abortionclinicdays

Military Families

I don't know if other clinics are noticing this as well, but we've seen lots more servicemen and women over the past year. I don't want to use this post to make any overly-simplistic arguments like Iraq War = more deployments and hardships for military families = more abortions, but I do want to mention some of the challenges that military families face when choosing abortion.

Maricela had been a teen mom and struggled for years to achieve some degree of self-sufficiency for she and her son. She worked a minimum wage job at a big box store. She met a boyfriend there and he challenged her to explore more options for her life. "There's not much out there for a single Latina mom with no education," she said, "and so I enlisted." She waited for basic training and a few weeks after getting her assignment, found out she was pregnant. "I'm sure that I can't have a baby now," she explained, "I have to get some training so that afterwards I can take care of my son. This is our only hope." Her mother had agreed to care for her son while she was gone. The challenge now was the pregnancy test at her preliminary medical exam. (Many pregnancy tests will give a false positive reading in the weeks after an abortion, because they test for hormones that are still in the body.) "If I come up as pregnant, I don't get to go. It's this or the Walmart." I offered to have her records faxed to any clinician she wanted, but she was reluctant. "I don't really want them to know that I just had an abortion, but I guess if it comes to that I'll have to. I guess we can just hope for a negative test, eh?"

Lana's story was much more serious. She had a string of abusive boyfriends and finally found the guy she said was "the one." Just one little problem--he was due to be sent to Afghanistan just three months after they started dating. Lana was in school to be a vet tech and had huge student loan bills. When her roommate moved out, her rent doubled and bills piled up. She worked at her regular job, but this wasn't making a dent. A friend worked as an exotic dancer and suggested that she give it a try. "I looked for something else, really there was nothing. I was going to be evicted." She didn't tell her boyfriend. "I was so ashamed. He's in a war zone, why would I bother him with my problems. Everyone kept telling me--don't worry him, he doesn't need to know about this. All his family kept saying was don't you break his heart, you better be faithful." Lana was raped by a man at the club, but didn't report the incident. "I felt like, who was going to believe me--I was a stripper." Now pregnant from the rape, there was nothing she would have liked more than to tell her boyfriend, not just about the pregnancy, but about the dancing, the money issues, her mounting debt, all the stress she was under. "Everyone kept saying, he needs you to be strong, don't you worry him. I don't know what he'd think of me. I was such a nice girl and now I'm a stripper. How could I tell him?" I reinforced that no one should ever be raped and being in the sex industry doesn't change that, but she had a hard time hearing me. "I'm supposed to be the loyal girlfriend at home pining away, not having an abortion from some guy who forced me." I encouraged her to get some counseling and gave her a referral to a sexual assault agency in her area, but with all that shame around the rape, I'm doubtful she followed up.

Cheyenne was positive that she didn't want to be pregnant while her husband was deployed, but military insurance will ONLY cover abortion services when the life of the mother is at risk. (Yep, check it out. No coverage if you're raped, if you have a significant fetal abnormality. No coverage for counseling, even.) "Hasn't our family sacrificed enough already? I have a thyroid disorder, depression and PTSD. My husband is in Iraq. I had to move in with my mother and I've hardly bought groceries this month because I've been trying to save up for a f***ing abortion," she said. "How much more 'at risk' does my life have to be?" That, I told her, was a damn good question.

-Nell

Coming Out as an Abortion Provider

I finally met my partner's grandparents a few weeks ago. They are a plane ride away, so it's pretty rare that the whole family is together. We had discussed first impressions and what to expect from them. Active in their local church, Elks Club and Rotary, as well as the local Republican party, I wasn't sure how they would react to my work. It was a pretty long walk back to the hotel, so we decided to tell them that I worked as a counselor at an ob/gyn office until we'd all had the opportunity to get to know each other better.

