A Retired OB/GYN’s Commentary On The Leaked News Of Our Supreme Court Overturning Roe Vs. Wade (& How I Did Abortions Because I Believed I’d Be A Hypocrite If I Didn’t).

My interview for the prestigious Northwestern University OB/GYN residency was my first choice. I was informed very clearly that Northwestern’s OB/GYN program supports a woman’s decision to keep a pregnancy. Northwestern was not the right fit for me if I didn’t support reproductive rights for women. Harvard’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital was my second choice. I was also told the same thing. Both programs basically told me that if I didn’t want to have abortions, I should go to Georgetown, a Catholic school.

My fundamentalist Christian mother discovered that I accepted the Northwestern position and asked me if I intended to perform abortions. I answered yes. It was my strong belief system to support a woman’s right to decide whether she wants to continue a pregnancy for any reason. I also said that if I were to become an OB/GYN, it would be a hypocrite if the abortions I performed weren’t done by me.

My mother threatened to exile me from my family, disown me, and shun me. I will never forget the words my mother uttered at me: “I cannot possibly love an abortionist.”

I was afraid I would lose my mother’s love if I did the right thing. But I did it anyway.

My first abortion at Northwestern was a heartbreaking experience. It was clear that I was killing something with my heartbeat. This was also confusing for me, as I was called “The Squirrel Girl” in our local newspaper. I was the little girl who saved wild animals from harm and helped to nurse them back to health. Although I thought I was a supporter for life, I was actually about to end a life with a suction catheter in hand.

This was my first experience with cognitive dissonance. I felt that the parts of me that supported women’s rights were more important than the parts that thought they could be given life. It took me several months to stop crying during the abortions that I performed. This was because my heart was so touched and moved by the pain of the women who I helped through their difficult choices, that my conviction that I was doing something loving for them was stronger than my fear and grief over ending a potential life.

After performing over 100 abortions during my residency, I applied for a job at a group practice in San Diego. There were four women OB/GYNs and one male. They told me that they refer to abortions when I asked about their abortion policy. I was met with a raised eyebrow when they said, “We send them out to Planned Parenthood.”

I was confused. “Are all of you not pro-choice?” I was unsure if I could join a practice that had OB/GYNs who were.

They were all pro-choice, but they didn’t like to do actual abortions. It was shocking to me that they would do such a thing. It’s not something that anyone likes to do. I have never performed an abortion without feeling the tug in my heart. It never made me feel numb, no matter how many times it was done.

However, I had to have abortions because I believed that no one should be forced to become a mother or to carry a child to term. I also believed that the parents could give up their baby at any time.

I accepted the position and decided to perform all of my abortions for my practice. I did this not because I was thrilled to do so, but because I didn’t want any of our patients to feel that her doctors were abandoning or shameing her during her time of struggle. We didn’t tell anyone what we were doing. If a new patient called and asked us if we offered abortions, we would not answer. However, if a pregnant woman had an unplanned pregnancy, they were referred to me.

Some of my abortions were performed on teenage girls who forgot to use birth control and were remorseful. A few of my patients were victims of rape and incest because I was a specialist in pediatric gynecology. As I was a caregiver for Somali refugees at the Mexican/ California border and a few of these women were Muslim women, some of whom came to me secretly without their husbands’ consent, asking not to be forced to have a twelfth, thirteenth, or more children. I have terminated pregnancies twice in transgender women who didn’t consider themselves to be women.

My abortion patients were mostly middle-class white suburban housewives who had experienced some kind of birth control failure and couldn’t bear to think about starting over. Some of their children were already in college, while others were still in their 40s. Some of their children felt suicidal when they thought about having another child. They felt ashamed, humiliated, and completely selfish. They were reassured by me that they were not the only one in their group of relatively wealthy women who didn’t want another child. I assured them that the law protects you regardless of your reason for wanting to have another baby.

I was grateful for the kindness and support of these patients. They were treated with dignity and I tried my best to make the trauma less severe. Nearly all my patients wept, and I often cried along with them. I received more flowers and cards from women whose pregnancies were terminated than I did from those whose babies I gave birth to.

My mother threatened to withdraw her love and excommunicate me from my family when a Catholic newspaper in my area called me the “New Abortionist In Town”. It was a hollow threat, fortunately.

My mother could not throw me out like trash. Even though I chose to follow my own path and not hers, it was clear that she couldn’t. After years of being controlled by my mother in almost every area of my life, I reached the limit of what coercive control she would allow me to tolerate. I was not willing to give up my right as an independent human being to disagree with her.

My mother told me, “We will never talk about this again.” She broke her promise. She begged me to ask for mercy from a kind God if I would confess that I had sinned against God and the natural world. She refused to accept my offer and said, “You’re going deny your dying mom her last wish?” I replied, “Yes Mother.” Then I called my therapist, crying because I felt like such an awful daughter.

This is not a story that I share with many people. Every OB/GYN that I know would rather have a live baby than terminate it. Many people can say, “I’m prochoice” and vote for those words without having to do any work. Only OB/GYNs can actually take action and place a suction catheter in someone’s cervix.

Although I have never been pregnant or had an abortion, I consider myself fortunate to live in a country that supports women’s rights to choose. Parts of me stopped breathing when Politico reported that a draft of the majority decision of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito overturned Roe. Wade, 1973 Supreme Court decision that established access to abortion as an constitutional right, was leaked to the media.

Today’s Letters From An American features Heather Cox Richardson, historian. She writes, “Accordingly to Neal Katyal, a law professor and legal commentator, the draft appears genuine and shows the fact that in a preliminary voting, a majority court agreed to overturn Roe.v. Wade .” The position is hardline, stating that abortion can be criminalized in any state with no exceptions for rape or incest. Although this is still a draft, it could be changed before the final version is handed down. However, it has already provoked a backlash. In anticipation of protesters and counterprotesters, security set up barriers around the Supreme Court as soon as it reached Politico.

Parts of me feel scared and panicked for women in my country, including my 16-year-old daughter. I feel we are under attack and will not allow that to happen. I will leverage every bit of power, privilege, and platform I have to shout “Hell to The F*@k NO!” even though it would make my mother scream in her grave. Heather Cox Richardson stated today, “And so we are. A minority is now in control of the U.S. Supreme Court after a president received a small percentage of the popular vote. He then tried to overthrow our democracy and took away a constitutional right that had been protected for fifty-years. This attack on federal civil rights protection is not only for abortion but also all protections in place since World War II, such as the right to use birth control, marry who you like, and live in desegregated areas.

Democracy allows us to disagree on things and we can use our vote to reach consensus. We also get to decide what we want with a majority vote. This is the utopian vision that our country rarely has actually implemented.

I believe in democracy. If the majority of Americans think that this Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe Vs. Wade should be deemed good news, I will stand outvoted. A minority of our country is trying to destroy democracy, corrupt our government, stop us from voting for our own decisions, and hand over the country to a few wealthy, powerful, mostly white supremacist male Oligarchs who don’t care about the oppressed and marginalized people of the United States. This includes women BIPOC, immigrant, disabled, poor, and the disenfranchised. I believe you care about democracy, social justice, and reproductive rights.

Let’s discuss this. Be respectful. Although you can feel strong emotions and show them, we won’t allow you to attack me or any other person. We will ban you and delete your account to ensure the safety of this container. We must create safe and brave spaces where we can gather community discussion about these topics. This is where I hope to see it.

Lissa