Supporting Abortion from the Shadows

14 thoughts on Supporting Abortion from the Shadows

1. I know law enforcement has its limitations, but I wonder if it has shirked its responsibilities in this regard.

2. You make an important point, but as a clarification, one of the main points of the article is doctors working to integrate abortion care into OB/GYN and family practices in hospitals, to counter the separation you describe. So they are fighting against the ‘in the shadows’ element in at least one very practical way.

3. I agree with “It” above – I feel a little less like it’s specifically clandestine, and more like these physicians are trying to bring abortions into regular care. I think that this can/could significantly reduce stigma, if more people see an abortion as a procedure that one can have done at the ob/gyn or family doctor. I think that women did not all want last/real names used because they are trying to run an integrated practice and don’t want their entire practice targeted and compromised.

4. I agree with all of the commenters above, and with the OP.
   Something else jumped out at me, too, and hit me hard. The article profile a foundation, which provides funding for fellowships. The article quotes people connected as saying, effectively, that the foundation is able to work best when people don’t associate their name with “abortion.” And then the New York Times goes and blasts their name everywhere. I find this problematic. Yes, they did respect the anonymity of the people who requested it, but I find something DEEPLY problematic with the way the foundation’s concerns – which I find valid, in a depressing way – were brushed off. Will the foundation lose support? Access? Will those who support them lose the plausible deniability that is tragically needed in many cases? In publishing the good work that the foundation does, will the Times lead to a reduction in the amount of good work that the foundation can do?

5. Abortion is changing, though I think in some ways for the better. Most abortion providers in the last decades were older, gray-haired, rude, male gynecologists who viewed abortion as a source of money. Some treated women very poorly and we had to put up with it. While many such doctors are still out there, they are a dying breed. Most abortion providers I know, and who have trained me, are feminist women who believe that its part of healthcare. Its so refreshing to work in an all womem clinic where patients are respected, supported, empowered and informed. Most ob/gyn residents who go for family planning fellowships are women. I’m probably going to apply next year for the fellowship since abortion (especially second trimester abortion) and contraception are very important. The face of abortion is changing. Unfortunately, the total number of providers has fallen as a lot of ob/gyns don’t offer abortion care for many reasons. In some states midwives or nurse practioners will be (or are already) allowed to do simple 1st trimester d&c’s or medical abortions. Some non profits like IPAS and Abortion access project are trying to help the next generation of physicians become providers. In working with medical students, I’ve also helped many women develop an interest for the provision of abortion and to bring it more into the open.

6. My mum, who had me the year abortion became legal in the UK, said that while the level of violence never became as acute in the UK as in the US, there was definitely a perceived threat – which could have escalated into the level of terrorism in the US, but never did.

   What the abortion rights movement worked for in the UK was greater access – the legal right was technically limited (and still is) to “two doctors agree you should have an abortion” but practically speaking, that has come to abortion on demand – and on the NHS, for most women in the UK but Northern Ireland. So when abortion rights activists attacked abortion providers, they were attacking the local hospital – which local people who didn’t care about one way or the other, would care about as a service. So yes, I think integration is the way to go.

   But I have to say (greatly though I dislike her) that I think Margaret Thatcher as leader of the Conservatives and as Prime Minister had a great deal to do with ensuring, during the years she was in power (1975-1991), that the British right never went wholeheartedly anti-abortion: votes on abortion have always been a matter of conscience for MPs, but when the leader of your party/the prime minister says publicly that she plans to vote for keeping abortion available up to 24 weeks, that does kind of ensure that going madly anti-abortion isn’t a shiny career path. That is the key problem in the US, I think – for far too many politicians, being anti-abortion is the thing to say.

7. I’m glad there’s a movement to help secure reproductive freedom. From over the pond the whole situation all seems rather baffling. I’ve worked for the NHS here in England, and been a very frequent customer of theirs too. I’ve given advice on arranging abortions/finding NHS and private providers, all in a day’s work.

   The last stay I had in hospital was a week in a combined gyn/urology ward, and abortions were carried out multiple times a day. There were surgical cases, and medical ones too. The women were in safe, comfortable surroundings accompanied by their loved ones with no threat of death, or violence, or harrassment, or worries about the cost. They had access to a hospital full of doctors and nurses in case of complications, and at no point were any of them treated any differently than the other patients on the ward. That’s how it should be, again, all in a day’s work and safe, quick, and easy to obtain. It’s far from a perfect system, but it’s one that at least recognises that women aren’t too stupid to know what they’re doing, or too frivolous to assess the consequences, and doesn’t attempt to heap shame upon someone who’s already had to make a potentially life-altering decision.

