I worked in an abortion clinic as a medical assistant in the 90s. To begin, I’ll describe what the job entailed. We set up the procedure rooms and cleaned them after the procedure, took care of the equipment, and used sterile technique to handle the surgical instruments, passing them to the doctor. Most importantly, we supported women through the procedure, holding their hands usually, often talking to them about what was going on-or other distracting topics if they rather not know. We’d take the woman back from the waiting room to the procedure room and have her get undressed and positioned on the exam table (in the “usual position” women with good healthcare know well).
While I’d set up the room for the procedure, while waiting for the doctor to come in, usually the women would want to talk.I ended up hearing about women’s lives and their decisions that brought them to that moment. I figured it out once-if I talked to half the women I met, that’d be around 400, so if we were doing a research study “n” would be pretty high (the higher the “n”, the more accurate the study, generally). The youngest patient I ever had was 10. The oldest was 49 (a surprise but wanted pregnancy).
In thinking about the abortion “debate”, one thing that infuriates me is that many people don’t understand/ take into account that a woman, in making her choice, typically Takes On Advocacy for the Contents of Her Uterus herself. These self-proclaimed advocates for uterine contents (whatever the stage) are unnecessary. It pains me that women are so underestimated in how carefully they make this decision. As far as I’ve seen, it’s the nature of most people who get pregnant automatically, consciously or not, consider the potentiality inside them as well when they are making their choice,.A pregnant 14 year old, one that might be a trying, bratty teenager at home perhaps, invariably is somber and responsible as she weighs her decision. Kids that age would not uncommonly voice regret and some self-blame for being in the position of having to make the choice, even as they’d express why it was important. I felt privileged to reflect back to them what they were saying, validate them with empathy.
There were so many compelling reasons women chose to get an abortion. There are many more than the recent decision in Georgi-and now Alabama-reflect in their unseemly judgement of women. Here in the Northeast, most of our pro-lifers tended (and afaik still tend) to be non-extremists. They wouldn’t force pregnancy that’d hurt a woman’s health, or if she were a victim of rape or incest. I think many of the 35% of Americans who are less liberal around abortion rights than I’d like are like this. In my opinion, most of these people can’t imagine scenarios such as these, which all in one way or another take into account the theoretical well being of any potential child and/or society, which of course, contributes to the well being of children at large.
Here are some of the things I heard from women: “I am not ready/this is the wrong to have a baby” and “I want to finish college ” or “this man is abusive and this baby will tie me to him” or “My family will disown me” or “Most of my friends with babies dropped out of high school and I don’t want to “ or “I am not someone who wants to be a mother right now” (do we want a baby raised by someone who doesn’t want to be a mother? Some people rise to the occasion but I’m telling you unwanted children who stress parents too much are easily abused) or “I’m not ready for this baby but I can’t go through a pregnancy without emotional harm (so much of “it’s easy just give it up for adoption!””. Or “if I carry this baby I’m not sure I’ll be able to give it up for adoption and I can’t raise a child right now/ever” (REASON why “why not just give it up for adoption” Does. Not. Work for some women. People attach to what they carry for 9 months inside of their body.) This one, related, was common “If I bare this pregnancy to term, even if I hope to give i won’t be able to raise it properly and/or it will change my life/potential/future family in a negative way”. or “My husband and I won’t be able to send our kids to college if we have this baby”. or “How will we afford childcare for another one”. Or “we will have to sell our house-we can’t afford this”. Or “I can’t handle carrying my rapist’s baby. I can barely deal with having the speculum inserted in my vagina as it is. That’s why i need to be fully sedated for this abortion.
Or. “I’m too young for this; I’m only 12”, I heard more than once. And of course, 13, 14, 15, etc.
About 1 in 15 of our abortions were later 2nd trimester (after 16 wks-we did up to 23 back then, though legal to 24,they’ll only do up to 21-22 now). Every. Single. Woman who I talked to had an extremely compelling reason to get an abortion that late. That’s not just a lip-service story pro-choice advocates tell. ALL of them were things like fetal demise, organs formed outside of the body, anencephaly. Crying women and their husbands or boyfriends or alone with very much wanted pregnancies. 13 year olds who didn’t know they were pregnant until their mother noticed them coming out of the shower-the were in denial. That was not uncommon in our youngest patients. Many teenagers under 16 or so didn’t know that they could get pregnant without penetration. And denial until they started showing and realized they were pregnant (healthy teens often won’t show for sure until well into the second semester).
Guess what, forced birthers. Second trimester abortions aren’t because women don’t care. I’d say about 1/3rd of our later term patients were just kids. I feel certain that many of the men who chuckle at their willful ignorance of women’s bodies and pregnancies they are legislating about, don’t know this: A young girl usually had irregular periods in the first few years. You can’t be sure if you even missed your period! Guess what else—you can even get pregnant before you get your period. I remember several Children (one was 11) that happened to. Rape victims, or those who mentioned it (it was more taboo to talk about in the 90s I think) seemed more likely to come in later, incest victims -that we knew of -were all quite late in the pregnancy. We had a prisoner who was raped by a guard. For some reason I took upon myself, crazy at 24, to bar the door to her guard as she lay splay-legged on the procedure table.
The 10 year old who came in with her mom and dad for an abortion? She was raped by her neighbor. She sobbed the whole time.
**Addendum: Sorry I haven’t been around to follow up with the diary today. I’ve had a prolonged tech issue trying to publish this and I didn’t realize it finally went through! Also had some stuff going on unexpectedly**
**Rec list! I’m very humbled and surprised. Thank you very much, for this non-writer (obviously).**
