Aug. 18, 1962 - Mrs. Sherri Finkbine of Phoenix, Ariz., who received permission in Sweden yesterday for a legal abortion, was operated upon successfully this morning. The 30-year-old mother of four healthy children was informed after the operation that the fetus was deformed, as she had feared. Her fears arose four weeks ago when she learned that she had inadvertently taken the drug Thalidomide, which is blamed for the birth of thousands of deformed infants in Europe. “Now we know we were right for the baby as well,” her husband Robert told reporters in a hospital corridor. “The last thing we wanted to do was to bring a deformed youngster into the world if it could be prevented.” Mrs. Finkbine, a hostess on a children’s television program called “Romper Room,” was in the 13th week of her pregnancy. Mr. Finkbine estimated that the expenses of the trip to Sweden would amount to $4,000. He said that he expected to meet the costs through a first-person story of the case that has been sold to several European newspapers. “I do not particularly like doing this,” he said, “but it is better than trying to pay debts for several years on a high school teacher’s salary.”
