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.

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