Monthly Archives: May 2022

The More Things Change

December 13, 1977
My few days at the abortion clinic. The doctor is an OB/GYN who has also been doing abortions for 5 years. The office is attractive and comfortable. No one has ever been turned away for financial reasons. They will do abortions up to 14 weeks; after that they will refer the woman to someone who will do it later than that.

My first day; the receptionist gets a call at 8:30am. “Yes, Ma’am, I’m glad your mother did not have an abortion and I’m glad my mother didn’t either…No, we are not influenced by Communists. We don’t want to have anything to do with Communists…No, anyone who gets an abortion wants one. We don’t force people to have them.”

Every woman is personally counselled before the procedure. The woman is informed of the alternatives (having it and keeping it or giving it up for adoption, or having the abortion). The woman is asked why she wants it and is asked to sign a consent form. The procedure is explained in detail: the lab work (blood pressure, HCT (hematocrit); Rh typing and urinalysis); the actual abortion and the post session.

The woman is told what may happen as far as cramping: what to watch for; who to call if she has any questions. (Don’t go to the local Catholic hospital emergency room; women who have get pretty bad treatment.)

The first woman I go through with is young (about 20), unmarried, with her father. She is cool, a little afraid but very realistic. Everything goes OK with no problems. We talk before and after. She wants an apartment and is ready to leave home. Her father is surprisingly calm and is glad it isn’t “like the butcher shop years ago, f’ Chrissake!” We talk about Rhogam (she is Rh-negative), other methods of birth control, and so on.

The women are of all ages: young, middle aged, married with kids, single, divorced. Rich, middle class and poor. The reasons: “I’m not ready to start a family.” “I have kids and I’m getting too old.” “I can’t take being pregnant again.”  How they got pregnant also varies: rhythm that didn’t work; a busted rubber; foam and no rubber; forgot the diaphragm; just got careless.

Some want to have kids later and feel it is the wrong time to start families. Some are from small towns, some from the big city. Catholic, Protestant, other.

Many of them are resentful of the Illinois legislature. Some think the representatives (mostly men) ought to try being pregnant. Most feel the option ought to be available. Everyone is glad to get it over with and swear they will never take chances again.

One woman today expressed frustration and anger at her husband, and at men in general who think birth control is always the woman’s responsibility. I’ve heard the reasons she says her husband gives and can’t believe people are still really like that. I feel for her because she is in a rotten position and needs some support. I listen and agree with a lot of what she says; she apologizes unnecessarily for “offending me.”

Next week I’m supposed to do the counseling myself (with an experienced counselor watching). This afternoon I will spend all night in labor and delivery. Strange world.

I wrote that almost forty-five years ago during my third year of medical school and a month shy of Roe v. Wade’s fifth anniversary. This year’s may be Roe’s last.

The physician, Dr. Richard Ragsdale, was a kind and compassionate man whose face resembled Lee Marvin. He would gently explain to the patient what would happen and always gave her the option of backing out. He would close his eyes when doing a bimanual pelvic exam, as if he was trying to mentally visualize the uterus. When the procedure was over, he would help her sit up, remind her of what to expect that was normal or concerning, and ask if she had any questions.

Then, as now, providing abortions wasn’t easy. Dr. Ragsdale’s clinic was firebombed. He was forced to do pregnancy terminations in a local hospital after the Illinois legislature adopted licensing regulations for outpatient clinics that were impossible to meet. Dr. Ragsdale sued the State in 1985 (Ragsdale v. Turnock, 625 F. Supp. 1212 (1985)). The Seventh District U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the Illinois regulations unconstitutional and the case continued to the Supreme Court but was settled in 1989. Dr. Ragsdale died in 2004.

I believe a few inconvenient and irrefutable facts:

First, and most important, women aren’t capable of inseminating themselves. The single requirement for an unwanted pregnancy is a willing dick with viable sperm. No politician has introduced legislation regulating accidental fatherhood, but maybe they should.

Second, preventing unwanted pregnancies can minimize the need for abortions but that requires, among other things, affordable and easily available contraception. GoodRx.com provides cheap oral contraceptives and Depo-Provera online. An IUD can run $500-$1300 but can last up to 12 years. The Colorado Family Planning Initiative provided long acting reversible contraception to low income women, cutting teen birth and abortion rates in half. Condoms cost about a buck each, less if bought in a box of 12 or more, but they won’t work if they are stuck in a wallet.

