Update - My lunch with an abortionist.

My lunch with an abortionist was because of this lunchtime programming series by the gender studies dept. on campus for undergrads, where people are invited in to talk who've had careers that are related to gender and women's studies outside of academia...

The doctor was younger (white) female, originally from a Catholic family in St. Louis, and had a lot of makeup on, and was like 7-8 months pregnant and sat slouched back in her chair with her belly stuck out and her hands resting on it, and she had a small tattoo by her wrist (something another woman who was there and her age had - perhaps it's a generational thing?)...

It's interesting how every abortion doctor has a conversion story. Hers was that during her ob-gyn residency she had to "opt in" for training and above and beyond her 80 hour workweek, she had to spend Fri. afternoons and some Saturdays at the local Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis. Then, one day this 18-year old came in for an abortion. It was her 3rd pregnancy, and her 1st two pregnancies had each resulted in twins, and her ultrasound that she had gotten had shown that this 3rd preganancy was also twins ("Which is medically crazy," the doctor was like). After hearing this, the girl drove a car into a tree in a suicide attempt but survived with brain and spinal damage, and she came into the Planned Parenthood Clinic in a full-body cast. As it was, she needed an abortion in the hospital because it was already 12 weeks in and there were too many possible medical complications to do it in a clinic, but of the 4 ob-gyn specialists at the hospital, none would do, though the head of ob-gyn said he'd step up if no-one would. So, the doctor stepped up and did it, and the head of ob-gyn assisted/observed and pulled the necessary strings to make sure they could use the university hospital (which wasn't a given), and even then despite hearing the full story a lot of nurses anesthesiologists etc. pulled out from working with the case.

"And that's when I realized that this is what I was called to do," the doctor was like.

She also said her parents were staunch St. Louis Catholics she was the only 1 of her 5 siblings not to have a Catholic education all the way through college etc., but since talking with her about her experiences and finding out about the situations of women that she meets, her mom has started to say, "I'm pro-life, but I think that abortion should be legal because of certain cases..."

"Which is in favor of choice," the doctor said, "Though I don't press that point with her."

In terms of protests, she said she hasn't gotten too many because she mostly works in hospitals, except that a few weeks ago a dead possum was left in a garbage bag on the doorstep of the urban clinic here where she sometimes goes, and they had to call the bomb squad in. And, at this one clinic where she used to volunteer, people would line up and call names at her when she walked in, and put up little gravestones out front with dolls positioned in front of them holding signs saying things like:

MY NAME IS [----].
DR. [----] KILLED ME.

But, she said the main abortion provider in St. Louis was this old gay who did abortions pre-Roe and used to fly in from Kansas City, and he got crazy harrassment and people tracked down his house and everything, and that her friends who fly in to do abortions in the Dakotas face the same (no abortion providers live in either Dakota).

Anecdotally, I asked her if location of clinics affected protests, because a friend's spouse who raised money for Planned Parenthood in Nashville said they didn't get many protestors because it was in a "bad" (=black) neighborhood. She agreed with that, and said that the whack-job doctor in Phillie flew under the radar partly because he was in such a bad neighborhood.

She also said she didn't have her picture on the talk-flyer, "just in case"...

Someone also asked her about "look alike" crisis pregnancy centers, and she wasn't viscerally pissed, but this just kind of shaking her head and was like, "And they give out bad information, like how abortions will make you sterile, or they show women false ultrasounds to make women think that the fetus is more developed than it is," and then she said how some woman who was 7 weeks pregnant came in with a little plastic doll they gave her that was 3 inches long and baby-looking and that was nowhere near how developed her little muffin was, though they said hers was that well-developed.

I also asked her about a trend I'd noticed in (female) friends my age and younger, who say they support abortion but would never have one, and if it was a generational thing. She said it was because they had never known a world without legal abortion, and that it bugs the hell out of her when women say "...but I'd never have one."

"Like who sits around saying, 'Oh, I'm going to have an abortion this year!'?", she was like. "It's just like with health care reform where you have to choose a track that provides for abortions or one that doesn't, are women really going to sit around and say, 'Well, let me set aside this amount of money here, because I want an abortion next year'? Abortions are a response to pregnancies that are unexpected."

She also said that she hopes no one has to make a choice with an abortion, finds out their baby doesn't have a brain, etc. She said that the worst is when the baby is really wanted, but then the parents find out that there's some horrendous genetic disorder "that's uncompatible with life" and choose to abort.

"One of the 1st abortions I provided was to this great young couple who really wanted a child," she was like, "But they found out too late about genetic disorders. She was crying, and her husband was there with her and crying, and of course I started crying too. But, that was early on, it got easier after the first 50."

I also also asked about community among abortion doctors, since this one memoir of an abortion doctor I had read said that most only did 1st trimester abortions, but had some sort of solidarity with doctors who did later-term abortions... She said that one factor is that you have to do a fair number of 2nd trimester abortions per year to keep up your clinical skills, but on top of that there's an "ick factor" where 2nd trimester abortions start to look a lot like babies (at that point I suddenly became very conscious that I was chewing on a piece of a sliced chicken that I had gotten from the deli tray that had been set out; lunch had been provided with the talk).

"My husband is a pro-choice physician, and I can't even talk with him about this," she was like, "So a community of doctors who perform the same procedure is very important."

She added that doctors would def. refer patients to you and be glad that someone did them, but at the same time they'd say things to your face like, "But I could never do that."

Perhaps the most interesting point is that 1 out of 3 women get an abortion in the U.S., but because of the clinic-hospital divide, most ob-gyns know nothing about abortions.

"Which is just mind-blowing," she was like, "Could you be a specialist in any other field and know nothing about a procedure which 1 out of every 3 of your patients undergoes?"

She added that the 1st trimester abortions are rather cut-and-dry and not technically challenging, and there's not much to diagnose, but rather it's just service to provide, beyond emotional care for the women, so a lot of doctors just aren't interested in that.