They both gave time and talent to Project Hope, serving in Tanzania, Peru, Ecuador, Egypt, Grenada, and China.

[3] Hodgson eventually opened her own clinic in St Paul, Minnesota in 1947, and for the next 50 years provided reproductive health care to women.

Her early research included pregnancy-testing methods and in 1952 she became a Founding Fellow of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

[5][6][7] Hodgson's opinion of abortion was influenced by both the women she cared for in her own practice, and by those she met on her many trips she took with her husband to the third world during the 1950s.

"[8] She was, however, optimistic about the future: Pulitzer Prize winner Linda Greenhouse cited an article in the Mayo Clinic alumni magazine in which Hodgson predicted: "Someday, abortion will be a humane medical service, not a felony.

[14] In 1970, Hodgson performed an abortion on a 23-year-old married mother of three children who had contracted rubella, which can cause serious birth defects in the fetus and child.

[17][18] In response to her lawyer's question during her trial, "Do you regard the fertilized ovum as equivalent to a human person?"

When the case was heard in District Court, Hodgson testified that "...one 14-year-old patient, in order to keep her pregnancy private, tried to induce an abortion with the help of her friends by inserting a metallic object into her vagina, thereby tearing her body, scarring her cervix, and causing bleeding.

[23] Hodgson was in court again in 1993 as a co-plaintiff in a case in which the judge struck down Minnesota's ban on Medicaid payments for abortions.

[27] From their research, in 1970, came a 193-page course booklet entitled Women and Their Bodies that included topics such as childbirth, birth control and venereal disease.