Notice I said minimize, not eliminate. Any given pregnancy has a 10%-20% chance of ending in a miscarriage, also called a “spontaneous abortion.” Oklahoma wants to criminalize abortion “from the moment of conception,” which presumably would make inserting an IUD a felony. The State has also convicted a Native America woman of manslaughter for miscarrying her 4-month pregnancy. Texas’ draconian antiabortion law would potentially consider surgical or medical treatment of miscarriages a crime, equivalent to a voluntary abortion.  So much for “small government.”

Sometimes a pregnancy implants somewhere outside the uterus and this “ectopic” pregnancy is life-threatening. The choice is removing the errant pregnancy or letting the woman die when the tube ruptures. When I was a resident we found a live fetus the size of a rice grain in a gestational sac hanging out the end of the Fallopian tube and no, we could not just move it to the uterus. Conservative thinking would potentially consider this an abortion.

Every birth control method, even permanent sterilization, has an inherent failure rate. Several years ago I saw a 42-year-old woman in a rural hospital’s Emergency Department complaining of a week of bleeding and abdominal pain. She’d had her tubes tied thirteen years previously but never thought she might be pregnant, but she had a positive pregnancy test. I found 1,300cc of blood in her abdomen from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

Preventing unwanted pregnancies also requires adequate sex education and the political will to ensure it happens. Countries with comprehensive sex education have far lower teen pregnancy rates than the United States. Determined teenagers will engage in sexual activity, regardless of adult pearl-clutching and sanctimonious bullshit, so get over it.

Third, women with money will always be able to get a safe abortion, regardless of state restrictions or their personal religious affiliations and convictions. So will the pregnant mistresses of pro-life politicians who have a sliding scale of morality.

Finally, I don’t want someone telling me what to do, so no one should be telling any woman what to do!

“Since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman, and our game from a woman. I wonder why we take from women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think it’s time we killed for our women, be real to our women, try to heal our women, ‘cus if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies, who make the babies. And since a man can’t make one he has no right to tell a women when and where to create one.”
? Tupac Shakur

Danni and Sarah

(I first wrote this 25 years ago. Perspective changes with time.)

I worked for a staff model HMO for nine years. Despite being a small cog in a sizeable organization, our Ob/Gyn department was like a second family to most of us. We knew about most of each other’s spouses (or ex-husbands). We shared our young kids’ accomplishments, antics and disappointments. We celebrated birthdays, expressed our condolences at the passing of elderly parents, and grieved together when a beloved young mother-to-be died in car crash. We had monthly department meetings at local restaurants after office hours, instead of trying to cram an agenda into a lunch hour.

Danni was the RN OB Intake Coordinator for our group. She was a gregarious soul with a kind heart and a good sense of humor.  She spent an hour with each new mother-to-be at their first OB visit, talking about what to expect during pregnancy, what to do (eat healthy, wear a seatbelt and keep your appointments) what not to do (smoke, drink, anything blatantly stupid or dangerous). She was usually smiling, even when one of her appointments sorely tried her patience.

If she was having a particularly stressful day I would go to her office and wrap my arms around her. She said I gave great hugs; this was back when it wouldn’t trigger a visit from HR. I remember her colorful cable-knit sweaters under her lab coat and the warmth of her cheek against mine as she hugged me back, providing a brief respite from the day’s aggravations. Sort of like Mom telling you not to worry, that everything would be alright.

Danni suffered unrelenting physical pain from a tragic injury more than a decade earlier. We all knew about it, but to hear her talk it was more of an aggravation, something she’d learned to live with. Or maybe it was to deflect from the emotional torment she carried and of which only a few were aware.

I left the HMO in 1994; Corporate dissolved the staff model a few years later because “you cost us too much money.” Everyone found other jobs in town; Danni got a position with a local clinic. Our family had been torn asunder; we drifted apart and some connections withered from neglect.

I wandered for a couple of years, working in two different practices and a couple of locum tenens jobs before being hired to set up a practice in a small Southwestern town. I’d wanted to leave the long, gloomy Midwestern winters I’d endured for three decades and was trying to get out from under crushing but self-inflicted debt. (It hadn’t occurred to me that I was abandoning my kids as well, something I would later regret.)

In February, five months into the new practice, I flew Danni and Elizabeth, another former staff member, out to help train my nurse and receptionist. My new staff had no experience with an obstetrical practice, and I was used to someone else handling patient education. In retrospect, my support staff may not have been receptive to the intrusion but I needed the expertise.

Danni promised to send me forms and other information when she returned home. I called her several weeks later since I hadn’t received anything. She seemed distracted and vague but assured me she would “get around to it when I have time.” I should have suspected something was wrong. That was the last time I heard her voice.
One evening she sent her daughter to spend the night with the neighbor next door.
And ended her pain forever.

