WEBVTT

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[music]

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I remember as a child, one
day, uh, my mother said

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to me do you see that man? And he was
out in front of our house. There was a

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small man with a, a French beret
on which, in, back in the 1930\'s,

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was really something. And she said he
is Doctor Robert Spencer and as you

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grow older, you will hear more about him.
When Doctor Robert Spencer died in 1969,

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he left behind a collection of letters
from women asking for his help.

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The letters spanned four decades. There
were more than 30,000 letters in all.

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Dear Doctor Spencer, I\'m writing
at the suggestion of a friend. I\'m

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six weeks overdue and I\'m desperately
afraid of winding up in the wrong hands,

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because some day I wish to have a family. Dear Doctor,
I find it very difficult to begin this letter.

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I have a problem and the man responsible
left me as soon as he heard about it.

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I was given your name as one of the few
doctors in the country willing to handle

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these cases. Dear Doctor Spencer, my husband
has just passed away. I have five children

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and cannot have another. I\'m in dire need of your help and
would like to have an appointment with you as soon as

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possible.

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[sil.] This is Ashland. A town
of less than 4000 people nestled

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in the anthracite coal region of eastern
Pennsylvania. The people here take pride in

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their community. An annual
parade celebrates Ashland\'s

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small town traditions.

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[music] Ashland was a thriving town

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in 1925, when the young Doctor Spencer
opened his clinic on Center Street.

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It was the most modern doctor\'s
office within 50 miles. This

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was a time when coal drove the nation\'s
industries and Ashland mines produced anthracite,

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the finest coal in America.

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[music]

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As the demand for coal tapered
off, Ashland became known

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for its bootleg miners,
speakeasies and labor unrest.

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This was an area where the Molly
Maguires were quite active, uh,

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union organizing days, uh... This
was a place where, where certain,

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a lot of immigrant groups, uh, resented and
resisted government intervention generally.

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Uh, very, they thought that, people
should be left alone. That, uh,

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there was a, a kind of,
uh, one local priest

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said to me, he said, there is a dreadful
live and let live attitude in this town.

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Doctor Spencer\'s treatment of black lung disease
and his willingness to help rescue injured

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miners made him legendary in Ashland.

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It was very unusual for a doctor to go into the mines to,
to help anybody. Generally they had to be brought out first

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and, and taken to the hospital
before they were seen by any doctor.

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And he would go in there and supply that

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attention before they were freed.
That was a danger to his

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own life at times, but he did it.
My first vivid

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recollection of doctor Spencer
as an individual or as a doctor,

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was that I read in the paper that
he removed an open safety pin

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from a girls esophagus. So
from then on, Doctor Spencer

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was something a little different
he was out of the ordinary

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run of doctors. I guess he could tell by,

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what, what the way you looked
or anything else you know.

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People that didn\'t have much
and, and I didn\'t have much

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because I, I was so apart from
my mother and two children

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you know? And he never charged
me more than two dollars

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and, and gave me the medicine.
He was a short man

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rather rotund and he had a very happy face.

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He, he\'s always smiling it seemed to me. I
still remember him at a zoo, his little beret

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with his little knob on top of it. He,
he was, he wore those most of the time.

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He looked, I thought he looked funny in
that thing. He looked like Harry Truman.

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Uh he was feisty and, he was, uh,
had a rotary pin in his lapel.

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He wasn\'t what I had expected and,
uh, I remember the pride at the age

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of uh in his late 70s he, he
uh, bought an aquacar and this

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was a car that could ride
on both land and sea.

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[music] He was just a pleasure to be with

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he was a jolly person. He\'d
a made a good preacher,

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but he was an atheist. He would be sort of

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um provocatively scientific. That man, um,

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who understood science, a man of
science could do wonderful things

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could do, could make the
world a better place. Doctor

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Spencer treated all patients
even those too poor to pay,

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but there was one type of patient who
by law Doctor Spencer could not treat;

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women who were pregnant, but did not wish
to be. Throughout the United States,

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abortion was illegal. A doctor who
helped a woman terminate her pregnancy

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could have his medical license
revoked be fined and sent to prison.

