In a special report of the December 1989 American Medical News, Delia O’Hara rightly noted: ‘Much is written concerning abortion; little of it is about the physicians faced with the decision of whether to do this procedure.’ In 43 years of legal abortion, feminist and legal progressive narratives have dominated analysis of American abortion providers. This paper argues that the 1973 Supreme Court Roe V. Wade ruling, which declared state laws banning abortion unconstitutional, was of little consequence to the emotional burden of abortion providers; internal conflicts regarding the lives of women and fetuses and ambivalence towards the act of the procedure itself, have endured. While Roe made abortion legally permissible, abortion providers
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But you do know that there’s a termination and … saying that you’re not terminating life. It is life. It’s going to be a life… A fetus cannot support itself on its own, but it’s going to become a human being sometime … You’re weighing the goodness of saving a woman’s life, who you know if she doesn’t get an abortion, is going to go to get an illegal abortion.
Dr. Tamis describes ‘the relationship of a woman having an abortion and helping her’ as important ‘because you know you’re saving the life of that living patient.’ However, when reflecting on his legal abortion provision, Dr. Tamis stated:
It’s not an enjoyable thing to do. It’s a negative thing. I shouldn’t say negative, it’s partially negative because there is a fetus that’s not going to survive and be a part of the world here.
In a 1990 New York Times article, an anonymous provider stated that ‘she had to prepare herself emotionally each time’ and claimed to ‘have sleepless nights before a scheduled abortion.’ The physician stated that ‘she lost control only once’ during an abortion ‘on a 30-year-old doctor after she herself had just had a miscarriage’ and ‘had been trying for seven years to become pregnant.’ In her 2007 memoir, Dr. Susan Wicklund …show more content…
I performed an uncomplicated D&E procedure… went through the task of reassembling the fetal parts in the metal tray. It is an odd ritual that abortion providers perform – required as a clinical safety measure ... – but it also permits us in an odd way to pay respect to the fetus … even as we simultaneously have complete disregard for it. Then I rushed upstairs to take overnight call on labour and delivery. The first patient that came in was prematurely delivering at 23– 24 weeks… Later... I watched the neonate on the ventilator. I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother’s uterus – but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and
But you do know that there’s a termination and … saying that you’re not terminating life. It is life. It’s going to be a life… A fetus cannot support itself on its own, but it’s going to become a human being sometime … You’re weighing the goodness of saving a woman’s life, who you know if she doesn’t get an abortion, is going to go to get an illegal abortion.
Dr. Tamis describes ‘the relationship of a woman having an abortion and helping her’ as important ‘because you know you’re saving the life of that living patient.’ However, when reflecting on his legal abortion provision, Dr. Tamis stated:
It’s not an enjoyable thing to do. It’s a negative thing. I shouldn’t say negative, it’s partially negative because there is a fetus that’s not going to survive and be a part of the world here.
In a 1990 New York Times article, an anonymous provider stated that ‘she had to prepare herself emotionally each time’ and claimed to ‘have sleepless nights before a scheduled abortion.’ The physician stated that ‘she lost control only once’ during an abortion ‘on a 30-year-old doctor after she herself had just had a miscarriage’ and ‘had been trying for seven years to become pregnant.’ In her 2007 memoir, Dr. Susan Wicklund …show more content…
I performed an uncomplicated D&E procedure… went through the task of reassembling the fetal parts in the metal tray. It is an odd ritual that abortion providers perform – required as a clinical safety measure ... – but it also permits us in an odd way to pay respect to the fetus … even as we simultaneously have complete disregard for it. Then I rushed upstairs to take overnight call on labour and delivery. The first patient that came in was prematurely delivering at 23– 24 weeks… Later... I watched the neonate on the ventilator. I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother’s uterus – but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and