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A religious organization recruited him to help open New York City’s first independent abortion clinic, though it was unaware that Louisiana had taken away his license.
On July 1, 1970, one of the first independent abortion clinics in the country opened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. New York State had just reformed its laws, allowing a woman to terminate her pregnancy in the first trimester — or at any point, if her life was at risk. All of a sudden, the state had the most liberal abortion laws in the country.
Women’s Services, as the clinic was first known, was overseen by an unusual team: Horace Hale Harvey III, a medical doctor with a Ph.D. in philosophy who, unbeknown to the clinic, had been performing illegal abortions in New Orleans; Barbara Pyle, a 23-year-old doctoral student in philosophy, who had been researching sex education and abortion practices in Europe; and an organization known as Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, a group of rabbis and Protestant ministers who believed that women deserved access to safe and affordable abortions, and who had created a referral service to find and vet those who would provide them.
What distinguished Women’s Services — a nonprofit that first operated out of a series of offices on East 73rd Street and charged on a sliding scale, starting at $200 — was its counselors. They were not medical professionals, but regular women, many of whom had had abortions themselves. Their role was to shepherd patients through the abortion process, using a model of a pelvis to explain the procedure in detail, accompanying the women into the procedure room and sitting with them afterward. They also reported on the doctor’s performance. It was a model that other clinics would adopt in the months and years to come.
The clinic’s humane approach was in stark contrast to the attitude of many hospital personnel at the time, Jane Brody of The New York Times wrote in 1970. “Don’t make it too easy for the patient,” one administrator put it, summing up the hospital’s philosophy. “If it’s too easy, she’ll be back here in three months for another abortion.”
Women’s Services had some other unique features as well. The waiting areas were cheerfully decorated, with piped-in music, and the operating tables had stirrups cushioned with brightly colored pot holders, a flourish Dr. Harvey, who died on Feb. 14, had brought with him from his days working out of hotel rooms in New Orleans.
Unlike many illegal abortion providers in those pre-Roe v. Wade days, who made the process as bare-bones and speedy as possible in anticipation of a police raid, Dr. Harvey had not only softened the atmosphere of his New Orleans procedure room to make it less terrifying; he had also offered the women cookies and Coca-Cola afterward, to help them recuperate.