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The ban on abortion gave rise
to the wide spread practice of

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illegal abortion. Black market
abortionists seldom had medical training.

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Procedures were unsanitary marked by fear.

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Around the country, thousands of women
were injured or died each year.

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For desperate women the only alternative
was to perform the abortion themselves.

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I was student teaching at a
junior high school in Harlem

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and in the short period of time that I was

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there, three young girls had attempted to

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abort themselves with hangers, back
room, real back room abortions and uh,

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two of them had died. Young kids.

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He had people brought in to him
from abortionists in the area

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that had botched the job.
They would use such things as

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the stays from an umbrella and they would
usually wind up either in a hospital

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or in Doctor Spencer\'s office.
One woman tried

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inserting one of those glass straws,

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you know you put it a glass straw

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in a drink and she used
that and she come into him

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and he worked terribly to save her life.

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For six years Doctor Spencer
obeyed the ban on abortion.

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Then with the great depression approaching,
the local coal industry collapsed,

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mines shut down, families went hungry.
The first one he ever did

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was a very poor woman with too

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many children and she came to him
and asked would he help her out.

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She couldn\'t take any more
of it and he had sympathy

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on her and he said I couldn\'t resist it.
People just

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went to him and depending

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on his sympathy to perform an abortion.

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Wasn\'t advertised it
wasn\'t talked about no one

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uh, criticized him it was just a

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a necessary service. Word
quickly spread of Doctor

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Spencer\'s willingness to perform
abortions openly in his clinic. Women

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came to him first from Ashland, then
from surrounding towns. In time his

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reputation spread to other states.

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In college, uh we had all kept
Doctor Spencer\'s names in our

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wallet as a sort of talisman and in
case of emergencies we would uh,

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know that there was this man or we
thought there was this man and he had

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kind of mythic uh we weren\'t sure that
he existed I never knew anyone who

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who actually went to Ashland, but we
had all heard these stories. He was so

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well known that there was a
mythology around him. I heard that

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they put him in jail sometimes.
I heard this

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story once that he would
he had performed abortions

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because he had a daughter who
died from an illegal abortion

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and that I believed turned
out to be apocryphal. Um,

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there were all kinds of
rumors floating around.

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In a small town like

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Ashland, everybody seems to
know everything about everybody

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and of course you hear lots of stories
and lots of rumors going around and

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they, I heard lots of
stories about, you know,

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performing the abortions at the
bus stop at the corner down

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below his place and they said when
you see ladies getting off from

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the New York bus all dressed up going
to Doctor Spencer, that\'s what they\'re

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going for. We never missed a beautiful
girl, but I wish she wasn\'t

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somebody always saw her going by you know, and hollered
and everybody else would come to the window have,

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have the, have the fun of
watching a girl go by.

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They walked up and down
town, for, to pass time

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and when they were free to see
what the local yokels looked like,

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but they, they were, they were nice people.
They were not

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riff-raff as they might say.
They were nice people. Sometimes

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there would be somebody come in
and uh, they wouldn\'t have the

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fare to go back. He\'d give
it to them or he\'d even buy

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them a dinner. They were that poor.

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Doctor Spencer\'s office was set up to
accommodate women from out of town

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who could not afford the local hotel and
black women who were not welcome there.

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On the wall of his office were these words.

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[music] Well I remember uh,

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a long drive to Doctor Spencer\'s clinic.

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I mean it\'s hard to explain how

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frightened I was.

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I mean it\'s just so hard to go back
and remember the backdrop of uh,

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of illegal abortions and the criminal

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sense of it and the dangerous sense of it.

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It was uh April of 1964, when
I went to see Doctor Spencer.

