On December 3, 1969, in Seattle, KING-TV reporter Mike James hosts a special in which a woman describes an abortion performed by Renton physician Dr. A. Frans Koome, an outspoken advocate of reproductive choice.
Koome had caused a sensation a week earlier by releasing copies of a letter he had written to Governor Dan Evans, in which he confessed that he had been performing illegal abortions in his clinic for three years, committing felony manslaughter under state law hundreds of times. The college student, who said her school health center had referred her to Koome, defended the doctor as “a dedicated and principled physician.”
Police investigated but no criminal charges were ever filed as a result of Koome’s public confession. King County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll said his office could not locate any patients who were willing to testify against the doctor.
Sources:
Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 278; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 27, 1969; Ibid., December 4, 1969; Ibid., December 9, 1969.
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