Abortoria

Dr. Eric Randolph Wilson, 51, of Los Angeles was arrested in Seattle last spring on charges of conspiring to perform abortions. Lack of evidence gained Dr. Wilson an acquittal. His associate, a skillful amateur named Paul de Gaston, was fined $100 & costs for practicing medicine without a license. Notwithstanding the insignificant disposition of these cases, they brought to light enough evidence to expose an amazingly widespread and efficient chain of Pacific Coast abortaria extending from Seattle to San Diego, to cause California to indict five doctors, a businessman, eight lesser associates. Last week the 14 were on trial in Los Angeles.

In court Prosecutor Vernon Ferguson of Los Angeles, assisted by Prosecutor John J. McMahon of San Francisco, set forth the charges on which he expected to send the defendants to jail. Two years ago, cried Prosecutor Ferguson, Reginald L. Rankin, a onetime Washington lumberman, conceived the idea of a great businesslike abortaria chain to accommodate the thousands of California, Oregon and Washington women who wished to avoid the logical result of conception. First step was to make a deal with a skilled operator, Dr. George Eliot Watts of Los Angeles, graduate of the University of Oregon Medical School in 1895. In California, Dr. Watts, 62, was noted for his competency in performing abortions, for the invention of numerous surgical appliances useful in his specialty, including a suction pump to clean the uterus after an operation and a method of quickly reducing the uterus to normal size after an abortion.

Promoter Rankin, according to Prosecutor Ferguson, also made a deal with Inspector William Byrne of the California State Board of Medical Examiners, who police the practice of medicine in that State. His job for Mr. Rankin, declared the prosecutor last week, was to compel California abortionists who did a good business to subjugate themselves to Rankin dominance or get out of business.

Mr. Rankin. who apparently thought of everything, also organized a Medical Acceptance Corporation to finance installment payments for abortions in precisely the way other finance companies finance the purchase of motor cars, automatic refrigerators, vacuum cleaners. Fees for abortions were to be $35 for a pregnancy of six weeks or less up to $300 for a seven-month affair. Solicitors were offered $10 on a $35 case, $15 for a $50 case, larger commissions on larger fees.

Clinics were established in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. Oakland, San Jose. Los Angeles, Hollywood. Long Beach, San Diego. The Oakland institution was reported so busy it maintained an ever-burning furnace in which abortions were incinerated.

With this setup, shrewd Mr. Rankin was said to have developed a $1,000,000-a-year business when he was arrested. A dozen doctors were supposed to have worked for him. To hide their identities they wore masks when they dealt with patients. If a Rankin abortionist got into trouble with the law, he was transferred to another abortarium.

To hear the evidence in this astounding tale of big, illegal medicine business, a jury of seven men and five women last week settled down to what they expected would be a long, bitter trial. First witness for the prosecution was the amateur abortionist, Paul de Gaston. He swore to the truth of most of the prosecutor's charges.

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