Hodgson, Jane E.

Jane E. Hodgson was born January 23, 1915 in Crookston, Minnesota. She attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she studied chemistry and received her B.S. in 1934 at the age of 19. She then attended the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she received her M.D. in 1939. She spent the next two years completing her internship and residency at the Jersey City Medical Center where she met her future husband, Frank W. Quattlebaum, a cardiovascular surgeon. After their marriage in 1941, Hodgson completed a four-year fellowship in obstetrics and gynecology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. In 1947, at the same time she was completing a post-graduate degree, Hodgson opened her private practice.

In 1970, Hodgson performed an abortion at St. Paul-Ramsey Hospital in direct defiance of Minnesota law. She was subsequently convicted by the Ramsey County District Court, given a suspended 30-day jail sentence, and lost her Minnesota medical license. While her appeal was pending before the Minnesota Supreme Court, she worked as the medical director for Preterm, inc. in Washington, D.C. Her conviction was overturned in 1973 when the opinion in Roe v Wade was released.

She moved back to Minnesota in 1974, and opened the Women's Health Center in Duluth shortly thereafter. In 1980, she and some colleagues challenged the Minnesota law requiring parental notification before a minor could obtain an abortion. They took their case to the Supreme Court of the United States, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing throughout the 1980s, both Hodgson and Quattlebaum gave their time and talent to Project Hope, an organization that works to make health care available around the world. Hodgson was inaugurated into the International Women in Medicine Hall of Fame, which is part of the American Medical Women's Association, in 2001. Hodgson died in Rochester, Minnesota on October 23, 2006, at the age of 91.

From the guide to the Jane E. Hodgson papers., 1947-1999., (Minnesota Historical Society)