This is an edited extract of Dr Klausen’s book, Abortion Under
Apartheid, published by Oxford University Press. Dr Klausen is associate
professor in the department of history at Carleton University in Ottawa
The 26 young women called to testify had been between the ages of 17
and 23 at the time of their abortions, and all were unmarried. All were
white, and it was their whiteness that aroused the authorities to
intervene in clandestine abortion.
As Dr Derk Crichton explained in court, criminal abortion was the
"major problem" in his unit; and Durban’s King Edward VIII Hospital for
blacks handled the greatest number of septic abortions in SA.
Yet there was never any attempt by authorities to investigate the
vast and deadly underground world of clandestine abortion as it affected
black women. This scandal belonged to the white community alone. The
1972 prosecution of Dr Crichton and James Watts for procuring abortion
on white teenagers.
All the national newspapers as well as the local press covered what was called "SA’s most sensational abortion trial" in voyeuristic terms.
Every day, the courtroom galleries for whites and "non-whites" were
"packed" with spectators. "Chic young women" and fashionable,
"well-dressed matrons" filled the white side; on the black side, "three
refined Indian women in saris" closely followed proceedings.
Some of the onlookers were members of the Abortion Reform Action
Group who regularly attended in solidarity with Dr Crichton. There were
men, too: on at least one day, there were large crowds of men "leaning
forward, straining to hear testimony by girls reluctant to raise their
voices".
The prosecution adopted the mode of what historian Rickie Solinger,
in her study of the prosecution of American abortionists, calls
"cryptoporno", a mode that "titillates the crowd while at the same time
invoking shame and repugnance".
They did this in two ways. First, the spectacle was made sexually
tantalising by Dr Crichton — a handsome, athletic, dapper man of 52
whose stylish attire was regularly noted by reporters. Dr Crichton,
already twice divorced, was regularly accompanied to court by two much
younger, unmarried women, his "attractive" secretary Linda Bean and his
live-in girlfriend Susan Pohl.
In such a puritanical society, the visibility of middle-aged,
respectable Dr Crichton, a divorcé and father of three, living with a
very beautiful woman half his age, added an exotic cachet of sin,
pleasure, and glamour to the story.
Moreover, Dr Crichton’s defiant, thoroughly unrepentant attitude
during the trial enhanced his presence. Asked by the prosecutor, P
Haasbroek, why he did not inform the police of the names of criminal
abortionists he knew of, he said: "I do not regard it my duty as a
doctor to report to the police every time I find that a patient has had
an abortion done which is illegal." In contrast, in 1958 he had helped
the police "trap" a dangerous backstreet abortionist, a soap injector.
The prosecution humiliated the girls with embarrassing questions
about their sex lives, bodies, and abortions. The young women were
objects of fascination to a public curious about the "type" of girl who
would have an illegal abortion.
Newspapers repeatedly noted how young and "attractive" the women were
who gave evidence; another was called "glamorous". Yet another
newspaper described many of the girls as "attractive mini-skirted young
women".
Salacious details about the girls’ bodies and sex lives, such as
getting pregnant from an affair with a married man, were reported. Of an
18-year-old, the judge asked "whether she had had intercourse with her
boyfriend". (She made the unsurprising admission that she had.)
A lawyer for the state asked a girl whether there "was anything
irregular about your breasts?" before she saw Watts, and continued: Now
what did Mr Watts do with the instrument?
Answer: He inserted it in me, he put it inside me.
Lawyer: Where did he insert this thing, you needn’t be afraid.
Answer: I don’t know how to say it.
Lawyer: Did he insert it between your legs into your private parts?
Answer: Yes.
Of another young woman, Haasbroek asked questions about the size of
her breasts prior to the abortion. He asked one young woman to "describe
the abortion from the beginning".
Answer: He didn’t shave me, he just cut — cut the pubic hair with scissors.
Haasbroek: Yes?
Answer: And then he …
But just then Justice James intervened: "I’m sorry, what did he cut with the scissors?"
Haasbroek: The pubic hair.
Justice James: Oh, your pubic hair.
Of a teenager who was 17 at the time of her abortion, Haasbroek
asked: "What did he (Watts) actually do with the tube and the wire?
Answer: He inserted the tube and wire into me.
Haasbroek: Yes, where?
Answer: Into my Virginia (sic).
Many answers were so similar in phrasing that the defence suspected
the girls had been coached to show that a "system" had been devised by
Dr Crichton and Watts.
Some young women were so distressed by the questions that they broke
down. One 19-year-old at the first trial "broke down in the witness box,
sobbing loudly" when asked to describe the abortion and, with "her head
bowed … was led from the packed court to compose herself".
There was one exception. One young woman was impervious to intimidation, and rebellious, even surly, while giving testimony.
She was unforthcoming, repeatedly claiming she could not remember
details about the abortion, angering Douglas Shaw, Dr Crichton’s lawyer,
who subjected her to increasingly aggressive questioning. Her tussle
with Shaw was entertaining to observers who sometimes laughed in court
as they witnessed the exchange.
Significantly, in previous abortion cases, women were spared public
humiliation and their testimony was given in camera out of consideration
for their privacy and reputations.
In 1949, during the preparatory inquiry before the equally
spectacular trial of Dr Gerhardus Buchner and his staff, who ran an
abortion clinic in Johannesburg, the prosecutor asked for protection of
the women’s identities lest they be embarrassed and even "ruined" by
public exposure.
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