After dinner with Grandma, Grandpa and family friends, one of the women there asked me what I do. I explained that I worked with pregnant women and that it was work that I really loved. I talked a little bit about how most of the women that I work with don't get great support at home through their pregnancies, have pretty tough lives and deserve good care. I mentioned how hard it is for women to express any mixed feelings about motherhood, when our culture often sends the message that it's supposed to be one of the most magical times in your life. I added that many women have had difficult experiences with pregnancy, partner issues or miscarriage, and it's hard to know who to talk to about this.

"Do you see many dead babies where you're at?" Nana's friend blurted out. My partner's jaw fell open and we shot each other a look and sat in silence for a moment.

"I mean...well, you see..." she quickly started apologizing, "when I...I was twenty-five I was pregnant. It was a stillbirth. The baby died and it was...awful. I still think about it. I think it's really important that women have someone with them for something like that. I'm really glad the women at your office can talk to you."

My partner recovered faster than I did, "Nell does work like that, she's done all kinds of pregnancy work, including grief work. I'm sorry, I was reacting to the language. We're pretty sensitive to stuff like this because, well..." We locked eyes and I gave a nod, "She also does abortion counseling with women." I braced myself for what was going to come next.

"Well..." Nana started, "Good for you. How about that, Ed?" She nodded at Grandpa, who gave a 'humph' in agreement. "You know, I think our family doctor used to do them," she said. "When my mother was pregnant--I had eight siblings--dad used to tease her about her visits. He'd say, 'make sure he knows what you're going for.' It was the depression," she added, "Women had to take care of their families."

I assured her friend that I was not shocked by the language, just unsure how to respond to her question. We went on to have a great conversation about pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, postpartum depression, stillbirth, adoption, parenting. Nana and Grandpa had been foster parents for years, it turned out. We talked about the families they'd helped over the years and about her friend's stillbirth and later single parenthood to a daughter. It was such a weight off my shoulders and I left with deep respect for everyone who was there.

I think that many of us in the abortion care field get so used to the violence and vitriol spewed out by our protesters that we forget most folks don't feel that way and that women are anxious to tell their own stories about pregnancy, abortion, adoption or mothering. We fear a bad reaction, so we keep our work to ourselves and no one hears the real stories about what we do. This was one small, very meaningful lesson for me in speaking up.

-Nell

A Pagan Perspective on Abortion

A friend of mine is Wiccan and she commented that we've covered many spiritual perspectives at abortionclinicdays, but haven't had a post that spoke to her sense of faith and right action. She forwarded me this post by Anne at Blog o' Gnosis, which I'm going to repost in its entirety.

Abortion: Holding Life and Death

What with the persistent attacks on women’s right to abortion and birth control in this country, I feel I must start clarifying my own position in the (falsely dichotomized) pro-life vs. pro-choice debate. I am both pro-life and pro-choice. I do believe life begins at conception, AND I do not believe it is a sin or a death to end that life before the fetus is born.

Because nobody is ever listened to these days without having to stand on their credentials, here are mine: 3 live births, 2 abortions, 1 miscarriage. 2 children adopted as teenagers. 4 children successfully raised to adulthood, one still an adolescent. Have attended births, deaths, fertility rituals, infertility rituals. Have friends who were adopted out as infants, friends who gave up infants, friends who adopted children. Have taught the kids of abusive and/or addicted mothers. Have counseled addicts and women who are unable to support themselves to have abortions.

Ursula LeGuin has a wonderful article (”The Princess”, an address to NARAL in 1982 collected in Dancing at the Edge of the World) where she writes, in response to the ridiculous claims of the Christian Right that every pregnancy must continue to birth, that as a young woman she got pregnant accidentally. Because she was in no position to raise a child, because she chose abortion and finished her schooling, she then went on to create a stable relationship and have three very wanted children. But if she’d had to raise that one, none of the other would have happened. So with the abortion, it is still a net gain of 2 babies. Following the Right’s crude mathematical logic, this should be cause to celebrate, right?

