Posted on 01/03/2005 6:54:54 AM PST by madprof98
Ten years after the bloody Brookline clinic attacks, one doctor explains why she still performs abortions.
Ten years ago this month, John Salvi sprayed bullets into two Brookline abortion clinics, killing two people and wounding five. Since then, the number of doctors willing to perform abortions has dwindled, increasing the workload for those remaining. One local obstetrician and gynecologist, whose clinic asked that she withhold her name for safety reasons, now performs as many as 10 abortions a day, twice a week.
One morning years ago, when I was working as a resident, a nurse brought me in to talk to a pregnant girl. When I walked into the room, there was this child -- an 11-year-old. She had come in for a procedure, and it soon became obvious that she had no understanding of sex -- she didn't really understand that she'd even had it, or that it had any connection to her pregnancy. We literally had to teach this girl about what it means to have sex -- about STDS, abstinence, and pregnancy. I remember thinking: In a world where people don't want kids to learn about these things, how can you not give them the choice to terminate a pregnancy? Even if she had chosen to continue the pregnancy and opt for adoption, what would that have done to her own childhood? How can we not provide a child with any education about sex, then force her to become a parent long before she's ready?
When I started medical school in upstate New York, I didn't want to do terminations of pregnancies at all. My mom is Catholic and my dad is Jewish, and the church we went to had a pretty strong stance on it: The message I got was that abortion was wrong. As a first-year medical student, I took an ethics class and we talked about abortion. I wrote a paper about how I believed in the right, but would never perform an abortion myself, because it was against the way I was brought up.
That all changed later on, when I had a crush on this guy who was a leader of Medical Students for Choice. At the time, I thought abortion was strictly a women's issue. But he convinced me that abortion is a civil rights issue, that if you have injustice for some members of your population, your whole population has injustice. I remember thinking that was really profound. Still, I told him that I didn't feel comfortable doing abortions, but I was pro-choice. So he gave me these two films to watch, and they changed my life. They were about different providers and patients, men and women, who talked about what life was like before abortion was legal. They really changed my views -- I suddenly thought, Yeah, I have to do that.
Today, though, there are so few providers who will perform terminations that the people who do agree to provide them end up taking the bulk of procedures. It can be hard. I'm a generalist -- I like a lot of different things about being an OB-GYN. But because sometimes I'm the only person around, I end up doing a lot of terminations.
Doing them over and over and over again can be really taxing. All of us who provide abortions believe in what we're doing and think it's a good thing and a right that needs to be available. But when you're in the clinic and in that group of people doing it, it can be tough, and you can get really tired. I don't think it'll ever make me stop doing terminations, but it can move people to tears. And it's not just me -- it extends to the nurses and the people who help us in the operating room. It's not unusual that you'll have only a couple of nurses who will help you out with it. There are nurses that will say, "No, I won't help you take care of this patient." I even know people who feel they can't tell their families what they do; their families think they work on labor and delivery.
It really frustrates me that there are so few providers. I've asked my friends who are doctors if they do abortions. Some women I knew were providers in residency, but they don't provide now because their current medical practice doesn't. It's upsetting that some friends don't fight harder to provide it. But I've also had friends who've stepped up and said, "I'm going to do medical abortions; would you teach me how?"
As providers, we give all options, including adoption and carrying the child to term. I always ask a patient "Are you sure about this?" I've had people change their minds, which is totally okay. We want that. Or sometimes we'll advise them that they have more time to decide what to do. I would feel worse terminating a wanted child than not being able to terminate at all. It's very important that a woman knows what she wants to do either way. I have no problem with a woman walking out. I always find those are good days -- when a woman walks out and says, "No, I'm keeping it."
I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but also believe that I'm ending it for good reasons. Often I'm saving the woman, or I'm improving the lives of the other children in the family. I also believe that women have a life they have to consider. If a woman is working full-time, has one child already, and is barely getting by, having another child that would financially push her to go on public assistance is going to lessen the quality of her life. And it's also an issue for the child, if it would not have had a good life. Life's hard enough when you're wanted and everything's prepared for. So yes, I end life, but even when it's hard, it's for a good reason.
