Abortion in Early Stages Said Simple, Painless

              Abortion in Early Stages
Said Simple*, Painless
By Margaret Martin
Times Medical Writer
A b o r t i o n s performed by
trained physicians under sterile
conditions are less hazardous
h a n normal pregancies,
Arthur Fort, head of the Depart-ment
of Obsterics and Gynecolo-gy
for the L o u i s i a n a State
University Medical School at
Shreveport, said in a speech
yesterday.
Fort spoke at a meeting of the
Louisiana Conference of Social
Welfare Region I at the State
Exhibit M u s e u m auditorium.
Also on the program was Dr.
Douglas R. Mackintosh, associ-ate
director and counselor of the
and Education Service, New
Orleans.
Prefacing his talk with the
comment that he had "no ax to
grind . . . I am not here to take
a stand one way or the other."
Fort said he was at the meeting
"to tell what goes on in this
country."
He told the some 100 partici-pants
that "abortions are done
— some are legal and some are
illegal."
Most Done By Doctors
There are a b o r t i o n s per-formed
by a number of people,
he said, but 85 per cent — legal
and illegal — are done by
physicians.
Up to three months of pregan-cy,
he said, abortions can be
performed "very, very easily
with a small syringe a
doctor can aspirate the product
of conception."
"It can be done in the doctor's
office and is painless," he said.
"It can be done very easily by
someone who knows what he is
doing."
D u r i n g the second three
months, abortion can be per-formed
by amniocentesis or
inserting a thin needle into the
sack of water in which the
embryo is housed, withdrawing
the fluid and replacing it with a
sugar or salt solution.
"This was a Very common
method of abortion in Japan in
the 1930s," Fort said, explaining
that it became an unsterile
procedure when the Japanese
began using it in wholesale
procedure.
A suction machine can be
used to induce more difficult
pregnancies, said Fort, explain-ing
that the machine is put to
the mouth of womb "withdraw-ing
the contents of the uterus."
The machine is used now he
said in 20 per cent of the
pregnancies, which end in spon-taneous
abortion,
,Fort said that abortions are
also performed with "slippery
elms," coat hangers and rubber
catheter, by insertion of various
instruments to scrape out the
contents of the uterus. Some
women buy drugs hoping to
induce abortion, but no drug is
effective, the physician empha-sized.
And while abortion can easily
be performed in the first
trisemester "easily by someone
who knows what he is doing a
lot of abortive attempts end in
congenital d e f e c t s , such as
deafness or blindness for the
infant, Fort added.
It is the p o o r who are
discriminated against most in
the area of abortion, Fort said,
explaining that upper and mid-dly
class women can afford
abortions, while unfortunately
the poor can't.
Referring to the moral aspect
of abortion, Fort said, "The
patient always comes to you
with his mind made up about
what he is going to do. They
come to you looking for help —
whether you give it to them
depends on the state in which
you live."
Although the subject of abor-tion
is a s t r o n g issue in
Louisiana, there are states such
as New York, California, and
Hawaii, where the procedure is
legal.
Mackintosh — who holds the
Ph.D. in public health from
Tulane University — discussed
abortion on international, nation-al
and local levels.
Comparing Louisiana to other
areas of the world, Macintosh
said that as more and more
women get abortions, more and
more people will be forced to
change their attitude toward
abortions.