LeRoy Carhart

Carhart was born on October 28, 1941 in Trenton, New Jersey.{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/obituaries/dr-leroy-carhart-fierce-defender-of-abortion-rights-dies-at-81.html |access-date=15 November 2024 |website=The New York Times |title=Dr. LeRoy Carhart, Fierce Defender of Abortion Rights, Dies at 81 |date=April 30, 2023 |last1=Traub |first1=Alex }} He trained as a physician in the U.S. Air Force, and retired from the force with the rank of lieutenant colonel.{{cite journal | first=Sarah | last=Kliff | title=The Abortion Evangelist | journal=Newsweek | url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/14/the-abortion-evangelist.html | date=August 14, 2009 | pmid=19711717 | accessdate=April 2, 2013}}{{Citation | title =Plaintiff Profile: Gonzales v. Carhart | url =http://www.reproductiverights.org/crt_plaintiff_carhart.html | accessdate =April 18, 2007 | url-status =dead | archiveurl =https://web.archive.org/web/20070420150653/http://reproductiverights.org/crt_plaintiff_carhart.html | archivedate =April 20, 2007 }}{{Citation | last =Hampton | first =Tracy | title =Physician Sees a Threat to Abortion Rights | newspaper =FOCUS: News From Harvard Medical, Dental, and Public Health Schools | date =October 27, 2007 | url =http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2000/Oct27_2000/medical_ethics.html | url-status =dead | archiveurl =https://web.archive.org/web/20070217204839/http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2000/Oct27_2000/medical_ethics.html | archivedate =February 17, 2007 }} He was a graduate of Rutgers University,[http://www.rutgers64.org/ru64_directory.htm Class Directory] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090830052950/http://www.rutgers64.org/ru64_directory.htm |date=August 30, 2009 }} and a 1973 graduate of Hahnemann University School of Medicine (now Drexel University College of Medicine).{{Citation | last =Hayers | first =Nicholas | title =Kansas State Board of Healing Arts | date =April 16, 2007 | url =http://www.docboard.org/ks/df/kssearch.htm | accessdate =April 18, 2007 | url-status =dead | archiveurl =https://web.archive.org/web/20070405065033/http://www.docboard.org/ks/df/kssearch.htm | archivedate =April 5, 2007 }}

After 21 years as a surgeon in the Air Force, Carhart opened a walk-in emergency clinic in Omaha in 1985. On September 6, 1991, the day of the passage of the Nebraska Parental Notification Law, arsonists targeted Carhart's farm, setting fire to his home and a 48-stall barn, along with two other buildings and numerous vehicles. The attack killed two family pets and 21 horses. The fire, which had started in seven different locations on Carhart's property, was never declared arson and no one was prosecuted. Carhart stated that he received a note the morning after the fire claiming responsibility and likening the deaths of his animals to the "murder of children". At the time of the fire, abortions had been a small part of Carhart's surgical practice; afterwards, determined not to "cede a victory to the antis", Carhart began performing abortions full-time.{{Citation |vauthors=Wright AA, Katz IT |title=Roe versus reality--abortion and women's health |journal=N. Engl. J. Med. |volume=355 |issue=1 |pages=1–9 |year=2006 |pmid=16822990 |doi=10.1056/NEJMp068083 |postscript=.}}

In February 2013, a 29-year-old woman who had been 33 weeks pregnant with a medically abnormal fetus died a day after a four-day abortion procedure at Carhart's clinic in Germantown. The medical examiner listed the causes of death as "amniotic fluid embolism following a medical termination of pregnancy", disseminated intravascular coagulation and fetal abnormalities.{{cite news | first1=Dan | last1=Morse | first2=Lena | last2=Sun | title=Md. medical examiner cites rare complication in death of woman after abortion | newspaper=The Washington Post | url=https://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-20/local/37201714_1_abortion-opponents-abortion-clinic-leroy-carhart | date=February 20, 2013 | accessdate=April 2, 2013 | url-status=dead | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130224095658/http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-20/local/37201714_1_abortion-opponents-abortion-clinic-leroy-carhart | archivedate=February 24, 2013 }}{{cite web | first=Shawn | last=Cohen | title=Coroner: Woman bled to death after late-term abortion | work=USA Today | url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/woman-late-term-abortion-bled-to-death/1935799 | date=February 21, 2013 | accessdate=April 2, 2013}} The Maryland Board of Physicians found that Carhart was not responsible for the death. The board's letter followed an investigation by state health officials that reported there were "no deficiencies" in Carhart's handling of the situation, and that the death could have happened during birth as well.{{cite web|url=http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/abortionist-leroy-carhart-cleared-in-mothers-death |title=Abortionist Leroy Carhart Cleared in Mother's Death | Daily News |website=NCRegister.com |date= October 18, 2013|accessdate=June 8, 2014}}

Carhart filed suit against the Nebraska Attorney General, Don Stenberg, because a Nebraska law banned a form of abortion, dilation and extraction (D&X). In Stenberg v. Carhart the United States Supreme Court struck down the Nebraska law with Sandra Day O'Connor providing the swing vote for the five-to-four decision because the law did not allow for the use of the procedure even when the mother's health would be put at greater risk by another abortion procedure.

Carhart later filed suit against U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in Gonzales v. Carhart seeking to strike down the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal law that is similar to the state law struck down in Stenberg. While the Court did not officially reverse Stenberg, it upheld the federal ban as not imposing an undue burden on women, the test established in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.[http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/05-380_All.pdf Gonzales v. Carhart opinions] (in PDF). O'Connor's successor, Samuel Alito, along with William Rehnquist's successor, John G. Roberts, sided with three of the four Justices who dissented in Stenberg, creating a five-to-four majority.

In 1964, Carhart married his high school sweetheart Mary Clark.

He was a Methodist, who had considered being a Lutheran minister as a young man, and a registered Republican. His wife described Carhart as being “stubborn, very stubborn.”{{cite web |last1=Traub |first1=Alex |title=Dr. LeRoy Carhart, Fierce Defender of Abortion Rights, Dies at 81 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/obituaries/dr-leroy-carhart-fierce-defender-of-abortion-rights-dies-at-81.html |website=The New York Times |date=April 30, 2023 |access-date=15 November 2024}}

Carhart died on April 28, 2023, at the age of 81, in Bellevue, Nebraska.{{cite web|url=https://www.wowt.com/2023/04/28/dr-leroy-carhart-prominent-nebraska-abortion-doctor-dies-81/|title=Dr. Leroy Carhart, prominent Nebraska abortion doctor dies at 81|work=WOWT|date=April 28, 2023|access-date=April 28, 2023}} He died from an aggressive form of liver cancer, according to his daughter, Janine Weathersby.{{Cite news |title=LeRoy Carhart, abortion doctor whose battles reached Supreme Court, dies at 81 |language=en-US |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/04/29/leroy-carhart-abortion-doctor-dies/ |access-date=2023-04-30 |issn=0190-8286}}

{{Reflist}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050215101458/http://www.crlp.org/pr_01_0823carhartstate.html Carhart's statement after the Stenberg decision]
• [http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-830.ZO.html Text of the majority opinion]
• [https://www.law.com/radar/card/norris-v-carhart-jr-et-al-41971022-0/ Norris v. Carhart, Jr. et al]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carhart, LeRoy}}

Category:1941 births

Category:2023 deaths

Category:Physicians from New Jersey

Category:American abortion providers

Category:Victims of anti-abortion violence in the United States

Category:Rutgers University alumni

Category:Drexel University alumni

Category:People from Omaha, Nebraska

Category:Nebraska Republicans

Category:United States Air Force colonels