A doctor who treated botched abortions pre-Roe looks back: ‘A matter of life and death’

When Daniel Belsky reflects on his 35-year career as an OB-GYN, he thinks about the hundreds of women he coached through childbirth, the proud new fathers he congratulated, the broods he watched grow over the years. But inevitably his mind wanders to the patients who did not come to him by choice, who he was with not on the most joyful day of their lives, but on the absolute worst.

“We could be called to the hospital any time of the night or day to watch a patient die,” Belsky, 90, of Voorhees, recalled.

Long retired, Belsky is proud of the work he did to help women in crisis. But the experience was haunting, and one he now fears a new generation of doctors will be haunted by, too.

With the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade overturned and abortion rights no longer protected by the U.S. Constitution, doctors and patient advocates caution about a return to the days of unsafe, underground abortions.

The abortion debate wraps itself around the issue of women’s rights, Belsky said. “But it’s much more than rights,” he said, “it’s a matter of life and death.”

Belsky was 29 and a father of three when he became a partner at his first OB-GYN practice in South Philadelphia in 1961, more than a decade before Roe v. Wade guaranteed the right to abortion. He later expanded his practice to New Jersey.

Whenever a patient turned up at the former Osteopathic Hospital of Philadelphia with a suspected abortion injury, the emergency department staff called Belsky, who rushed in.

“I would say to the patient many times, ‘Who did this to you?’ and they’d never reveal a name,” Belsky said.

Today, abortion is a common and safe procedure if done by a trained medical professional. But before doctors were allowed to provide abortions, women who could not afford the hundreds of dollars it would cost to see an underground doctor often resorted to crude and unsafe tactics for ending a pregnancy.

He treated patients whose uterus was punctured by a sharp object inserted through the vagina. Others were treated for infection and sepsis. Some had organs removed and were never able to bear children, Belsky said.

“Most lost a lot of blood,” he said of those who made it to the hospital. “But survived.”

The horrors he saw in operating rooms compelled Belsky to advocate for abortion rights at rallies and protests in any spare time he had outside of work.

Belsky retired in 1996, when he was 64. Since then, he’s kept a watchful eye on the politics surrounding reproductive rights and has feared the day Roe might be overturned.

On Friday, he watched the news from his apartment in a Voorhees retirement community and rage boiled inside him.

“How dare they?” he said. “After all the work we did.”

Then he sank back into his seat and thought about the women he’d tried to comfort as he repaired the damage an unsafe abortion had done to their bodies.

“I’m going to help you,” he’d tell them. “It’s not your fault.”