The Importance of Abortion Doctors

I received this profile of aspiring abortion doctors a week ago, and haven’t had time to write about it until now. It’s a really great piece, filled with a lot of sad facts about how few doctors are going into the profession, how few medical schools train students to perform abortions and how difficult it is for some women to get access to abortion providers. It also discusses what drives these young doctors to go into such an embattled profession.

Listening to news of the Supreme Court’s ruling, third-year medical student Lysie Cirona, 24, found herself shouting at her radio in frustration. Then she took a hard look at her career plans. She had always been interested in psychiatry, but now she envisioned herself flying to North Dakota or Nebraska a few times a month to perform abortions. “It wasn’t on my radar screen” a year ago, Cirona said, but her priorities have changed as she’s learned more about the history and current state of abortion rights. Cirona has taken to badgering her professors to include information about abortion in their lectures. She attended workshops on how to respond effectively to anti-abortion protesters.

Some days, she still wants to be a psychiatrist. Other days, she thinks of the women who drive 10 hours to reach the nearest abortion clinic. “This is what I’m going to do,” she tells herself.

. . .

Lederer does not know how she will handle such emotion; the closest she’s come to performing an abortion was suctioning the seeds out of a papaya to learn a first-trimester technique. She may, in the end, restrict her practice to early abortions. But that’s not an easy solution to accept. She can’t see how she could ever justify taking one woman as a patient while turning away another because her pregnancy is a few weeks more advanced.

She also knows that the few doctors who perform late second- and third-trimester abortions are mostly in their 60s or 70s. “Who’s going to do this when they leave? Someone has to,” Lederer said. “I feel in my heart of hearts that it’s the right thing to do.”

I imagine that this would have to be a really terrifying decision. You would have to deal with the possibility of family and friends disowning you. You would also face harassment and physical threats pretty much every day of your working life. You would also have to deal with emotional women, many of whom may be at the most difficult point in their lives. It can’t be an easy thing at all.

I wanted to write about this article both to praise the young doctors who are choosing to perform abortions. It is a largely thankless task, and so I would like to be someone who thanks them. I also wanted to highlight what a dire situation we are in. This country is already stretched incredibly thin when it comes to abortion providers. Many of them are now beginning to retire. Some are being run out of the profession through increasing regulations. And for understandable reasons, few young doctors are choosing to take their place.

I have highlighted here before that there is no choice without the financial ability to access the abortion that you want or need. I would like to highlight now that there is no choice without someone who is willing to help you follow through. We have more cosmetic surgeons in this country, willing to rip women’s bodies apart for huge sums of money. But we don’t have the physicians necessary to help women make far more important medical choices.

And again, this shortage is not going to affect middle-class white women who can take the time off work or get on a plane to get her abortion. It is going to affect predominantly low-income women and women of color, just like most of these “small” choices and decisions that chip away at reproductive freedoms. These situations are only “small” set-backs if you’re not the woman who is forced to carry a pregnancy that she does not want to term.