I don’t have the patience to write so craftily in response to this right-wing assault as she has. I am plain furious that our government keeps narrowing the birth control and abortion options for women both in this country and abroad. I hate that they think this is good for social ills of any kind. And I am furious that reasonable-minded people are letting this happen. I don’t like the fact that the Left keeps letting itself get out-flanked on the issue, and I don’t like that by saying I’m pro-choice I’m not supposed to admit that life begins at conception. As a Pagan, there is no contradiction here. Our religion teaches us to hold both death and life simultaneously.

I have trained for many years to sense energy, to feel what is going on both inside my body and in the spiritual realms around me. Each time I have gotten pregnant, it took very little time for me to make contact with the spirit of my unborn child. For me, that connection was so instantaneous, so deep and intimate, that the thought of bearing a child and then giving it up once it was born was not an option for me. That would have been far more devastating than having an abortion.

Each time I had an abortion, it was because I knew I did not have the time and energy to raise that child to my own childraising standards. That is a knowledge borne out of the experience of many, many hard years of mothering. I was completely clear that aborting the pregnancy was the best thing to do. Where I part company with the pro-lifers is here: it is not murder to abort a fetus. The child at that point is a spirit, not a body. It resides only occasionally in its little, developing fetus body. Mostly, it hovers in and around the mother, feeling what we feel, remembering where it’s been before, riding the changes in its consciousness and ours in a completely non-judgmental way.

When it is time to abort the fetus, I have felt the spirit around me strongly. I have said good-bye in a tender, loving, deeply grieving way. The fetus is expelled, and the spirit just drifts away. It does not die, it is not harmed. I know this to be true. It goes back to the spirit world to wait for its next opportunity to come through, hopefully richer for the experience of our having been so close for a short time. That is what happens, yet even with this outlook abortion is deeply traumatic for women, something to be avoided if at all possible. It is not an easy process, even when we want it.

In a term pregnancy, usually the child’s spirit fully enters its body at birth. So from a spiritual perspective I can see why pro-choice folks rally round the credo that life begins at birth. But for me, acknowledging that life is there at conception allows me to take the pro-choice argument a step further: it is a woman’s birthright, this ability to judge which spirits pass through our wombs into life, and which pass through into death. That is part of the deal, part of the package of being born a woman.

We have that power, and we need to claim it, learn how to use it wisely, and guard it ferociously. We need to teach our daughters about their birthright, and be comfortable ourselves talking to them about birth control and our own deepest experiences with our fertility. If we give up the right to choose when we want to have children, either by apathy or by struggle, we will be giving up power over our own bodies AND an important part of our spiritual power. Women are the gates, and the gatekeepers, between the born and the unborn. We hold life in one hand and death in another, and that is how we are meant to be. This cannot be neatly parsed into the ridiculous boxing match of pro-life vs. pro-choice. Abortion should be legal, and extremely rare. We achieve this through realistic sex education (I’m not talking about abstinence-only here) and by providing free or low-cost birth control and abortion services to all women of childbearing age. End of story. Now, just how do we go about making this the law of the land?

Illegal abortion in Brazil

Ipas, the international women's health organization produced this short spot to encourage discussion about illegal abortion in Brazil.

For a more thorough discussion of the issues raised, here is Amber Levinson's recent commentary, Crime and Punishment: Illegal Abortion in Brazil, and a 2005 article from Women's E-News: Brazil Begins to Talk Openly About Abortion.

The Brazilian organization Catholic Women for the Right to Decide and the International Women's Health Coalition also provide information about reproductive justice throughout Latin America.

Nell

True Freedom of Choice

Now is the time for women to take action and require FULL DISCLOSURE from reproductive healthcare providers.  These days more and more physicians and pharmacists are opting out of providing certain services to women, and only to women! No men have been denied any healthcare they are seeking!  In order that we not waste our money, our time, and subject ourselves to humiliation or worse, we hereby demand that pharmacists, nurses and physicians make known up front exactly what their belief system will preclude them from offering us.  We demand a level playing field. 

