Tag: Women’s Services

CCS Participants, Legacies of the CCS

Dr. Hale Harvey

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We were saddened to learn recently of the death of Dr. Horace Hale Harvey III on February 14, 2025, in the Isle of Wight. Dr. Hale Harvey was a formative force in the fight for safe, compassionate, legal abortion in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. The Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion referred patients to him in the days when abortion was illegal. At the time, illegal abortions were often dangerous, done in seedy locations, by unskilled or even abusive practitioners. The clergy did find competent and safe doctors to refer to, but Dr. Harvey went well beyond that minimum standard. He provided counseling before and after the procedure; he created a welcoming and non-judgmental space; he offered small comforts, such as potholders on the cold stirrups of the procedure table. Most of all, he provided compassionate treatment and respect to his patients.


In 1970, when abortion was legalized in New York State, Hale Harvey, along with Barbara Pyle, Arlene Carmen, and the clergy, started one of the first legal abortion clinics, Women’s Services. It was staffed mostly by women, charged a very reasonable price–as little as $25 for anyone in need–offered a somewhat comfortable atmosphere, and provided amenities such as snacks after the procedure. Patients flocked to the clinic from all over the country. By 1972, Dr. Harvey had left Women’s Services, but the statistics gathered during the clinic’s first year of operation were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Of 26,000 first-trimester abortions performed, none resulted in death, and complications were few. The clinic paved the way for safe outpatient surgical procedures of all kinds, something we take for granted now. Dr. Harvey’s humane and even empowering care for his patients set the standard for abortion clinics around the country after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationally–until Roe was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.

We are very sorry that we never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Harvey, but we pay tribute to the work he did and the legacies he left.

Legacies of the CCS

How clergy led the outpatient revolution

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Have you ever had a breast biopsy? Endoscopy? Arthroscopic knee surgery? Gall bladder removal? D&C? Vasectomy? Chances are, if you’ve had any of those surgical procedures in the United States in the last 20 years or so, you didn’t stay overnight in the hospital. You walked in and walked—or at least wheeled—out again the same day.

It wasn’t always so. In the 1960s, knee surgery, vasectomy, even D&Cs and legal abortions (usually approved by a committee of doctors only in cases of serious threat to the woman’s life) involved a hospital stay of one or more nights. It was accepted medical practice.

But from 1967 to 1970, many thousands of women were obtaining safe abortions—usually illegally—on an outpatient basis, referred to licensed physicians by the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (CCS). The ministers and rabbis of the CCS gave women information on how to contact doctors who performed abortions safely in their offices or in hotel rooms, houses, or apartments. Women walked in, had the procedure, and walked out an hour or two later, usually with no ill effects. They could be back at work in just a couple of days.

In 1970, New York State legalized abortion. By that time the CCS had referred thousands of women for abortion, nearly all as outpatients, without a single death. They invited a doctor to whom they had referred many women, and who had been praised as competent and caring by his patients, to help open an outpatient abortion clinic in New York City on the day abortion became legal.

The clinic, known as Women’s Services, set a standard for compassionate care. Women counselors accompanied patients through the entire procedure; the offices were decorated with colorful posters to offer a welcoming environment; snacks were available during recovery, since patients had not eaten for hours before the procedure. Women flocked to the clinic from across the country, often flying in and home again the same day.

The high volume of patients offered an unprecedented study opportunity. In 1972, the then director of the clinic, Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson (later an anti-abortion activist), published in the New England Journal of Medicine a study of the 26,000 patients served in the first year of the clinic’s operation. There had been no known deaths and a very low rate of complication for first-trimester abortions at the clinic, proof that a procedure that traditionally required a hospital stay could be done safely and much less expensively on an outpatient basis.

Women’s Services later helped to pioneer outpatient breast biopsies—another procedure that had previously required a hospital admission. And there was discussion of creating an outpatient birthing center (though that plan never came to fruition). Outpatient surgery and procedures grew in scope through the 1980s up to the present day. Now dozens of kinds of routine surgical procedures are offered on an outpatient basis. Patients avoid a hospital stay, save money, and often recover more quickly. And the pioneers of this revolution were those ministers and rabbis of the CCS, who just wanted to offer women compassion.

Photo: (c) Can Stock Photo / EyeMark