Piecing It Together

DR. HARVEY LOTHRINGER, a family practitioner, has been performing illegal abortions for years. His medical office is under police surveillance, but Barbara Lofrumento’s parents may not know this when they bring her to him on a Saturday morning, the 2nd of June, 1962. She’s five months pregnant.

“I’m not touching her. She’s too far along.”

“You’re going to take care of this problem,” Barbara’s father, Dominick, says. It sounds like a threat. Dominick knows of Harvey’s reputation and record, can turn him in at any time. When he learned of Barbara’s pregnancy, Dominick asked around for the name of an abortionist. Harvey’s Queens office is about 15 miles from Dominick’s home in upscale Westchester, New York, but he was told the doctor would travel to his house. Dominick lives with his wife, Rose, and their children Barbara and Richard. Another daughter, Rosemary, is out of the house, safely married. It’s Barbara who is of concern now. But the doctor is reluctant.

He’s forty-one years old and has never been under such pressure, has never been put in this position. He finally agrees to do the procedure the next day at the Lofrumento home. There’s no question of doing it in his office; it’s too risky.

But at eleven that night Harvey changes his mind. He’ll do it in his office. He calls Dominick, telling him to bring his daughter to Park Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan, five blocks from the Queens-Midtown Tunnel—an easy jump back into Queens.

They rendezvous at two thirty in the morning, Sunday. Barbara and her mother slip into Harvey’s car and Dominick returns to Westchester. Even at this hour, the city is a mosaic of energy—sounds and lights and meandering people. Although the theaters are closed, the marquees are lit and taxis honk, weaving in and out of light but steady traffic. Harvey takes the midtown tunnel under the East River into Queens, following the Long Island Expressway to Grand Central Parkway, exiting at 188th Street into the polished landscape of Jamaica Estates. In the blanket of pre-dawn darkness, they arrive at Harvey’s house, where he’s been living with Theresa, a former Cuban airline hostess, since his separation from his wife, Felice.

The house, an expanded ranch, is more spacious on the inside than it appears from the street—Union Turnpike, a primary artery lined with shops, restaurants, and the occasional home converted to a business, like Harvey’s. His is