Before I start out describing how an abortion works, I always make sure that the woman knows enough about her reproductive organs to understand what I'm talking about when I say uterus or cervix. When I sat down with Amy yesterday, she looked that the 3-D model I was using to describe anatomy and said, "I know that this might be a gross question, but I've been doing some research on the internet. What I want to know is--where did the hanger go?"
We went on to have a great conversation about what it was like for women before abortion was legal. In her honor, I want to put up this essay from the New York Times. This was published a few months back and I've been meaning to find an excuse to post it.
Repairing the Damage, Before Roe
by Waldo L. Fielding, M.D.
With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative, many people who support women’s right to choose an abortion fear that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave them that right, is in danger of being swept aside.
When such fears arise, we
often hear about the pre-Roe “bad old days.” Yet there are few
physicians today who can relate to them from personal experience. I can.
I am a retired gynecologist, in my mid-80s. My early formal training in
my specialty was spent in New York City, from 1948 to 1953, in two of
the city’s large municipal hospitals.
There I saw and treated almost every complication of illegal abortion
that one could conjure, done either by the patient herself or by an
abortionist — often unknowing, unskilled and probably uncaring. Yet the
patient never told us who did the work, or where and under what
conditions it was performed. She was in dire need of our help to
complete the process or, as frequently was the case, to correct what
damage might have been done.
The patient also did not explain
why she had attempted the abortion, and we did not ask. This was a
decision she made for herself, and the reasons were hers alone. Yet
this much was clear: The woman had put herself at total risk, and
literally did not know whether she would live or die.
This, too, was clear: Her desperate need to terminate a pregnancy was the driving force behind the selection of any method available.
The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” —
which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New
York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put
it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix
and could not remove it.
We did not have ultrasound, CT scans or any of the now accepted radiology techniques. The woman was placed under anesthesia,
and as we removed the metal piece we held our breath, because we could
not tell whether the hanger had gone through the uterus into the
abdominal cavity. Fortunately, in the cases I saw, it had not.
However, not simply coat hangers were used.
Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an
abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda
bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.
Another method that I did not encounter, but heard about from
colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap solution forced through the
cervical canal with a syringe. This could cause almost immediate death
if a bubble in the solution entered a blood vessel and was transported
to the heart.
The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else
will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what
looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we
examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact
part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever
implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery
to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the
bowel that was still functional.
It is important to remember
that Roe v. Wade did not mean that abortions could be performed. They
have always been done, dating from ancient Greek days.
What
Roe said was that ending a pregnancy could be carried out by medical
personnel, in a medically accepted setting, thus conferring on women,
finally, the full rights of first-class citizens — and freeing their
doctors to treat them as such.
Waldo
L. Fielding was an obstetrician and gynecologist in Boston for 38
years. He is the author of “Pregnancy: The Best State of the Union”
(Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971).
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