abortion provider testimony

Recently a colleague announced the following at a press conference.  This portion of her speech addressed the stigma of abortion.

Lu

In the United States since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 there have been over 45 million women who have chosen to have safe, legal abortions. In fact, 37% of American women, over 1 in 3 women, will have an abortion by the age of 45.

Abortion IS mainstream medicine.

Abortion IS a normal part of women’s health care.

So, why is stigma so successful? Why does the shame persist and silence pervade in our culture when so many people share the abortion experience?

Most of the time these 45 million women are silent.

Most of the time the loved ones who helped them with their abortion don’t talk about it either.

In fact, the pro-choice majority is silent.

Most of the people talking about abortion in our society are anti-abortion.

We abortion providers often feel and are looked at as the “radical fringe of the pro-choice movement”

However the reality is that without us there is no choice. We ARE the Common Ground. We give the choice. Without providers, the right to abortion is just an idea – it is just something on paper that means nothing to women in actuality.  
 

What does it take to keep 45 million women and their loved ones silent? You have to spend millions of dollars to shame them – to tell them they are murderers over and over until they believe it themselves. And you must threaten and intimidate and ultimately murder those who provide them this care. For over 35 years abortion providers have been the buffer between the anti-abortion movement and the women who have abortions. We have tried to protect women and shield them from the hostility of the antis. We need these women to speak up. There are not enough of us providers to protect this freedom for women.  

To me, irradicating stigma is the single most important thing we can do for abortion rights in this country. Even now, in this room, at this moment each of YOU is looking at me – the abortion provider from Texas – through your own lens of stigma about abortion. Maybe I am “less than” or “more than” you thought “an abortion provider would be like”.  

When I talk about my work people are often pretty quiet. Eventually, when they feel comfortable enough with me I am often asked, “so, why abortion care?” or “how can you do this work?” Even by supporters, by pro-choice people I see this question on their face or experience the silence or separation when I talk about providing abortions.  

I EXPEREINCE stigma all the time in my work; the hospital will not give privileges to our physicians, we can’t secure local back up doctors, we can’t get anyone to provide us with bottled water or replace our tile floors or replace our roof or resurface our parking lot. 

I HEAR stigma everywhere:

“Abortion should be rare”

“Abortion is a tragedy”     (and these are our friends!)

“Prevention First”

“I am pro-choice but I’d never have an abortion”

“I am not like those other women”

“I don’t believe in abortion as birth control” 

You may have heard these statements

You may have said these words yourselves

You may have thought these thoughts 

It is my life’s work to end the stigma around abortion. To that end, let me take my final moments with you to answer that ultimate question – Why abortion? Why do you do this work? I invite you, in turn, to speak out about abortion. Tell your own personal abortion story, or talk about how access to abortion changed the life of a woman you know and love.

 

For me, abortion care is a calling.

Abortion involves all the big things in life – sex, death, religion, family. Providing abortion gives me the opportunity to have heart-to-heart conversations about these things – about what really matters – every single day. I get to sit with a woman as she examines what she believes – as she looks at what matters most to her. What are her intentions? What are her dreams? Abortion is a kind of right of passage for many women – it is often one of the first times where women take a look at the values that they have inherited from family/church/culture/education and decide which ones are applicable or meaningful to them and which ones are not. 

Making an abortion decision is a time when a woman acts with intention. When she chooses a path for her life and the direction she will travel. I want to NOTICE that moment of acting with intention and hold it up high for the woman to notice and to feel and own as hers. I invite her to experience her life as though she were in charge of it. There are many times in a woman’s life where “life happens to them” and abortion stands out as a time when I can support a woman to be the actor in her own life – the chooser – not a victim but an intentional, deliberate and ethical person choosing what is best for them. 

