I wonder what she thought of the current situation.
Jane Hodgson, 91, a Minnesota obstetrician-gynecologist who directly challenged her state's restrictive abortion laws in 1970 and, long after her conviction was overturned, remained a stalwart of reproductive rights for women, died Oct. 23 at her home in Rochester, Minn. She had congestive heart failure.
The daughter of a country doctor and the wife of a prominent cardiac surgeon, Dr. Hodgson developed her own thriving OB-GYN practice in the Twin Cities after World War II. She was deeply conservative and for years shunned requests for abortion procedures.
Dr. Hodgson was considered an unlikely person to defy the state law, which said abortions were legal only when the woman's life was at risk. "I've always had a proper respect for the law, and I've performed very few of even the so-called 'legal' abortions -- not over a dozen in 23 years of practice," she told the New York Times in 1970. "But those aren't the ones that bother me. It's the ones I've refused to perform that haunt me."
In other interviews, she described being increasingly "besieged" by desperate women bleeding from botched motel-room abortions. "I'd take them to a hospital and finish it for them," she said.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001281.html
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