Bogart v. Board of Medical Examiners

[251]

DORAN, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment discharging an alternative writ of mandate, denying a peremptory writ of mandate, and sustaining an order of the respondent board revoking appellant’s license to practice medicine. No new evidence was offered at the hearing in superior court, the matter being submitted upon the record of the proceedings before the board, together with written briefs and oral argument of the parties hereto.

According to' the appellant’s brief, appellant’s license was issued on December 17, 1945. On July 8, 1949, appellant was charged with a violation of section 2377 of the Business and Professions Code in the procuring and performing of a criminal abortion upon the person of one Gayle Rúbin on or about May 31, 1949. The respondent board found the appellant guilty as accused.

The record discloses that Gayle Rubin, a single girl aged about 20, was some five weeks pregnant when the appellant woman physician was first consulted. One Jean Warfield accompanied Miss Rubin on this first visit, at which time appellant, according to Gayle Rubin, set a price of $150, ordered Miss Rubin to take' a laxative and to return May 31, 1949, with $100; appellant would do the rest.

On the designated day, accompanied by a boy friend, Miss Rubin went to appellant’s office when according to the victim’s testimony, the physician used some sort of liquid in a syringe. No scraping or cutting was felt but the girl felt a little pain and had some cramps. Thereafter, in response to a telephone call and due to the fact that Miss Rubin had been bleeding for two days, Dr. Bogart came to the patient’s apartment, ordered everyone to leave the room and stated that there was nothing to worry about.

Dr. Walter Williams, who was called on June 4, 1949, diagnosed the trouble as “a threatened or incomplete miscarriage with localized peritonitis.” Miss Rubin was sent to the general hospital on June 5th; Dr. Donald J. Crawford there examined the girl and concluded that there had been a completed abortion following a criminal induction.

Appellant denied the accusation; claimed to have first seen Miss Rubin at the latter’s apartment on June 2d in response to a telephone call that a girl was sick and wanted a woman doctor; denied even making a pelvic examination, and claimed to have merely given the patient a business card with instructions “to return tomorrow morning to my office for complete physical check-up and X-ray of the back be