Sitting with a woman as she examines her abortion decision provides ME with an opportunity to plant seeds that will change the world. I can invite a woman to look at her life differently than she may have before she came to my clinic. I have a moment to affirm that she is good, to affirm that she is moral and kind, and to affirm that she is not selfish. I can witness her dreams and her desires and affirm that she is put on this Earth to see them out and to act on her own gifts, not just to receive the lot that has been dealt to her. I have an opportunity to shine some light on her situation and turn on a light bulb or two in her thinking – especially about what is possible, what she is capable of, etc.  

The opportunity to invite women to accept themselves and to live out their dreams is a byproduct of abortion care to some people, but to me it IS abortion care. I can make a contribution that matters - I can truly change the world one woman at a time, simply by sitting next to a woman, listening to her story, witnessing her experience and gently nudging her to be all that she can be.  

This changes the world.

For the better.

And this is why I provide abortions.

Comments

[Julie]

Pandora, honey, it IS already true. Claiming abortion is not part of health care will not magically make it so. See, this is what you get for trying to conflate personal opinions as fact. Yet, I am not wholly surprised because I have seen anti-abortion activists make this same mistake over and over again, ad nauseum.

[Pandora]

"Abortion IS a normal part of women’s health care."

You can repeat it until you're blue in the face; it won't make it true.

[Типография]

Abortion IS a normal part of women’s health care.

[me]

The instrument has yet to be invented that could measure my sympathy for this whiny critter with her ratty parking lot.

[Julie]

Pandora: It's never occurred to you that maybe business people are leary of working with an abortion provider because they fear harassment from immature anti-abortion protestors? Like, you, maybe?

[me]

Hope the roof repair is going well Julie .... next get the repaving equipment out and fix that ratty-looking parking lot. While you're working, explain to Whiny Abortionist that the badmouthing will never stop in her lifetime. Most folks just don't like those who kill children.

[Julie]

Would someone please get Pandora a pacifier? Apparently her mommy doesn't know she's online and trying to pick fights with adults.

[Pandora]

It would appear the Whiny Abortionist needs to grow up ..... she's stuck in La-la land if she is still striving for acceptability for abortionists. Won't ever happen. Now get over there and fix her roof; take Operation Counterstrike and Diatryma with you. Bring bottled water.

[Julie]

Oh, dear. Please, Pandora. Grow up. Just. Grow Up. Seriously. You sound like a stuck CD.

[Julie]

You can't be serious, jmtbw. Abortion is the #1 cause of the success of the pet supplies industry? I've never seen such concentrated ignorance in one post.

[Pandora]

Silly statement of the day- " Abortion is like appendectomies, mole removal, or chemotherapy"

How many general surgeons, oncologists and dermatologists experience what the whiny writer does ....

"I EXPEREINCE stigma all the time in my work; the hospital will not give privileges to our physicians, we can’t secure local back up doctors, we can’t get anyone to provide us with bottled water or replace our tile floors or replace our roof or resurface our parking lot. "

You'd think it'd sink in by now that abortionists are the pariahs of the medical community. Rather than face this fact the whiny abortionist tells sob stories about only post-abortive women can save them from their sentences as outcasts of mainstream medicine.

You want to make a living killing preborn children? Well, it's legal but don't expect others to make you feel better at the expense of their own consciences.

[marie]

you use frequency to equal normalcy.. in that case a great many women will be raped in their lifetime.. does that mean rape is a normal part of life and should be respected and the poor rapists not stigmatized? of course not, because frequency of a bad thing does not equal normalcy of that bad thing.. why wont prolifers leave it alone, because more than 45 million babies have been killed in your time frame. we will not be silent, someone has to speak for the children youve killed. maybe its not murder by the legal definition, but you still stop a beating heart in a great many instances, you still prevent a life from reaching its potential.

[Diatryma]

Could you please stop strawmanning 'pro-choice' to 'abortion is great'? Abortion, not great. Abortion is like appendectomies, mole removal, or chemotherapy: sucks, but it's sometimes necessary, it shouldn't be traumatic, and you are not the person who decides when it is. Also largely preventable, but I've never found an anti-abortion group that was also pro-contraception.

