One Doctor's Choice

There was something special about some of the patients who trooped into the office of elderly Dr. Roy Odell Knapp at the south end of Akron's Main Street. They were women who did not appear ill, but wore a worried look. Many of them slipped in furtively. The doctor was kindness personified. If, after listening to a woman's story, he thought it likely that she was pregnant, he would send a urine specimen to City Hospital for a pregnancy test. If the test proved positive, and the patient insisted that her whole life would come crashing down about her if she had a baby, Dr. Knapp performed an abortion. Beginning in 1934, he did 200 to 300 a year, at $200 apiece--which works out at close to $1,000,000 taken in and 5,500 babies deprived of life.

Last week, with sagging jowls and shoulders, Abortionist Knapp sat in Akron's common pleas court and made a clean breast of it. At first he defended his acts. "This has been going on since the earliest recorded history, among both savage and civilized peoples, and it will always go on," he said. "I developed a great respect for the women I served. Many are unwed, of good family, and frantic to save their reputations and those of others they hold dear. If they can't be cared for under favorable circumstances, they will seek operations [from unlicensed practitioners] at great danger to their health."

Dr. Knapp testified that in 22 years he had not had a single death. Even the case that blew the roof off his abortion mill was detected while being routinely treated at City Hospital. In his years at the game, Dr. Knapp had never had the slightest trouble with the law or with the medical profession. In fact, he testified, other doctors had referred many cases to him, and the Summit County Medical Society knew about his activities and "had been most kind."

But when Judge Ray Waiters asked: "What is your own attitude toward your conduct?" Dr. Knapp mumbled apologetically: "I am ashamed of it." In light of the defendant's age (72) and diabetic condition, the court suspended a one-to-seven-year penitentiary sentence but ordered him to serve a purgative four months in the county jail. The county medical society, distinctly not in a "most kind" mood, denied that it had ever had any knowledge of what Dr. Knapp was doing, promptly expelled him.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.