate me into stopping. There are only three things I’m afraid of: lightning, grizzly bears, sharks. “The anti-abortion fanatics have shown they’ll stop at nothing, including the assassination of a doctor in his church. Dr. [George] Tiller was a really good friend. I miss him. We talked on the phone two or three times a week. “There have been a number of attempts on my life, but I don’t wear a bulletproof vest anymore. They have been very clear in their letters, saying, ‘Don’t bother with the vest, we’ll go right for a head shot.’ That’s what they did with George. You just never know what’s going to happen.”

Dr. Douglas Laube

First abortion performed: 1973

Still practicing

“When Roe was passed I was a second-year resident at the University of Iowa. Within a few months, we were set up to do abortions. I was trained as a general ob-gyn. Back then, many of us expected it would just be one part of our larger practice. We didn’t anticipate that so many doctors would opt out of performing abortions. [Today, very few doctors are trained to perform abortions.]

“After Roe, we thought we’d won. We thought it was over.

“I remember back in the ‘80s, I was sitting on the exam stool with the patient in the middle of a D&C abortion. We were in a basement facility and heard this big noise coming from the ground floor, right above us. Fortunately, there were heavy steel-cased doors, but they had glass windows. An extremist group was using a telephone pole as a battering ram, trying to break through the front door.

“We could hear the breaking of the glass, the pounding against the door, our people were screaming. One nurse ran to call security. The other nurse was trying to calm the patient down. The patient was pleading with us not to leave her. She kept saying, ‘Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ I couldn’t leave; I had to finish the procedure. I said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll finish our job.’

“Today, it seems that there’s a little less violence because the right wing has been able to make a lot of legislative changes. The frustration and the desperation they felt in the first 20 or so years has been mollified by their ability to generate meaningful legislation for their side. Back then, I don’t know that any of us thought that there’d be any legislation curtailing abortion. We were very wrong on that, obviously.”

Dr. Suzanne T. Poppema

First abortion performed: 1974

Retired in 2014