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attorney had no power to investigate the violation of an unconstitutional law, and therefore he could not force me to testify. In 1970, | became the only plaintiff in the first lawsuit to declare the abortion laws unconstitutional in New York State. “Later, various women’ s groups joined the suit,” Lefcourt recalls, “and ultimately the New York legislature repealed the criminal sanctions against abortion, prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade." Dr. Spencer never knew about that. He had died in 1969. The obituary in the New York Times acknowledged the existence of his abortion clinic. The obituary in the local paper in Ashland did not. | continued to carry on my underground abortion referral service. Each time, though, | would flash on the notion that this was my own mother asking for help, and that she was pregnant with me. | would try to identify with the fetus that was going to be aborted even while | was serving as a conduit to the performance of that very abortion. Every day | would think about the possibility of never having existed, and | would only appreciate being alive all the more. Of course, | couldn’ t possibly have known the difference if my fetus had been aborted. Pretending to be the fetus was just a way of focusing on my role as a referral service. | didn't want it to become so casual that | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015067