Reddit reviews This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor

Abortion providers need to follow the current law, even if there is debate about whether the law should be changed.

I remember reading about a couple of instances of abortion providers discussing doing such in their memoirs:

From Dr. Willie Parker's Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice:

>One day, a twelve-year-old girl was sitting in the waiting room in Tuscaloosa with her mother. She was caramel complected and physically mature, but with the face of a child. When she came in that morning she had been shy and silent, but she had been given a Xanax, the same as all the other patients, and now she was sitting there among a bunch of other women a lot older than her, feeling vouble and disinhibited. When her mother went outside tot he parking lot for a smoke, one of the other patients, a white woman who happened to have a twelve-year-old daughter at home, turned to her and gently struck up a conversation, hoping in a maternal way to guide her away from what she imagined was inappropriate contact with older boys at school. "Who were you messing with?" she asked the girl. "Don't you know not to go around with those boys?"

>The girl replied, so naively that she was almost sassy, "He isn't a boy. He's fifty-three and he's my daddy, and after this he's going to pick us up and go get ice cream." The waiting room went silent. And then the white woman got up from her chair and made her way past all the knees and crossed ankles and hands in laps, and through the swinging doors that led to the procedure rooms and down the long hallway to the owner's office. By the time the girl's mother came inside, we had taken the girl into a back office. Gloria Gray, the clinic's owner, had called child protective services and the police were on their way. Gloria and I were in complete agreement about our mandated duty to report situations of this type to the authorities, an obligation that I honor with all dependent minors.

And Susan Wicklund, in her book This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Provider:

>"Sometimes things happen that aren't easy to talk about. I need to know how you got pregnant. Did somebody do something bad to you?"

>She sits mute.

>"Who made you pregnant?" I insist, moving as close to the scared girl as I dare. "Who?"

>Long silence, but she finally lifts her head, looks at me. Her eyes are troubled. No fourteen-year-old eyes should look that way.

>"It was my daddy," she whispers.

>For a minute I don't speak. I can't speak. The rage exploding inside me is molten. I want that man's neck in my hands. "I just want what's best for my girl," he had said. The same man who violated her, who tortured her life in service to his perversity. I start shaking, trying to control my anger.

>"The man in the waiting room who you came with? Is that who you call 'Daddy'? Is he the one who did this to you?"

>"Yes," she says. "It's him."

>"No one else? No one else has touched you down there? Nobody has done this to you but your daddy? The man you came here with?"

>"No one."

>"Does your mama know?"

>She tightens up, looks down again. One question too many.

>"Listen. I won't do an abortion today. We have time to consider that. We won't touch you or deal with your pregnancy. Our first job is to make sure you are safe."

>Her head jerks up, fear flaring in her eyes. "He'll hurt me if I don't. I have to! He said if I didn't he'd beat me up again. He will! He's done it before."

>"You are a minor," I say. "We have to get you away from him for a while, someplace safe. You are very early in the pregnancy. We can talk again soon, but we have to make you safe."

>Her eyes plead with mine. They ask for honesty. They search for an adult to trust.

>I reach out, touch her, carefully, very gently. "We'll get you through this. I'm going to have a nurse come sit with you while I make some phone calls. We won't let him hurt you."

>Nearly an hour had passed before I felt comfortable leaving the young girl with a nurse and could return to the main office.

>"I want to see my girl!" the father demands, as soon as he sees me. His face is red; his hands are clenched in fists.

>I keep a lid on my own temper, quell the temptation to scream at him, and instead, impose a cool, professional demeanor.

>"It's taking a little longer than we thought," I tell him. "She's young, and we want to be careful. It takes time to prepare such a young patient," I lie. "Try to understand. She's perfectly fine, and we're doing everything to make sure she's safe."

>"I want to see her!" he paces back to his seat.

>I close the door and hurry to the administrator's office. "We have a reportable incident," I blurt out. "We have to hurry. The girl is a minor, an incest victim. She's identified her father. He's in the waiting room now, but he's really nervous and demanding. He may suspect something. I've told him we've been delayed."

>She has the phone in her hand before I finish. We notify both the police and the Child Protection Agency, stress that it's essential for them to synchronize. The girl will be escorted out the back door by a caseworker at the same time the police take the father out the front.

>All this takes more time. It's been almost two hours since the girl checked in.

>"Where's my girl?" the father demands when I return. "I want to see her!"

>I have to physically block him from coming through the door. "Please. Be reasonable," I say. "I'm sorry it's taken so long. We'll be through soon, but it only prolongs things if I have to keep coming out here. It won't be long now."

>"I know something is wrong," he accuses. "What's going on?"

>He finally storms back to his chair, muttering to himself.

>Back with the girl, I fill her in. "People from a place called the Child Protection Agency are coming to pick you up. They are set up to take care of young people who have troubles at home. They'll keep you safe while you figure things out."

>"He'll never let them take me," she says.

>"The police are coming to ask him some questions. They won't let him hurt you."

>The events daze her. By turns she looks relieved, anxious, scared, thankful. The door opens, and the administrator calls me out.

>"Everything's set," she says. "The police are coming in."

>I get to the waiting room just as they open the door. The father is looking at me, about to speak, when an officer takes his arm.

>"What's going on?" he explodes. "What is this?"

>"You're coming in for questioning." The officer handcuffs him as they speak.

>"My daughter's here. You can't do this."

>He shoots me a haunting, burning look. He'll be back, I think. He'll be back, looking for me. I watch just long enough to be convinced they will indeed take him away, then turn and go quickly to the back of the clinic. The girl is just about out the door with the social worker, but I stop them briefly.

>"Please come back and talk to me when you feel safe," I say.

>She nods distractedly. She looks tiny and vulnerable. A child starting a new life.

>I tell the caseworker I'm available any time. I write down my phone numbers. The car drives off.

>I have a moment of doubt. I didn't have to probe for the truth. I could have performed the procedure and let her return to her life. It was only through my persistence, and my legal obligation to act on information, that this happened.

>In the end, though, it is these cases that make me feel I'm performing the best medicine. It would have been easier not to be thorough, to ignore the red flags. But that extra twenty minutes spent digging for the truth, or explaining something a patient doesn't understand, or answering the hard questions can make a difference for the rest of a woman's life. The moment I simply become a technician performing procedures is the moment I have to quit.

These are just snippets- each book has a little more detail, but I think I've transcribed enough to get the general gist.

Way to go, America.
I read this book !reddit! about an abortion doctor, how she got into it, and her grandma had a big impact when she found out what kind of stuff the author did. This poor doctor, who does so much more than abortion, has her life threatened.. her kids.. has to wear a disguise at times. It's sickening.

I've heard medication abortion sucks pretty badly for a couple of days, but if it cuts down on surgical.. good.. because any surgery is risky, and much more invasive, with the infection risk, even if its done in sterile conditions.

I've recently learned about a book called The Common Secret, about a woman's experiences as an abortion doctor. At one point she had a patient who didn't really want an abortion, but felt that she had to get one for economic reasons. The doctor basically had to guilt/manipulate a pro-life clinic into giving the woman free prenatal care.

I completely understand being pro-life, but it's insane to me that pro-life people don't want to take steps (even expensive steps) so that women won't feel that they have to have abortions.