Re: Harvey Karman, 84; invented device for safer, easier abortions
From: jayacy jayankar (jayacy@gmail.com)
Mon May 19 03:46:59 2008
Hello Dean
thanks a lot for that article,it would have been a pity not knownin about a
person
on whose name we call upon so much during the evacuation procedures.
Regards
Jayacy
On 5/19/08, Dean Huffman . <dean@thehuffpeople.net> wrote:
>
> -
>
> Harvey Karman, 84; invented device for safer, easier abortions
>
> By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
>
> Harvey Karman, a flamboyant psychologist whose invention made a key
> contribution
> to women's reproductive health, particularly by making abortions simpler,
> cheaper and less painful, died May 6 [2008] at Cottage Hospital in Santa
> Barbara [California]. He was 84.
>
> The cause was a stroke, said his son Kenneth, of Los Angeles.
>
> Activist, inventor, educator and rogue, Karman was drawn to the plight of
> women
> facing unwanted pregnancy in the 1950s, when abortion was illegal. While
> training in psychology at UCLA, he started an underground abortion referral
> service and eventually performed abortions himself, for which he was
> convicted
> and sent to state prison for 2 1/2 years.
>
> In the early 1970s he developed a soft, flexible tube, or cannula, for a
> device
> that was widely adopted in the United States and developing countries to
> perform early abortions. He freely demonstrated its use for doctors and
> other
> medical professionals and in 1972 was part of a humanitarian mission to
> terminate the pregnancies of 1,500 Bangladesh women and girls who had been
> raped by Pakistani soldiers. His cannula is still widely used today.
>
> "Harvey Karman did more for safe abortion around the world than practically
> any
> other person in the world," said Dr. Malcolm Potts, Bixby professor of
> Population, Family Planning and Maternal Health at UC [Unoversity of
> California] Berkeley, who accompanied Karman to Bangladesh 35 years ago.
>
> "Karman's name is not known, yet his ingenuity and to some extent his
> courage
> has made safe abortion available to literally millions of women around the
> world."
>
> Doctors later found other applications for the Karman cannula, including
> using
> it in the diagnosis of uterine cancer, said Dr. Philip Darney, chief of
> gynecology and obstetrics at San Francisco [California] General Hospital.
>
> The tube, which Karman never patented, is so inexpensive and easy to
> sterilize
> and re-use that it has "dramatically reduced healthcare costs in treating
> uterine bleeding, one of the most common reasons women come to the
> emergency
> room," Darney said.
>
> Karman also had many detractors, particularly because of his attempt to
> revolutionize second-trimester abortions with a device called the super
> coil,
> which was inserted into the uterus and expanded when exposed to moisture,
> causing a miscarriage. It caused serious complications, including
> hemorrhaging
> and infection, when it was used on about a dozen women in Philadelphia on
> Mother's Day in 1972.
>
> "Harvey engaged in some very irresponsible experimentation on women's
> bodies,"
> said Carol Downer, who co-founded feminist women's health clinics in
> Southern
> California in the 1970s.
>
> The incident was investigated by the national Centers for Disease Control,
> where
> Darney worked at the time. Darney called the super coil a "bad idea" but
> added,
> "I don't think that offsets the importance" of Karman's other
> contributions.
>
> Downer agreed, calling Karman "a real change agent" whose invention gave
> momentum to the abortion rights movement in the period before the procedure
> was
> legalized by the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade. "I would never take
> away
> from the importance of a lot of the work he did," she said.
>
> Karman was born Harvey Walters on April 26, 1924, in the tiny northwest
> Oregon
> town of Clatskanie [Oregon]. He did not know his father, and his mother,
> who
> led a transient lifestyle, often left him in orphanages. When she married,
> he
> took the last name of his stepfather.
>
> A high school dropout, he joined the Army Air Forces and was stationed in
> England during World War II. After completing his military service, he used
> the
> GI Bill to attend UCLA [University of California at Los Angeles], where he
> earned a bachelor's in theater and a master's in psychology. He later
> became
> director of psychosomatic research at San Vicente Hospital in Los Angeles
> [California].
>
> He became interested in abortion when he was conducting research at UCLA on
> the
> emotional aspects of therapeutic abortion. During this time a student with
> an
> unplanned pregnancy committed suicide and another died from a botched
> abortion.
> Karman responded by helping women obtain illegal abortions in Mexico.
> Unhappy
> with the high prices and poor care some of the women received, he began
> performing abortions himself.
>
> His ultimate goal, according to Darney, who met Karman in the early 1970s,
> was
> to "make it possible for women to safely do their own abortions using the
> simplest possible equipment."
>
> Working with Merle Goldberg, a medical writer and women's health activist,
> Karman developed a method for extracting menstrual blood during the first
> weeks
> after a missed period with a vacuum syringe and a flexible plastic tube
> about
> the width of a drinking straw.
>
> The device could be manually operated and, because of the narrowness of the
> tube, caused less discomfort than the larger metal curets that were
> normally
> used in abortions.
>
> The procedure Karman and Goldberg developed took a matter of minutes,
> leading
> some to call it the "lunch-hour abortion." Karman offered the procedure at
> his
> Community Service Center clinic in West Los Angeles [California]. Studies
> found
> that complications were rare.
>
> Some doctors were quoted expressing reservations about do-it-yourself
> abortions,
> warning of the risk of infection and other problems. Anti-abortion forces
> attacked Karman as an illegal abortionist. But Karman was undeterred and
> proceeded to train many mainstream doctors as well as paramedics and
> others,
> including Downer and other feminist healthcare activists.
>
> In 1973, the New York Times reported that the method was available in 45
> states
> and cost no more than $80.
>
> After the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, when Bangladesh gained independence,
> he was
> part of a five-member team of abortion experts invited by the Bangladesh
> government to perform abortions on rape victims and train native doctors
> and
> paramedics in his method. Most of the victims were between the ages of 10
> and
> 16.
>
> "Many victims were actually being driven from their homes and villages by
> husbands and families who felt disgraced. And many committed suicide," he
> told
> the Los Angeles Times in 1972.
>
> He said the team visited outlying villages and taught midwives, village
> chiefs,
> young girls, "anybody who wanted to learn," how to use the cannula for an
> abortion. The method is still used widely there, although it is called
> menstrual extraction because abortion is banned.
>
> Karman "is responsible for saving the lives of countless women throughout
> the
> world through this innovative technology," Vicki Saporta, president and
> chief
> executive of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association
> for
> abortion providers based in Washington, D.C., said in an interview last
> week.
>
> Along with advances in local anesthesia and suction equipment, his little
> tube,
> she said, was one of three major innovations that dramatically improved
> abortion care in the 1970s.
>
> Karman spent much of the late 1970s and early '80s in Bangladesh, India and
> China, where he championed women's rights and safe, easy abortions. He
> lived
> for some years in London, where he also had a psychotherapy practice. He
> retired in 1992 to Santa Barbara [California].
>
> In addition to his son Kenneth, Karman is survived by three other children,
> Kathleen, Steven and Janice; and six grandchildren.
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-karman18-2008may18,0,4488738.story
>
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