Abortion doctor who championed women's rights dies at 74
The doctor at the centre of a landmark abortion case in the 1970s, Dr Kenneth Edelin, died on Monday at age 74 after battling cancer.
Edelin’s wife, Barbara, confirmed that he died in Florida after suffering from the disease.
Edelin – the first black person to become chief resident of the Boston City Hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology department – made headlines in the United States when he was convicted of manslaughter in 1975 for performing an abortion.
He was a great advocate for ... women to have choice in their own reproductive freedom
That was two years after the US Supreme Court legalised the procedure with its decision on Roe v. Wade.
Edelin completed the procedure surgically after the 17-year-old girl, in her sixth month of pregnancy, failed repeatedly to abort the child through saline injections, reports said.
“He was a great advocate for the rights of women to have choice in their own reproductive freedom,” Barbara Edelin said. “Particularly for women of colour and other minorities.”
His wife said Edelin was affected deeply as a child when his mother died of breast cancer.
“He became a doctor because that’s what he thought he needed to do to help women,” Barbara Edelin said.