abortionclinicdays

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.

Listening to the Heart of a Woman

As an abortion provider, I have often felt as Peg Johnston, below, feels.  That is, that the words of the 45 million who have had an abortion are crowded out by the "two sides" arguing back and forth.  But since the murder of Dr Tiller, more women are speaking out.  Many women have told their stories on the website, drtiller.com. Clinic workers, aligning themselves with our slain hero, have created a website, iamdrtiller.com.  Only by women and their partners and families speaking about their own abortions will the dialogue be genuine.  Only then will more Americans come to understand what is truly in the hearts of the women who chose abortion.  Thank you, Peg, for once again writing so eloquently, giving clarity to the issue and encouraging more women to speak up and let their voices be heard too.
Lu

Listening to the Heart of a Woman

By Peg Johnston

July 13, 2009 - 7:00am

Published under: Common Ground | Women’s Rights

If the proverbial Martians were to come to Earth, and specifically to the United States, they would naturally be interested in the dominant conflicts on the planet as the best way to learn about us. When they got to the abortion conflict, they would be perplexed that the most impassioned partisans were not those who personally decided to have or not have an abortion. And there’s a lot to learn about that observation.

What is missing in the abortion debate, including the Common Ground discussion, are the women themselves who have had abortions, or for that matter, who decided to parent or make an adoption plan.  You would expect that patients who identified as pro choice would choose abortion as needed without a lot of conflict. You would think that those women who were against abortion wouldn’t have one. You would be wrong on both counts.

When you sit with women on a daily basis as I, and most abortion care workers, do, you will soon learn that “until you understand the heart of a woman, nothing about abortion makes any sense at all.” Dr. George Tiller taught us that mantra, which is why he was so beloved by our community. A day or two listening to women talk about their decisions will make everything about the public abortion debate seem completely irrelevant.

Take Catherine (not her real name) who wrote on her chart last week: “Yes (it was a difficult decision) because it is wrong.” You might think Catherine was in the wrong place, but what I heard when I listened closely was a complex, thoughtful decision that considered her family and the needs of each of her kids, the financial prospects for her and her husband, and how she might feel about her choice later on, just for starters. I was so impressed with her process that progressed from a simplistic worldview of right/wrong to a more nuanced, ‘what’s right for me and my family?’ I also witnessed her courage in facing down the long held, but unexamined beliefs she had learned from her family. Still, she would not talk to them about her decision, physically recoiling at just the thought of it.

In this she is not alone. “What does it take to silence 45 million women?” many of us have asked. We know that the 30+ year campaign to stigmatize abortion is working remarkably well. It’s what keeps a woman from talking to her best friend, her husband, her doctor, or her minister. It doesn’t change people’s minds; rather, it’s how they are silenced. So, no wonder no one gets to really understand why more than1 million women every year choose to terminate their pregnancies! Imagine if there was only one story about divorce—instead of knowing women who were relieved to move on, traumatized for a long time, or should have gotten a divorce earlier, we only hear about the adulterer.

The problem is that only a few of us hear these incredible stories of people’s real lives. Aside from the mental health implications of stigmatizing a life event that 45 million people share, the silencing of the abortion experience has distorted the debate. Recently conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan acknowledged that women’s stories, written as comments on Dr. Tiller’s murder, changed how he viewed the issue. “Some of these situations are really tragic,” he said. “Duh,” we said in unison.

Even more tragically, there are very few opportunities to hear, really hear, women’s experiences of abortion, or indeed, their experience of unintended pregnancy and decision-making. Abortion care workers (and I include those who help women at abortion funds, family planning clinics, talklines etc) are like priests in a confessional. The public can sometimes listen into the stories they hear at blogs like abortionclinicdays.com or the abortioneers, but there are not many opportunities to hear more than partisan sound bites. A pregnancy decision is so rich with multiple layers of feeling, concerns, and ethics that it is a shame that the public can’t access them. A discourse that embodied these experiences would completely change the abortion debate and would significantly help women who are isolated in their decision-making.

Imagine if women were invited to use existing online public engagement technology so that our deeply conflicted society can try to understand the “heart of a woman.” So that this doesn’t turn into which side can log in faster to a FOX poll, the process would be designed to tease out the most complete story. A scientifically designed survey would invite women who have had an abortion to answer questions as well as to contribute a narrative about the significance of the abortion decision or experience in their lives. These questions would encourage reflection on various aspects of the abortion decision, such as the needs of children, her or her partner’s readiness for parenting, her concerns about the impact of a child on her relationship with partner or family, financial issues, educational goals, religious or spiritual beliefs, support, or lack thereof, for the woman’s moral agency, and societal attitudes toward various pregnancy outcomes (abortion, adoption, single parenthood, etc.)  

A content analysis would identify important themes. This qualitative approach is not a battle of numbers but will allow everyone to understand the range of factors in the decision making process as well as barriers to each option a woman considers. Instead of opinions we will be soliciting experiences.

Those who are making policy about funding, state mandated waiting periods, and other restrictions might just gain perspective from women themselves about what was helpful and what might have been more useful to them in their decision-making. For instance, what kinds of support would have contributed to their emotional health? What information would have been helpful? Were state and federal laws a help or a hindrance? What presentation of risk factors most often leads to negative mental health outcomes? What is the impact of the societal stigma placed on abortion in terms of healthy outcomes? What are the special needs of young women, those experiencing domestic violence, or those with other identified risk factors such as prior emotional conditions?

Just as any visiting Martian can tell you, the solution to the conflict does not come from the partisans on either side. It comes from the truths of the people who are living with the consequences of public policy. When women’s experiences, not just bumper sticker slogans, are part of the debate then—and only then-- will common ground make any sense at all.

This piece first appeared on RHRealityCheck.org