Commonwealth v. Wheeler

The defendant, a practising physician, has been found guilty by a judge sitting without jury upon an indictment charging the defendant (first count) with “unlawfully” using a rubber tube upon the body of the defendant’s own wife; (second count) with “unlawfully” administering to her a “drug, medicine, or other noxious thing”; and (third count) with “unlawfully” doing both of the foregoing acts, all with intent to procure her miscarriage in violation of G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 272, § 19.

At the trial the defendant admitted having procured the *395abortion of his wife. His defence was that it was…