Edelin Guilty, Abortion In Question

"A lot of innocent people have been hung."

The trial hadn't yet started, but Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin, seated in his small green office in the recesses of the Boston City Hospital, was trying to convince a reporter that the Suffolk County prosecutor, with the help of an emotional case, really did have a prospect for conviction with the manslaughter indictment of Edelin.

Fifty-one days later, defense attorney William P. Homans Jr. '41 was rocking nervously on his haunches in a back corridor adjacent to the drab courtroom where for the past six weeks he and the prosecutor had argued over Edelin's guilt or innocence.

Ironically, the nine-man three-woman jury, somewhere in the recesses of the Suffolk County Courthouse, was then deadlocked at 11-1 for conviction, and 22 hours later--exactly one week ago--it returned a guilty verdict to a shocked courtroom.

Edelin was convicted for the death of a fetus following a legal abortion he performed on October 3, 1973. Although the prosecution realized that it could not prosecute abortion, it succeeded in affirming, by the conviction, that an abortion can result in a birth, and that a doctor is responsible for the fetus during such an operation.

That non-abortion abortion verdict has left more than a half-filled ninth floor courtroom in Boston in shock.

Edelin's continuing defense--involving appeals to Judge James P. McGuire and to the state Supreme Court--has drawn demonstrations of support al along the East Coast.

Meanwhile, opponents of abortion have lauded the decision, and Roma Catholic publications have welcomed what they said will be the discouraging effects of the verdict on the practice of abortion.

In the recesses of City Hospital, Kenneth Edelin, saddled with a one-year probationary sentence, has returned to his small green office with what he says is a "bitter taste" in his mouth and some small hopes of regaining his anonymity.