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The Spirit of Abortions Silenced Legacy
introduces Dr. Smith
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| I'm the Spirit of Abortion's
Silenced Legacy. I'm your mother, your sister, your
daughter, and your granddaughter. |
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| I have existed since the
beginning of time. |
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| Embodied, entrusted, and
entrapped inside of me are the silenced screams
of millions of desperate women the world around
determined to control their destiny who lost their
lives to illegal abortion. |
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| I share their pain, their
fear, and their desperation. |
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| I held their hand as they
were forced to testify in a public trial against
a caring doctor who safely terminated a pregnancy
that they would have terminated someway somehow
no matter the risk to their life. |
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| I comforted them as their
medical confidentially was destroyed so their abortion
provider could be convicted. I shared the humiliation
they endured as their private sexual life was laid
open in the public square. |
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| I cried with them. I bled
with them. |
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| I cradled their maimed
bloodied bodies in my arms as they suffered and
died. |
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| Some because they sought
dark back alley opportunists - but most crumpled
on their own bathroom floor or in a hospital emergency
room having been desperate and determined enough
to self-abort - like Gerri - a beautiful mother
of two daughters who died in June of 1964 on a dirty
cold and impersonal motel room floor, alone, abandoned
by her boyfriend after their attempt to self-abort
went terribly wrong. |
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| I cradled her as she desperately
tried to stop the bleeding - I shook with the horrible
fear she felt - I became prostrate with the pain
she was enduring - I was overwhelmed by her realization
that she was dying. |
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| This is the legacy of
illegal abortion - having been too long silenced
- but no more will I be silent. No more will others
be silent. |
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| TURN TO DR SMITH - Introduction |
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| Before Roe vs. Wade, the
1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion,
hundreds of caring doctors across the country became
abortion providers like Dr. Smith. Before World
War II a number of abortion providers served women
for twenty, thirty, forty years or more completely
unimpeded by the law. In many communities their
name and address, as was Dr. Smith's, was well known
by both women who might need their services, police
and politicians who regarded their presence as a
public health asset. |
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| But after World War II
abortion providers, especially women like Dr. Smith,
presumed by law enforcement to be unskilled, untrained,
and unprotected in comparison to their male-counterparts,
were arrested, convicted, and sent to jail, even
when there was no evidence of a botched abortion.
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| Dr. Smith braved the many
perils of illegal abortion, just before World War
II and thereafter, performing this medical procedure
in secret and like some of her colleagues, endured
police raids, public trials, and went to jail again
and again but never wavered in her determination,
as did her colleagues, to provide safe abortion
services for thousands upon thousands of desperate
and determined women. AND thankfully, these skilled
and caring doctors never wavered in their belief
that what they were doing was right and moral. |
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| Dr. Smith is a true heroine.
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| Dr. Smith, like hundreds
of other good caring doctors across the country,
could not in good conscience stand-by and watch
determined and desperate women die from self-induced
abortions when they could safely terminate their
pregnancies for them, albeit it in secret and albeit
illegal. |
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| Listen to her story -
it's moving - it's heartbreaking - it's the reality
of illegal abortion. |
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(Dr. Smith performs her/his script - then
when Dr. Smith is finished - The Spirit of Abortion's Silenced
Legacy speaks again in Part 2.)
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