The obituary in Monday's Duluth News Tribune told of the death of Dr. Jane Hodgson, an outspoken supporter of women's ability to get a safe abortion and the first doctor in the country to be convicted of illegally performing one.
What it didn't say is that Hodgson, 91, was co-founder and longtime medical director of the Women's Health Center in Duluth, the only clinic in the Northland that provides abortions.
Hodgson served as medical director of the clinic for about 10 years, said Tina Welsh, executive director of the Women's Health Center. Because no local doctors were willing to perform the procedure, Hodgson was one of a few physicians who would travel to Duluth once a week to perform abortions, often doing up to 20 a day.
"She would fly up, but one time she couldn't because the weather was bad," Welsh said. "So she went back to St. Paul and took a cab up."
In 1970, Hodgson treated a patient who contracted rubella in the first month of her pregnancy and feared the baby would be born with deformities. Hodgson's patient wanted an abortion. Because abortion was then illegal in Minnesota, Hodgson sought permission to perform the procedure from the federal court. After receiving no answer, she performed the abortion. A judge later found her guilty.
ADVERTISEMENT
Three years later the Supreme Court overturned state abortion laws with Roe v. Wade; Hodgson's conviction later was overturned.
Hodgson's decision to perform that abortion was "a catalyst for the entire movement" in Minnesota, said Tim Stanley, senior director of government and public affairs for Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota.
Hodgson might first have become connected with the local abortion movement in 1970, when she met UMD psychologist Iver Bogen.
At that time, Bogen and others at the University of Minnesota Duluth formed a group to refer women who needed an abortion to doctors willing to perform them.
Bogen said he met Hodgson at a political gathering and they later collaborated on a book titled "Abortion Debate Pro" that Hodgson paid to print and have placed in libraries in Duluth and the Twin Cities before Roe v. Wade.
"She was bright, articulate and passionate," Bogen said. "She was just a good, good person."
In 1981, Hodgson decided to open a clinic that would perform abortions in Duluth because no other clinic would perform the procedure, Welsh said.
"They really can't get anybody else," Hodgson told the Houston Chronicle in 1992. "It's ridiculous, really. ... I think the young generation of medical students, with the exception of women, are not (interested in this training). And I don't blame them, really. You're really not going to beat your way through the pickets to help out in a clinic if they threaten your kids."
ADVERTISEMENT
Though the Women's Health Clinic started in the Medical Arts Building, Welsh said the clinic couldn't get its lease renewed there. Later it was unable to get its lease renewed in the Arrowhead Building.
Welsh said Hodgson decided to have the Building for Women constructed to house the clinic, where it has been since 1994. The courtyard outside the clinic is named after Hodgson.
The Women's Health Center is the only Minnesota facility performing abortions north of the Twin Cities and serves 24 counties in northern Minnesota, 14 in Wisconsin and four in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Though her colleagues described her as fearless and devoted to her cause, they also said she was kind.
"She was so compassionate; you forgot she was fearless when you were with her," said Prudy Cameron, former president of the Duluth chapter of the League of Women Voters, which worked closely with Hodgson when the group promoted abortion rights. "I don't know if we'll ever see her likes again."
Hodgson died Oct. 23 of complications of congestive heart failure, according to published reports.
The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
