“Broken Justice” by Kenneth C. Edelin.
In 1974, Kenneth C. Edelin, an African-American doctor finishing his residency training at Boston City Hospital, was indicted on a charge of manslaughter. The indictment concerned an abortion he had performed on a 17-year-old girl; the alleged victim was her fetus. After a six-week trial, a jury convicted Edelin. In 1976, the state Supreme Judicial Court reversed the verdict.
For 30 years Edelin struggled to write a book about the case. Last year he retired from the Boston University School of Medicine to finish it. “Broken Justice: A True Story of Race, Sex and Revenge in a Boston Courtroom” is his gripping account of those tumultuous times. Before the indictment was handed down, Boston City Councilor Albert “Dapper” O’Neil had convened hearings aimed at ending abortions at the city hospital. Edelin also draws on memories of accompanying his girlfriend to New York in 1962 for an illegal abortion.
Edelin, who remains supportive of a woman’s right to an abortion, writes in the book that “the scar on my soul [from the manslaughter conviction] has never gone away.”
That’s definitely going on the Amazon wishlist.
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Oh man, it was a BIG BIG DEAL at the time. (Too bad we didn’t have COURT TV back then!–said the COURT TV addict.)
My mother sent money to his defense fund. That was when she told me about her own illegal abortion.
i’m not old enough to remember the case, but being from the boston area i can say that ‘Dapper O’Neil’ is a synonym for ‘racist, misogynist asshole.’
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