   I would love my ‘sisters’ all over the world to have access to such a system. I’d love to see an end to U.S. Neo-con doublethink that hinders access to contraception and full sexual education, yet refuses to accept that their stance will lead to unwanted pregnancy, and obstructs access to abortion providers so that there’s no way out. Sex should be fun and loving, not riddled with anxiety and shame, and pregnancy should be a choice, not a punishment.

   Reproductive freedom and choice needs to be brought into the light, because ultimately it affects the entire society, not just individual women. The sooner that’s realised, then the sooner progress toward true freedom for women can happen.

8. Esteleth, regarding donor anonymity: I have known of a couple of instances (one at my alma mater and one at my synagogue) where a donation was “anonymous,” but everyone knew who the donors were. These sorts of things tend to be the types of “secrets” that are fairly widely known. I would also be very surprised if the Buffett foundation was adversely impacted by this article–Buffett has more money than god and is determined to give it all away. (He’s very well known for telling his children that they will not inherit much of his fortune). His own massive personal wealth is what makes the foundation tick.

   All this to say that I don’t disagree with your principled objection, but I do think the practical impact will be minimal.

9. I find it interesting that abortion is in the shadows even in countries, lik the Netherlands, where it is a non-issue legally and our pro-life groups have extremely little influence. Makes me wonder whether it is truly due to recent anti-abortion activism that abortion has to be forced back into the back alleys, or at least here, it always was that way, unlike the US.

10. It also comes from the fact that abortion has been stricken from the language of those who support abortion. After all, NARAL has decided is NARAL without being an acronym because heaven forfend that the A in NARAL stand for abortion. It does help that the our “supportive” policymakers frame it as a tragic act that we have to hold our noses to protect.

11. I’m a family medicine resident who hopes to provide abortion services along with all the other primary care services that are offered at a community clinic. While this article was an important one, it did a great disservice to abortion providers. The abortion provider community is very close-knit and is in constant communication. This article is extraordinarily scary for providers because it published providers’ names and pictures without their consent. They did not know what they were consenting to when they signed the contract. People are scared about their safety and the safety of their families. The previously anonymous foundation is also considering withdrawing their financial support.

    The irony is that New York Times Magazine and the author are trying highlight and promote the future of abortion providers but by not protecting people’s anonymity, it only scares more providers away from providing abortion.

12. @ thewonderseeker

    May I ask for clarification for what you mean when you wrote, “they did not know what they were consenting to when they signed the contract.”?

13. @Liz – not sure if this is what wonderseeker means, but I have heard tell that one of the doctors photographed at work basically had the photographer “sprung on her” and hadn’t agreed to it beforehand. And the amount of personal detail given about those remaining “anonymous” was apparently unexpected as well. I would guess that the people involved were slightly naive about what it would entail, and Emily Bazelon was doing a zealous job of journalisting, to the point of jeopardizing something she appears to care about. Perhaps she didn’t understand the stakes or the risk — but that seems really weird, given that she was writing a ten-page article about the stakes and the risk.

    So, I feel very WTF about it, and wondering how it could have happened quite the way it did. It started off as a great read gathering lots of important topics that I wanted to share with others, but I couldn’t bring myself to disseminate it after seeing all the naming and almost-naming she did.

14. To be fair, in some places it is incredibly difficult to be “out” as a pro-choice activist. I live in Ireland and am involved in pro-choice activism. Friends of mine have received death threats for speaking out about it and photos of our group have appeared on far-right message boards alongside anti-racism activist groups as we are “destroying Ireland” apparently. Luckily for us, the far-right in Ireland is a mess and consists of mainly ill-informed teenage boys blogging from their bedrooms. What is more worrying though, are the tactics of harassment and manipulation carried out by anti-choice groups who set up rogue pregnancy counselling clinics where they lie to women seeking help to get an abortion outside of the state. It’s not so long since the same people that run these clinics used to break up meetings of pro-choice activists using hurleys sticks (kind of similar to hockey sticks I suppose). The level of stigma and shame attached to abortion in Ireland makes it really difficult for anyone to campaign on the issue, let alone medical providers – for some it can spell the end of a career.

    I don’t like it, but in my book, quiet work is better than no work at all.

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