Beginning now, all healthcare workers must display the following sign prominently in their office so that we will know whether we want to take our business elsewhere.  A colleague has suggested the following:

NOTICE TO PATIENTS

I follow my own religious beliefs ahead of your medical needs.  Therefore, I will not support, offer, or approve any of the following checked off below.

__ I do not subscribe to a woman's right to make her own decisions about her reproductive healthcare.

__I do not believe that a woman has the right to choose her method of contraception and therefore will not sell prescription birth control.

__I do not believe in Emergency Contraception, even if you have been raped, and will therefore not give you Plan B to prevent pregnancy.

__ I do not believe in abortion and therefore will not provide an abortion nor will I offer a referral for an abortion elsewhere.

When this sign is posted in all healthcare institutions from doctor's offices to clinics to emergency rooms to pharmacies, then women will have true freedom of choice.  Women will know before they make an appointment, spend money and time whether their healthcare provider offers the services they are seeking.  We are informed of the contents of our food, our haircare products, our drinks.  Why not which healthcare needs we will be denied before the humiliation!

Please spread this list far and wide!  Women unite! Begin asking before you make an appointment if your doctor or clinic will provide you with all of the healthcare services you need.  If not, take your business elsewhere!

Lu

Dr. Susan Wicklund at Women and Children First Bookstore

 I heard Dr. Wicklund speak several months ago, reading from her book This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor. It was one of the most moving readings I'd been to in a long time, and many of us in the room were full-out sobbing as we listened to her story. 

Dr Wicklund began as a self-avowed hippie living in a tent in the Midwest. In 1976, she her own abortion under awful circumstances, with a physician who was rough and uncaring. She went on to have a wonderful homebirth several years later, trained as a midwife, attended births herself and made the decision to go to medical school. When the opportunity to learn to provide abortions came up, she saw an unmet need and eventually opened her own clinic, determined to provide better care than the kind she recieved. Dr. Wicklund was personally targeted by violent anti-abortion protestors and the book also chronicles the lengths she went to to keep herself, her family and her staff safe. It's a powerful book and she's a great speaker.

Here is Dr. Wicklund reading at Women and Children First Bookstore in Chicago, filmed by Book TV. If you don't have time to watch the entire reading, Viva La Feminista has a great rundown of the evening.

Nell

I could never tell them--they're against this...

We've been getting a fair number of hits from a Catholic site recently which posted that posing the question of "what makes for a good abortion" was a horrifying thing. I'm not upset that someone would respond this way, I know those feelings are out there and see the effects of it in the clinic every day. I'm saddest when I think about how this attitude will affect the women in one's life. When your family, friends and loved ones know that you have such strong feelings about abortion, they'll never feel comfortable telling you about their own abortions, or seeking help with a pregnancy decision. They already know how you're going to respond and fear that it won't be helpful, loving or compassionate.

We cross-posted on Feministing last week and here is one woman's response:

I had my abortion about three and a half years ago. I thought I was pro-life simply because I was raised it and terrified to set foot into a planned parenthood. I went to get a pregnancy test and the nurse brought me back to a room to tell me I was pregnant. When she told me I was the words just spilled out of my mouth "I can't have the baby" She didn't even hesitate or frown on my words and I began the process of figuring out how to pay for it ect. The worst part was that I had to hide it from my mother and father as well as the fathers (my now husband) mother and father. The best part was everything about the planned parenthood! From the nurse holding my hand and talking to me about the college classes I was starting in the fall to the Dr. being so caring and respectful. The very best part was the warmed recliner and cookies in the recovery room! The after care with planned parenthood is also great!
In summary, planned parenthood (at least where I am) is amazing!

So here's our promise to all the anti-abortion folks out there, who think that it's horrifying to try to imagine good care through an abortion decision: We promise to continue to care for the women in your life when they need abortions and we will do it with compassion and dignity. When they can't talk to you, we will make sure that they are safe, respected and loved, through whatever decisions they make.