Because of all the threats these days, doctors who have been doing this longer than I have are a lot more hesitant about things that I don't even usually think about. Things like, "Who is sponsoring this conference I've been invited to? Did this interview request come from a referral I trust?" They warn me to be more leery. I wasn't in Boston 10 years ago, during the Salvi shootings, but I recently talked with someone who had been around at that time, and she told me the incident essentially put her whole career on hold. That scares me.
What happens if something like that occurs again? Would I still be able to show up for work? It's unfair and depressing. I'm older now, but there was a time when I was going to sacrifice everything for the cause. But would I really sacrifice the well-being of my family? There are providers who have been shot at, who have been shot and still show up for work and still do their job, which is amazing.
Maybe I live in an idealistic world, but I believe in people being good and in trying to understand their opinion. I don't think I'm going to be easily swayed. Obviously, the threat of violence is something that's always in the back of my mind, that it could happen, but I feel like I'm doing something so right. How could people think it's wrong?
Judging by the tens of millions of natural/spontaneous abortions that take place each year it would seem that Jesus (if that's who or what you believe "designed" the natural world) doesn't seem to have a problem with abortion and even encourages it in some situations. In a sense, he would actually qualify as the most prolific abortionist of all time.
One of the saddest comments on the lack of logic and ethics in medicine that I've seen in years. I just can't figure out why this woman can't see that the sniper believed that he had the same justification. As did the Nazi's and Stalin.
The Creator can know so much more than the created, such as when to intervene in the natural order of the universe, and when to violate natural law. When He does intervene, we call such intervention a miracle.
Spontaneous abortions - miscarriages - are not intentional interventions or regulated under the medical codes of the States and Federal and State pharmaceutical laws.
My letter to the Boston Magazine editors
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/content.php?name=contact.txt
Re: Brookline clinic killings
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/content.php?name=contact.txt
What a sad statement about the lack of logic and ethics on the part of the abortion provider (as told to) Cheryl Alkon. She admits to killing human beings due to her own personal ideology or "belief" and does not give a sufficient explanation as to why her ideology is more persuasive than that of the shooter. She demonstrates a lack of insight by her description of her conversion and a lack of imagination and empathy when she cannot identify with her victims at the same time that she portrays herself as a potential victim.
She is a typical abuser of human rights.
I am glad that she double checks as to the desires of the women before she kills their children. But, she treats the child that she acknowledges as human *as a human* if the mother wants a live child and *as less than human* if the mother wants a dead child. What right is there in any human being discriminating against the right of another human being not to be killed?
"I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but also believe that I'm ending it for good reasons. "
Unreal. She is blind.
The person who shoots abortists feels they are doing something right too. That's why we can't leave what is right and wrong to each person's "feelings". I am so glad I won't be in this butcher's shoes on Judgement Day.
Is an 11 yr. old even developed enough to carry a baby???????
Note that this woman was intellectually compromised from the beginning. She lived a basic contradiction, so the following article of her abortion practice is no surprise.
From what I have read, presenting both sides of the issue is very rare amongst abortion providers. Possibly this woman does it because relatively little of her income rests on abortion (20 per week.)
I've never known a miscarraige where the baby's brain was sucked out through a scissor induced hole in the back of the head.
I've looked over your posting history, and you seem to enjoy posting comments that are inflammatory and engineered to incite anger.
You seem to want attention.
So I'll oblige ya kindly.
You're welcome.
Shine the spotlight Darks!!
Your parents must have been prolife. That's odd.
You're a moron! I'm intentionally INSULTING you as the pathetic little worm you are. You sir/ma'am/frozen vegetable are breathing in my valuable oxygen! Jump off this planet!
Poopy.
smelly poopy
Because it's murder, moron.
From THIS article:
Bush: 'I don't see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1318882/posts?page=35#35Since
His comment:
"there is no such thing as the "Lord" (except in one's imagination), President Bush is clearly wrong."
Hiding?
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