The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
Why I Provide Abortions
IN
public health, you go where the crisis is. If there is an outbreak and
you have the ability to relieve suffering, you rush to the site of the
need. This is why, a year and a half ago, I returned to my hometown,
Birmingham, Ala., to provide abortions.
For
the previous two years, I had been flying to the South from Chicago to
provide care to women whose access to abortion services was limited to a
few clinics, despite the fact that abortions are deemed legal by the
Supreme Court. These women face harsh life circumstances and incessant
hostility, merely for wanting to exercise their rights.
My
decision to provide abortions represented a change of heart on my part.
I had been working for 12 years as an obstetrician and gynecologist,
and had never performed abortions because I felt they were morally
wrong. But I grew increasingly uncomfortable turning away women who
needed help.
Ultimately,
reading a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged me
to a deeper spiritual understanding. I was moved by his discussion of
the quality of the good Samaritan and of what made the Samaritan “good.”
The Samaritan reversed the question of concern, to care more about the
well-being of the person needing help than about what might happen to
him for stopping to give help. I realized that if I were to show
compassion, I would have to act on behalf of those women. My concern
about women who lacked access to abortion became more important to me
than worrying about what might happen to me for providing the services.
I
stopped doing obstetrics in 2009 to provide abortion full time for
women who needed help. Invariably I field questions regarding my
decision, with the most often asked being: Why? The short answer is:
Because I can. And: Because if I don’t, who will?
The
South has become one of the centers of the abortion crisis. While women
across the country are losing the ability to make private health care
decisions because states have passed hundreds of laws chipping away at
that right, the South is the most restrictive.
Last year, it took a court ruling to prevent the closure of the last Mississippi abortion clinic; something similar occurred
recently in Alabama. Last week, the Supreme Court announced that it
would hear a case out of Texas, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, that would
address the many clinic closings in that state because of restrictive
laws. The outcome will affect not only Texas but also any state where
these restrictive laws have been passed, including Mississippi, where I
also provide abortions at that last clinic. If the Supreme Court upholds
the Texas law that most notably mandates that abortion providers obtain
medically unnecessary hospital admitting privileges, Mississippi could
become the first state with no abortion clinic.
A
majority of pregnancies in the South are unintended. More than a
quarter end in abortion. The rest are more likely than pregnancies that
are chosen to lead to low birth weights and other poor outcomes. In some
areas of Mississippi, the rate of death for black pregnant women mirrors that of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The deaths are a function of the bad health status of poor minorities.
CLINICAS DE ABORTO EN VENEZUELA son ilegales.