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That I always remember because
not only was it traumatic

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time in making the decision to have an abortion,
but also to find somebody that, that\'s safe

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and that\'s not going to jeopardize your
health. I didn\'t even know what was wrong

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with me, but I asked a woman friend and
she said you\'re pregnant. I said oh

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my god what do I do? She said well
you have two choices you can go

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to Doctor Spencer if he\'s practicing
now or you can raise 600 dollars

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and go to Porto Rico and when you\'re
working for a dollar an hour and

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Doctor Spencer charged 25 dollars, there
was no question. I don\'t know what

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I expected I guess I expected
to be punished somehow or to be

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told as I had felt that this was a wrong

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thing to do and a wrong thing
to happen and it wasn\'t

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like that it was, um, this
is an accident this is

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an unfortunate situation you are not doing the
wrong thing. I think it was the first time

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that it really kicked in, that I was really scared
with something more than would I be damaged

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inside, If I chose to have children later
on would I be able to have children,

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but then I sort of started thinking of Doctor
Spencer and I just looked, I kind of saw

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his face and I just you know felt
that this man would not harm me

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and would not hurt me and I
really thank God in a way

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that he was there to help me because this was
not a period of my life where I, where I

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was ready to have a child. I

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remember being told, if we were
stopped by the highway patrol,

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to just say that we were
just on a vacation because

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there were no reasons to visit Ashland
other than, especially from New York

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with out of state license plates unless you
were, uh, on your way for an abortion.

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I suppose if uh, if I were going there as an
adult now, I don\'t know how much the town

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has changed, but I would probably
think, wow what kind of a god

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forsaken place is this? What kind
of an out of the way place is this?

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But I guess I figured that it was
just about right for him to be

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able to do what he did in such a
place and perhaps he was protected

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by the town. That didn\'t occur
to me then though. I had a

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feeling that people there knew what was
going on. That this was a time that

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abortions were illegal, but yet I had the
feeling that the whole town knew, because the

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motel manager was a man and when we
were young you know college students

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and yet what are we doing
there for one night? He

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once told me they should name me jokingly he said, they should name
me mister Ashland as if it wasn\'t for me there would be no motels in

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this town. People came from all
over and they literally did. Uh,

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they came from California from
Florida many from New York from uh

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Massachusetts. His uh, dozens of
dozens of states, some foreign

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countries. He uh, he was
the magnet that brought

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the world to Ashland after
no one much wanted the

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anthracite that it had produced
for all the years of its boom.

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As word of Doctor Spencer\'s
abortion practice spread,

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it drew the attention of local and state
authorities. Finally the crackdowns began.

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On at least five occasions, state
troopers raided Doctor Spencer\'s clinic,

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but they were not able to prove that
Doctor Spencer was doing anything illegal.

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When he was to be raided
by the state police,

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the county police gave him

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word of what was going on
and he would get rid of his

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patients in the office and
when they came there was

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nobody there that he was
doing abortions on.

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When he\'d lay low that was
only for a day or so. He

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would just clean out the office the
days that that he was going to be

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arrested. He\'d start in the
next day and go back to work.

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The townspeople, in effect,
built an invisible shield

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that as far as possible
the townspeople would

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protect the doctor even
though they realized

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and even though a lot of them
personally did not approve of abortion.

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I worried about it. I didn\'t
want anything to happen

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to him. You never knew

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what, what could. Doctor Spencer
avoided arrest for nearly

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three decades. Then in

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1956, a woman from New York who had come
to Ashland for an abortion experienced

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heart failure during the procedure.
Doctor Spencer tried to

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revive her, but was unsuccessful.
He called the local police and told

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them what happened. The
people that arrested Doctor

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Spencer, didn\'t do it willingly.
They did it very unwillingly

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and uh cut it as short as
they knew how to do it.

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The county prosecutor charged Doctor

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Spencer with performing an illegal
abortion and involuntary manslaughter.

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He told reporters that
he could prove Doctor

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Spencer\'s guilt without a doubt.
Doctor Spencer himself had signed

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a confession stating the patient
died during an illegal abortion.

