The procedure Karman and Goldberg developed took a matter of minutes, leading some to call it the "lunch-hour abortion." Karman offered the procedure at his Community Service Center clinic in West Los Angeles. Studies found that complications were rare.
Some doctors were quoted expressing reservations about do-it-yourself abortions, warning of the risk of infection and other problems. Anti-abortion forces attacked Karman as an illegal abortionist. But Karman was undeterred and proceeded to train many mainstream doctors as well as paramedics and others, including Downer and other feminist healthcare activists.
In 1973, the New York Times reported that the method was available in 45 states and cost no more than $80.
After the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, when Bangladesh gained independence, he was part of a five-member team of abortion experts invited by the Bangladesh government to perform abortions on rape victims and train native doctors and paramedics in his method. Most of the victims were between the ages of 10 and 16.
"Many victims were actually being driven from their homes and villages by husbands and families who felt disgraced. And many committed suicide," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1972.
He said the team visited outlying villages and taught midwives, village chiefs, young girls, "anybody who wanted to learn," how to use the cannula for an abortion. The method is still used widely there, although it is called menstrual extraction because abortion is banned.
Karman "is responsible for saving the lives of countless women throughout the world through this innovative technology," Vicki Saporta, president and chief executive of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion providers based in Washington, D.C., said in an interview last week.
Along with advances in local anesthesia and suction equipment, his little tube, she said, was one of three major innovations that dramatically improved abortion care in the 1970s.
Karman spent much of the late 1970s and early '80s in Bangladesh, India and China, where he championed women's rights and safe, easy abortions. He lived for some years in London, where he also had a psychotherapy practice. He retired in 1992 to Santa Barbara.
In addition to his son Kenneth, Karman is survived by three other children, Kathleen, Steven and Janice; and six grandchildren.
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elaine.woo@latimes.com