[Pandora]

jmtbw,

Yep abortion is so great .... but Monica is hiding it from the two possible fathers and her co-workers. The Whiny Abortionist will still be complaining about women not writing about their positive abortion stories forever (while contemplating her still untiled floor.)

[Monica G]

GOD i really hope when I have my abortion next week I'll have someone like you. I'm terrified I'll have someone who's just there to have a job and nothing else. I'm also glad to have someone who still feels the way I did before I saw the plus-sign on the stick.
Blogging about the full experience now, if you're curious about the full on range of stuff leading up to it: http://ieffedupmylife.blogspot.com/

[Diatryma]

Of course women deserve better than abortion. We deserve safe, reliable, inexpensive birth control. We deserve safe, reliable, affordable child care. We deserve not to be punished for having kids. We deserve medical care. We deserve medical care for our kids. We deserve to decide when we want to become pregnant. We deserve not to be coerced or forced into sex. We deserve not to feel shame for our decisions.

That will reduce the number of abortions more than anything the pro-life/anti-abortion movement has done. We deserve competent doctors who perform abortions when they are necessary, and we deserve to decide when that is.

[jmtbw]

All I know is, women deserve better than abortion. If abortion is so wonderful, why don't women talk about it openly? It's LEGAL, isn't it? The fact is, women suffer greatly from post traumatic stress disorder. I have been a part of Project Rachel, which is a post-abortion healing and reconciliation ministry to women, men, and anyone who has suffered from the effects of abortion. One phone call that sticks in my mind was from an elderly man whose wife was dying. She was still dealing with the pain of an abortion done many, many years before. She wanted to "get right with God" before she died. If abortion is a good thing and it is legal, then why do women suffer? Ever heard of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign? I have a close friend who is post-abortive. She tells a very sad story.

Do you know any post-abortive women who love animals very much? Do you know any post-abortive women that have pets that they dress up and treat like they are their babies??? The pet industry has boomed over the last 36 years. They just need to fill an empty hole, but it remains empty. St. Augustine said, back in the 4th century, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in You , O Lord."

I hope you all find the True Source of Peace. You are in my prayers. Please pray for me as well. May God's peace be yours.

[Julie]

I'm torn betweeen wanting to laugh at you, Panora, and wondering what the heck is your problem. My first impulse is to point out I'm not a "pro abort" but it's more than obvious medical and scientific facts don't interest you the same way inflammatory labels do.

[OperationCounterstrike]

Another thing med-workers are more aware of than lay-people is child abuse. Baby-abuse, too. And, medical conseques not of abuse per se but of less-than-full-hearted parenting. A kid gets brought in with a minor injury, having fallen off his bunk bed, and you learn he was jumping off it over and over again and the parents were elsewhere.

The more of this stuff we see, the less we like the idea of forcing a woman to grow a baby she doesn't want.

[OperationCounterstrike]

What is wrong with your comment system??????? It posts, then deletes. Get it fixed, morons.

[OperationCounterstrike]

testing again

[OperationCounterstrike]

Something wrong with your server, it posts some posts but not others.

Pandora, the reason 87% of counties have no dedicated abortion-providers is low demand. Not enough patients. If every county had one, most of them would stand idle.

I went to med school in a very right-to-lifist part of the country and even there right-to-lifer were a pretty small self-segregating minority in the med community. We see enough childbirths that we don't like the idea of forcing one upon a woman against her will.

[OperationCounterstrike]

testing

[Pandora]

Here you go Julie,

http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/access_abortion.html

I'm surprised a pro-abort like you didn't know this, as pro-abortion groups have been whining about this for years.

[Ruth D. Rivera]

I had an abortion in 1985, at the age of 15. Sperm donor absconded, of course, but forced-birthers don't seem to care one whit about that. I am grateful each and every day that I was able to obtain a safe, legal abortion when I needed one and I fight each and every day for that right to continue. My body is not community property; it is MINE. I will decide who or what gets to use my body, because I am a person and not chattel.