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ILLUSTRATION BY JORDIN ISIP |
as a family practice physician, you also bring babies into the world and help patients who are having difficulty getting pregnant. Is it difficult psychologically to play both roles? Well, you always see these tremendous ironies -- kids 14 or 15 who get pregnant at the drop of a hat and and don't want to be and other people who desperately want to be pregnant and are doing every kind of high technology thing to get pregnant and still can't. And sometimes you're delivering babies into situations where you know there will be "less than adequate parenting." Of course, I have my own personal feelings about them, but as a physician I think my role is to try to support a woman to make the best decision for her at that point in time. If she decides to carry a pregnancy, I try to support her in that and try to hook her up with the services she needs in order to be the best parent she can be. If she decides to have a termination, my role is to deliver that in a high-quality environment. When the American Medical Association endorsed the recent ban on "partial birth" abortions, it was the first time the AMA took a stand on abortion, even going against the recommendation of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which opposed the ban. It seemed to open the way for Congress to intrude in other medical decisions. I believe that this should not be a legislative issue. I do not believe that health-care issues are legislative issues. I think, for example, that Bill Clinton coming out and saying that women should have mammograms at a certain age is ridiculous. Frankly, the only reason he chose breast cancer is because it's a big, political, physical illness, and because of his personal experience with his mother's death. It's all based on emotion and politics, not science. Neither Congress nor Bill Clinton have the information to make these kinds of decisions. Even though some "partial birth" abortions are performed before the fetus is viable, it seemed much more difficult for the public to deal psychologically with the nature of the procedure. You know, they're not pleasant procedures to describe or to hear, but frankly, a lot of what we do to people in medicine is not pleasant. When you see CPR on TV, for example, it looks like everybody survives and it's really an easy procedure. But in fact, its very violent. People's ribs and breastbones get broken and there's blood and body fluids all over the place and tubes stuck in all kinds of orifices. Much of what we do can look violent and aggressive. Abortions done late in a pregnancy are much harder on the woman as well, but the majority of late-term abortions are for medical reasons. Would you be comfortable doing late-term abortions? I really feel comfortable doing procedures that are 12 weeks and under. Even between nine and 12 weeks there's a big jump in development, and from 12 to 16 there's another big jump. If I felt that the availability of late-term abortions was resting on my shoulders, I might have to rethink it. But emotionally, I would prefer not to do them. Have you referred women for them? I have referred women in the 20- to 21-week range who've had amnios that show significant congenital problems. Nobody has asked me for a referral for anything less serious than that. Some people talk about the "moral value" of the fetus becoming more complex as it develops and edges closer to birth. Do you think there are any circumstances where the woman's decision should not be considered paramount? My feeling is that if a fetus is viable outside of a mother's body at the point when she makes her decision, then an effort should be made for that infant to be born and survive and not be cared for by the mother, if she doesn't want the child. The mother is going to have to go through a procedure one way or the other in order to deliver this baby from her body, and I think then the fetus' life at that point is a separate life. Do you think the pro-choice side was weakened in the latest debate by sticking to its traditional focus on the woman? Yes, I think we have to really face the issue of what we're doing and embrace it in all it's difficulty in order to be able to defend it. For years, because I knew abortion was available to my patients, I didn't really have to deal with it. I wasn't worrying about it for myself; I was trying to get pregnant. But having started to do these procedures again really forced me to think about what I am doing and what we are asking people to accept. And my experience as a parent made me understand the whole complexity of it much more than when I was supporting it before I had children. I think people who are pro-choice have to do that in order to be believable. Have you worked with any men who do abortions? Most of the providers in our area are men. One of the providers that I respect a lot is an older guy, in his 70s, who has been around long enough to have cleaned up after women who tried to abort themselves or who had back room abortions. He is just a staunch believer in abortion, having seen all those. People forget those times, because it's been legal for a long time, but he's really seen it all. He's raised five daughters and he still does this because he believes so strongly in it. On the other hand, he's really an old school kind of ob-gyn in that he always tells women, "Oh, I'm not hurting you, this isn't pain you're feeling" -- things that I would never dream of saying to a woman. Women are often very appreciative of having a woman there to do the procedure. Would you have an abortion now? After I had two children, I went back and forth about having a third child. My husband and I tried and weren't able to and then we made a decision not to have a third child and then I got pregnant. So it was actually a big shock. My husband was ambivalent about having a third child and we talked about terminating the pregnancy, but I realized that at that time in my life, I could not make a decision to have an abortion. I did at a previous time in my life, but I couldn't any longer, at that moment in my life. I saw that it would be an inconvenience, but it would not be the make or break issue in my life. I knew that my husband could accommodate it. I knew that our financial situation could accommodate it. And at that point, I felt like this is a situation where I have to make room for this child in my life.
But that doesn't change my feeling that abortion must be
available for women as a choice. I think that women need to think
about themselves and their own bodies and whether they can go through that
experience, but they also need to think about the health and balance of
their whole family. It's really destructive to bring a child into the world
that is going to unbalance a family and maybe lead to the breakup of a
family by adding more stress, emotionally and financially. You really
have to think of the well-being of the people who are here in the world at
this time.
Should abortion be more than a woman's choice? Talk it over in Table Talk. |