Nell

ADDENDUM: While thinking about what I just wrote in the shower, I do want to point out that this is not a challenge to prove "who cares about women more." Rather, this is a post about decision-making, about who we go to in times of crisis or when in need of help. If I am a vocal supporter of the peace movement and all I talk about is how awful millitarism is, you're probably not going to want to talk to me about how you're husband is stationed in Iraq and how you really miss him. If I continue spouting off on how welfare is a travesty, you're probably not going to tell me that you're on food stamps. I don't think that anti-abortion protesters love the women in their family less, but I do wish they'd consider how their sentiments affect the women in their lives who have had (or will have) abortions.

Links to address some recent questions

Several comments have requested specific information about the laws surrounding abortion care, the safety of the procedure and about prenatal testing. Here are a few links to address these issues:

An Overview of Abortion in the United States: This presentation from the Guttmacher Institute became available in 2008. Available in powerpoint and pdf format, it includes information on demographics, access and medical safety of abortion in the US. While the powerpoint does not include citations, the references are available on the site as well.

Abortion Laws: Also from the Guttmacher Institute, with state-by-state information. This is a pdf document which is updated monthly.

What to Expect After an Abortion: From the Feminist Women's Health Center

Prenatal Testing: As I'd mentioned in an earlier entry, the kind of knowledge we can glean from prenatal testing is limited to certain kinds of conditions. These links which review what kind of prenatal testing is available, how and when in pregnancy it is performed and what the test is able to screen for.

Finally, I wanted to send a little love out to one of our readers, who writes the "Chaos is Normal" blog and thank her for adding her voice to the conversation about prenatal testing, a fetal demise and finding a physician who would perform a D&E. Thank you for sharing your experience, be well, we're thinking of you.

-Nell

The History of the Pregnancy Test

Every woman I meet with has her own "how I found out" pregnancy story. It's become a rite of passage. Most women do two, three, four tests before actually believing the results and I've come to believe that the single, most popular place to take a pregnancy test in America today is the Ladies Restroom at Walmart.

Check out this fascinating site about the history of pregnancy testing: The Thin Blue Line.

Your abortion stories

Even though we do not typically respond within the comments section of this blog, Bon, Lu and I do read comments to see what readers have questions about and what kind of stories would be meaningful to our readers. I want to thank those of you who have written in with your own abortion stories. Nothing better illustrates the richness and complexity of a pregnancy decision than hearing from women who've been there. The women's positive abortion stories help us as counselors identify the qualities that help encourage resilience and healthy coping before and after an abortion.

We often share your stories with our own patients. Hearing that someone else has walked that path with strength and grace--and that they're not afraid to tell their story--our patients describe as the most precious gift they can receive from the women in their community. The abortion stories women provide that describe isolation, suffering or painful rumination--those teach us something too. We should be listening to these women to understand the qualities that contribute to their suffering so that no woman has to describe her pregnancy or abortion experience in this way.

So how can you help the women you love to have positive memories of their abortions? I would love to hear from readers about the factors that made a difference in their abortions being positive or negative memories. Some suggestions I've gotten from women include:

Listen closely and let me express all the feelings I'm having, even the ambivalent ones.
Don't tell me what to do, unless I ask you for that feedback.
Tell me your own abortion story.
Don't assume that be cause I am pro-choice, this experience will be clearcut or simple for me.
Don't assume that describing myself as "against abortion" means I don't want to have one.
Help me with practical things--childcare, a ride to the clinic, make my favorite dinner for when I get back home, clean the house, cover my shift at work on the day of my appointment.
When you make promises to help with this stuff--FOLLOW THROUGH!
Don't promise to "help me with the baby" unless you can identify specific things you are willing to help with. If I choose this path, once again, FOLLOW THROUGH!
Remind me what a good job I'm doing taking care of my family already.
Help me find accurate information about abortion care.
If I ask you to respect my privacy and not tell other people about my pregnancy, please do so.
Love me no matter what.

What are the factors that made your own abortions positive experiences? Were there things that impacted your experience negatively? What else would you add to this list?

Nell