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Dr. Smith's Story
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| I don't think I ever believed
I would become an abortion provider. In the early
1960's I was a Dr. in the last stages of my hospital
training when I first encountered the horrible and
unspeakable aftermath of illegal abortion. Day in
and day out, I saw women in the emergency room of
my hospital that had gone to unbelievable lengths
to terminate their unintended and unwanted pregnancies.
They were the very young, the women nearing menopause,
the married, the unmarried, the wealthy, and the
poor all unique, all scared & all desperate. |
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| Whatever their reasons,
whatever their circumstances, they were determined.
The most difficult were the women who did very dangerous
things to themselves to terminate a pregnancy. The
women who attempted self-abortion were scared, very
scared. But they were more afraid of not
terminating their pregnancies - whatever ended up
happening - and no matter if their actions were
illegal. |
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| No doctor of conscience
could witness on a daily basis what I did and not
conclude |
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| that illegal abortion
is wrong and immoral. |
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| Many people, my own peers
even, have asked me what was the final straw, what
pushed me into becoming and abortion provider and
taking on all the personal risk and risk to my family.
If only they had been there on October 19, 1961.
I was 26. It was my first 24-hour day in the emergency
room and one I will never forget. |
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| I had been there for about
3 hours when a woman was brought into the ER - it
was a very busy day. Everyone running here and there.it
was a hot day. I helplessly watched in disbelief.
A woman had tried to abort her pregnancy at home.
She had gotten some hollow tubing into her cervix
and - and she had put turpentine down the tube into
her uterus. It - It had literally cooked the lining
of her uterus. She was in and out of consciousness,
in and out of screaming in horrible pain. Screams
I still hear. They took her to surgery right
away and they removed her uterus. I had never seen
anything like that - had never heard of anything
so brutal. |
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| My shift was nearly over
and I had convinced myself that I wouldn't see another
woman that day suffer from an illegal abortion,
but I was sadly mistaken. I was only 10 minutes
away from finishing my shift that day, when a doctor
visited Dr. Buckley, my supervising doctor. |
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| They talked quickly &
called me. We went outside with this other doctor
to deal with a trauma case. Nothing I had ever
seen, even under the most adverse conditions prepared
me for what I was about to see. It was beyond my experience.
In this doctor's car was a woman, almost unconscious
and bleeding profusely. When Dr. Buckley and I lifted
her onto the gurney, her dress pushed up above her
hips. I'll never forget what I saw. She had
a loop of bowel hanging out of her vagina. It
was wrapped in newspaper. |
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| The doctor who had brought
her in had perforated her uterus while he was doing
the abortion; he had pulled out the bowel with his
instrument. She had over 30 inches of bowel hanging
out of her vagina. To this day I don't know
how I helped Dr. Buckley get her into surgery. Dr.
Buckley did a bowel resection; he pulled the dirty
bowel out of the uterus and vagina. We worked
to save her but our efforts were unsuccessful.
I stayed with her body for an hour afterward, unable
to comprehend so much tragedy in one night. |
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| After abortion was made
legal, I experienced the hypocrisy with anti-abortion
protesters. Over the years since the legalization
of abortion, both my house and my clinic have been
under siege by anti-abortion extremists. They harass
me, my family, my medical staff, and my patients.
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| Three years ago I had
a woman who had been harassing me at my clinic as
well as my home for years, come into my clinic,
disguised, because she needed an abortion. She was
48 and thought she was in menopause. Despite what
she yelled outside my clinic and home about me,
she new she would receive safe medical care -
a safe termination of her pregnancy and she knew
we would keep her secret. |
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| She told me she could
not go through a 7th pregnancy. She cried when she
told me her youngest child was in college. She cried
when she said she could not carry the baby to term
and give it up for adoption. She said she'd always
encouraged, even begged other women to consider
adoption, but now, this was her and her child and
even if her child were to be placed with a loving
family, she was terrified that her child would never
understand or forgive her for giving him or her
away and might even suffer irreparable emotional
scars over being given away. She admitted those
were consequences of adoption that she had never
before thought about. |
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| She cried when she said
she could not tell her husband because he would
force her to have the baby. She had thought long
and hard over this choice, which is why, she was
about 18 weeks when she came to see me. I felt for
her, |
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| as I would have for any
woman. How could I not?? Reality clashed
with her idealism and she realized that for her
to follow her anti-abortion beliefs in this situation
would not have been in her best interest and in
the best interest of the potential life she carried.
I did her abortion. |
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| After that she came out
to protest me only when her husband insisted & she
appeared to be less vocal than before. We both
understood her situation. |
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| We are again in a tenuous
situation. If abortion becomes illegal again, there
will be many consequences. Realize that women of
influence and means, even those who claim to be
anti-abortion - will - as they did in the days before
Roe vs. Wade - get safe - albeit illegal abortions.
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| The young teenage girls
and poor women will be left to self-abort, or secure
unsafe, illegal abortions. That inequality isn't
right or moral. |
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| As a Doctor of Conscience,
I cannot go back. I cannot face those women dying,
one after another. I think of all the women's lives
I saved.but all the women who senselessly lost their
lives to illegal abortion haunt me. We are moving
ever so close to losing the few rights we have.
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We cannot be silent anymore.
We must take to the streets and be heard.
I cannot do this alone.
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