This is an update on the chapter in my book Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles about Dr. Curtis Boyd. I could find no mention of his death, although he and his wife Glenna Halvorson-Boyd wrote We Chose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion before, during and After Roe.
He was born in 1937 and he performed over 250,000 abortions from the two clinics.
One estimate believes that there were over one million illegal abortions annually prior to Roe v. Wade
Dr. Curtis Boyd does not look his 80+ years in a film where he appeared. He still had a full head of white hair. Age had not stopped his operating two abortion clinics, one in Texas and one in New Mexico.
As of this writing (January 2018) he is one of the last living doctors who performed abortions in the United States before they were legal. He has been active in the pro-choice movement since the 1960s.
One estimate indicates that there were over one million illegal abortions annually prior toRoe v. Wade, although exact tallies are impossible to find.
Boyd’s childhood was spent on a farm. He began professional life as a Baptist minister before becoming a doctor and a Unitarian. His early viewpoint toward women carrying unwanted babies came from watching a high school classmate go through an unwanted pregnancy. Women, he believes, should have the control over their fertility, not the state.
During the 1960s he had been working on human rights issues before he was recruited by the Clergy Consultation Service who sought doctors to provide safe abortions.
Boyd taught himself how to do the procedure. Women came to him from all over the country. Operating from morning to night, he had to give up his general practice because the abortion demand was so great.
His opinions are in documentaries and interviews splattered across the internet.
Some illegal abortionists cared nothing about women, seeing them as cash cows. They removed the fetus, possibly ignoring dangers. This callous attitude was why many hospitals around the country kept a ward with 20 or more beds for women who had been hurt or were dying from their ministrations or from women who took poison or inserted blunt instruments into themselves to dislodge the fetus.
Risks
Dr. Boyd maintained and maintains a stoic attitude about the risks related to his work.
The FBI was/is not so calm. Nor are others. When Boyd was to speak at a Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health panel discussion, the FBI was worried about his safety, a fear that was only increased by his friend and abortionist George Tiller’s assassination. The FBI has cautioned Dr. Boyd not to give media interviews.
“They're much more concerned about that than I am,” Boyd said. “I do not live my life in fear.” Still the sponsors of the conference did not announce his presence in advance.
Media interviews can be tricky for other reasons. When he gave an ABC affiliate interview in Texas in 2009, he remarked, “Am I killing? Yes. I know that.” The whole quote was, “They said murder. Murder is a legal definition. I said ‘yes, it’s killing, but it is not murder.’” The edited clip has been used and reused by anti-choice proponents.
Why and How Boyd Continues
His clinics, which are cheery places, include Boyd’s own paintings on the walls. The clinics have suffered two arson attacks, one in the 1980s and one in 2007.
After Tiller’s death, Boyd stepped in to do late-term abortions, one of the few doctors in the country to do so. He hired two of Tiller’s staff. Dr. Boyd was 72 at the time, an age when most people are well into retirement.
National statistics show:
- 89% of all abortions are done before 12 weeks or usually before quickening, as was the standard in the old days.
- 1.2% of abortions happen after 21 weeks.
As an individual I am uncomfortable with late-term abortion, but that it is not a decision I am willing to make for someone else. Dr. Boyd says he does them because he wants them to be available. I agree with him because I do not know the circumstances of why any woman would make that decision and I do not have to live with the consequences of that decision either way. She does.
He does not do many. “It might be to save the life of a woman: the woman dies or the foetus (sic) dies. I’ve had those choices to make. Very few of these are done in the world, and in this country...And when they are done, they are always done—always—for very compelling reasons.”
When he was still a young doctor, Dr. Boyd decided to do what he thought needed to be done despite the law and dangerous circumstances. “I thought the law needed to be changed, the service needed to be provided, and I was going to do it, understanding the risk that I was taking, which may have included going to prison. That's the way a social activist needs to think. Deciding to disobey a law is not something you take lightly.”
“The reason I did the work was what it meant to women. To have a child and not be married in a traditional community was difficult. Or to have a child that wasn't your husband's could be a very difficult situation. To be a woman fortunate enough to have gotten to a university and be pregnant and know that if you had this child, you were going to have to drop out of university and you might never get that college degree. These were strangers, women I'd never seen before and I'd never see again, and they were treated with respect, with dignity.”
What it meant to women who came to Dr. Boyd was a reduced risk of dying. He was part of the list of recommended doctors by the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS) that made sure all doctors on their roster were competent and professional.
Does dignity include having to give his patients incorrect information about the connection between breast cancer and abortions, a Texas legal requirement? Boyd obeys the law but adds that he doesn’t believe it.
He dislikes Texas state law HB2 which adds restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period. Women do not wake up one morning and think they will have an abortion the same way they may decide to go to lunch at a nearby restaurant.
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