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Still, the jurors heard nine days
of expert testimony reinforcing the

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prosecution\'s case. Well I knew that

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he was a doctor that performed abortions.
I knew that. I realized that,

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and uh, but he did a lot of other good.
He was one of the first doctors that

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performed tonsillectomies in his office.
Doctor Spencer\'s lawyer

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called no witnesses. He spoke to the jury
for ten minutes and rested his case.

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I don\'t approve of abortion. I think it\'s
wrong because I\'m a Christian, but uh,

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the girl from New York that
had died in his office

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uh had a bunch of other medication
in her purse and we felt that

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she may have had other medical problems
other than being there for an abortion.

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The jury\'s verdict came as a
relief for Doctor Spencer.

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Had he had been found guilty he would have been
banned from practicing medicine ever again.

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Still, he was devastated by the
death of the woman from New York.

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He wouldn\'t do any for
quite a while and uh,

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but then somebody desperately in

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need of help would come
in once in a while. Then

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he would do one. Dear

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Doctor Spencer, thank you for recommending the
doctor in Porto Rico. Unfortunately, I do not have

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the means to travel there. I\'m growing
more afraid each day. Dear doctor I am 18

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years old and I am very distressed because
I\'m in trouble. I have no family here

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and no one to turn to. Dear Doctor Spencer I\'m at
the end of my rope and I\'m running out of time.

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I am writing in hopes that you might
reconsider my request for help.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
In time,

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
Doctor Spencer\'s practice returned to
normal. He continued to perform abortions

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
openly, helping as many as ten women a day.
He did this because

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
he thought there was enough
suffering in the world and he

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
should, as far as possible, he should
eliminate it. It was I wanna help

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
humanity, which seems
awfully, it seems awfully

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
uh simplistic to say, but that\'s how I feel

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
the doctor was. He wanted to help humanity
in whatever way he could and as a doctor

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
this was a way in which he could do it. When
you asked him, you know, the big why, why

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
do you do it? he said that\'s when he said
these young women come and they ask me

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
and they say why do you do it and I say don\'t
you want me to do it for you? And they say

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
yes and he said that\'s why I do it.
When my first

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
daughter was born, I had
never loved any creature so

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
much in my whole life.
It was not, you know,

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
it was not the same feeling of getting
pregnant accidentally at all. As soon as I

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
knew I was pregnant, I
was so happy and I feel,

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
everything goes back to everything, goes back
to everything. So if Doctor Spencer hadn\'t

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
helped me out then, I know, I probably

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
would\'ve made a good life but, I can\'t imagine
that it would have been as good as this one.

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Doctor Spencer kept his office

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
open almost until the day
he died in 1969, four years

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
before abortion became legal. His
obituary appeared in the New York Times

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
and on the front page of the
Los Angeles Times. Newsweek

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
magazine devoted a whole page to his story.
The Ashland newspaper published a

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
moving eulogy, but never mentioned that
Doctor Spencer had performed abortions

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
[music]

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
Dear Doctor Spencer I will never forget your
gentleness and concern since my visit last summer,

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
I\'ve finished college and have begun teaching.
There is no way I could thank you enough

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
for all you\'ve done. Dear doctor, I want you to know
how much I appreciate the risks you took to help me

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
when no one else would. I am truly grateful.
I thank God that you were there for me.

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
Doctor Spencer, I came to you two years
ago when I was in trouble. At that time,

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
I felt so frightened and alone. I
am now married and recently had

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
a beautiful baby girl. I owe
much of my happiness to you.

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
I, I figured

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
what he did and what the people that
come to him did was their own business.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
Judge not and you won\'t be judged.
The community

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
protected him because they liked
him because he was doing a good

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
job. Any time

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
there was any medical problems that

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
no one else knew how to solve they
went to Doctor Spencer and it seemed

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
he knew the answers and
everybody loved him.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:55.000
[music]