*           *           *

Linda, a nurse practitioner I worked with, called me early the next morning, sobbing.
“Danni is dead!”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.  She had her daughter Katie stay at her friend’s house last night. She found Dani when she came home to get ready for school.  I don’t know why, but they found a note.” 

She continued to cry.
“I remember she was suicidal when she left the clinic.  I remember telling you she could never do that to Katy and you told me ‘Don’t bet on it.’  I don’t understand.”
“I do,” I replied.  “I understand all too well.”

I talked with Peg later that day and told her what had happened.
“How are you handling all this?”
“As well as I can.”
“You know, I had a dream about you last week and I was afraid to tell you about it.  You and I were talking and you told me you were going to kill yourself in the same tone you are using now.   When I reminded you that you’d promised to keep going, you looked at me and said, ‘I was telling you what you wanted to hear.’  I heard the resignation in your voice.  How could you do that??  Don’t you realize how much it would hurt everyone, including your kids???”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be around to know it.”

Over the next 2 days we talked about suicide; Peg was very angry.
“It’s so selfish!  I don’t understand how she could calmly take her own life and leave her child with no one. There is always something else you can do.”

But for someone who has fallen into the abyss, such platitudes ring hollow.  I know because I lived on the edge for almost 30 years and peered into the darkness many times.  There comes a point when there is no more hope; when one has reached one’s limit of coping and can go no further.  A point at which getting out of bed in the morning takes all the energy one has.  There is nothing tangible to keep one moving, to make one want to take one more breath.  Danni had reached her limit after years of constant physical pain and believing she had to go it alone.  For all the people who cared and loved her, she finally could not continue.

The love of other people isn’t enough for some of us, because we don’t feel it is genuine or that we deserve it.  On some level, I had long viewed that conditional “love” in the context of Billie Holiday’s song, God Bless the Child:

“Rich relations may give you
A crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But don’t take too much.”

Ironically, Nietzsche said, “The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”  I survived many of those dark nights and ultimately determined I didn’t want to jump into the void.

A couple of days later I got an e-mail from Liz.
“I got your message, thank you.
I feel numb.  I can’t believe it.  I will never understand. 
Please, David, never do this!!!!!!”

*           *           *

Sarah was a 17-year old-gangbanger and troubled youth. Her father had also been a gang member, but he had turned his life around and tried to steer kids away from drugs, alcohol and living on the edge. Age and a stark reminder of mortality is often enough to trigger such an epiphany in adults, but teenagers either think they are immortal, or doomed to a life that can never change, so why bother.

Sarah was drunk the night she and some friends were playing chicken on the Interstate highway that ran north of town. They would lie on the white line while traffic approached at Autobahn speed, then run to the shoulder at the last moment.  When Sarah’s turn came, she got up too late and was struck by a car.  The local newspaper called it “an unfortunate accident” but some who knew her said she’d been severely depressed.

I went to the visitation with a family who had a troubled, angry 15-year-old daughter. I learned that when she threatened to run away from home, Sarah had talked her out it.  “You don’t know how good you have it.  You don’t ever want to live on the street!”  Her friends and acquaintances, also “gangbangers,” appeared for the visitation, crying and holding on to each other for support.

I cried the tears I hadn’t been able to shed for Danni, and for those kids who felt they only had each other.   I cried wondering why it took death to arouse family and friends from their oblivious slumber. Twenty-five years later I know some aren’t receptive to being helped, no matter how sincere the efforts.

St. Mary’s Church was filled for the funeral.  The gang members had printed T-shirts with “Turtle” (her nickname) over the left breast, and a memorial on the back: “In loving memory of Sarah Jo, 1980-1997.”   During the eulogy Sarah’s cousin told the mourners, “If you love someone, tell them now.  You never know when it will be too late.”

The procession to the cemetery stretched for 2 miles.  After the priest finished, her friends released green and white balloons and sang for her.   I couldn’t hear what they were singing. Instead, I heard a radio in the background playing “Forever Young” and then “That’s What Friends Are For.”

Melissa, 8 years old, wrote her own goodbye:

I held my 13 year old son and told him I loved him, even though I chewed his butt incessantly and tried to make him walk the straight and narrow.  He blew it off, but deep inside I knew he understood and would always know that I loved him.  I’d like to think my dad would have done the same.

A parent’s worst nightmare is having to bury a child long before his or her time. 

A child’s worst nightmare is wondering what you did to make your parent commit suicide.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255

Turtle © Can Stock Photo / shalamov