In mid-1930s, pregnant women in cities in California, Oregon, and Washington could obtain safe surgical abortions in clean facilities from professionals trained in the latest technique. The only catch? The abortions were illegal.

The syndicate that provided these abortions was the Pacific Coast Abortion Ring, which operated from 1934 to 1936 with clinic locations in Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and San Diego, Long Beach, Hollywood, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, California. It employed more than thirty people, which included not just doctors but also receptionists, nurses, and steerers who referred women to the Pacific Coast Abortion clinics from doctors’ offices and pharmacies. 

Joining me to help tell the story of the Pacific Coast Abortion Ring is Dr. Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Assistant Professor of History at LaSierra University and author of From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969, the source for much of this introduction.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Jewel Inez Joseph, mother of Ruth Attaway who died after an abortion, in court, Los Angeles, 1935,” published in the Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1935, and is available via the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Additional Sources:

• “Abortion and the Law in California: Lessons for Today,” by Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, California History, February 1, 2022; 99 (1): 10–29. 
• “How California created the nation’s easiest abortion access — and why it’s poised to go further” by Kristen Hwang, Cal Matters, April 21, 2022.
• “San Diego’s History as a Haven for Desperate Women” by Randy Dotinga, Voice of San Diego, July 3, 2022.
• “‘Criminal Operations’: The First Fifty Years of Abortion Trials in Portland, Oregon,” by Michael Helquist. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 2015; 116 (1), 6–39. 

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