This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor (6 page)

As the weeks passed, what grew more powerful in me was the fundamental commitment to patients and to the cause of keeping reproductive rights safe and legal. I was free of the conservative, oppressive bosses who lived in denial and demanded allegiance to the financial bottom line over full treatment. Free of edicts to spend no more than ten minutes with a teenager experiencing her first pelvic exam and wanting birth control advice.

“Give them a Pap, hand them birth control pills, and move on,” I’d been instructed in Grantsburg. Now I was free of off-site administrators with no community knowledge telling me to stop seeing “welfare patients” because they didn’t bring in any money. More to the point, I was finally free of secretive, furtive abortions.

Work was invigorating and gratifying, but there was a price to pay. My schedule was exhausting. And it played havoc with my family life. I felt as if I were constantly in a state of jet lag, rotating between airports and clinics and vehicles.

“Sue,” Randy said one weekend. “It’s your mom’s birthday next week. Let’s find a day to go see your folks. Your dad isn’t doing so well, and Sonja always loves seeing them.”

“I know,” I said, “but tomorrow I fly to Appleton and don’t get back until late Tuesday. Wednesday I drive to Duluth and won’t be home until late.”

“What about Thursday night?” he asked.

“Nope. I go to Milwaukee this week, so I fly out Thursday morning and don’t get back until Friday night, and I’ve agreed to work on Saturday in St. Paul.”

“Sunday?”

“Please, I need one day at home,” I said. “You and Sonja go if you want, but I have to have one day staying put.”

If Randy was disappointed, he hid it well. He was totally supportive of my work and the choices I’d made, but I know there were many times he had to swallow hard and walk away. Sonja had her own busy schedule, full of swim team practices and homework and friends, but she missed the trips to see family.

My professional life was hitting sonic speed, heady and rewarding, but I was suffering from tunnel vision.

Part of my work preoccupation came from the fact that I still had so much to learn. One of the counselors in Appleton was a clinic veteran named Dottie. She taught me valuable lessons about how to talk with patients and how to really hear what they are saying. Dottie always made it clear that we did abortions for the woman, not for her partner or husband or mother. For the woman. It was her choice, and she needed to completely own that. Dottie taught me that no matter how good the counseling was before the abortion, there would be times when issues wouldn’t come to the surface until the woman was actually undressed and facing the beginning of the procedure. I learned to ask every patient if she was absolutely sure of her decision.

“Is anyone pushing you or telling you that you have to do this?” I’d ask.

Any hesitation whatsoever and I stopped and asked her to get dressed again, and we talked more. It wasn’t uncommon for me to send her away to reconsider her options. My biggest fear has always been to do an abortion on someone who will later come to regret it.

In the early years, when issues of this nature came up, the staff and administration always allowed the time and resources to support a woman’s choice and to help her reach a point of resolution. The patient took first priority. That supportive, nurturing environment within the clinic made it possible for me to endure the increasing efforts of the anti-abortion zealots and to overcome the hate they directed at me.

By the summer of 1990 the protestors had figured out that I was one of the doctors. When I approached a clinic entrance, tried to get out of an airport, or walked from my car to a clinic entrance, they went into a frenzy.

“Murderer!” they screamed. “Baby killer!”

I dreaded seeing them—every time. How could they hold up a Bible while screaming through clenched teeth? When in a public place and being singled out, I cringed at the looks people gave me. I hated the thought that anyone witnessing this spectacle would believe I actually
did
kill babies. My stomach would knot and churn.

Sometimes I was close enough to see the hateful, twisted facial expressions of the protesters. It was horrifying. Their voices were shrill and loud and unstoppable. I was engulfed in a tornado of frenzied emotion, out of control and very dangerous. I fought the urge to panic, to flee, but I never reacted outwardly, never responded to their taunts, never made eye contact. When they tried to block my way, I’d shove past, hurry on.

“Baby killer! Their blood is on your hands, Susan!”

Entering a clinic, I would often stop to look back and see how the patients were faring. Many times clinic escorts were available to help the patients get through the protesters, but not always. Without the escorts present, and sometimes even when they were, protesters would rush at a patient on the sidewalk, surrounding her and shouting awful rhetoric. They reminded me of a pack of wolves. You could see their frustration when a woman refused to stop and talk to them, but pushed her way into the clinic instead.

The protestors became more and more organized and sophisticated. They got better at deciphering my helter-skelter schedule, knew when to expect me at various clinics, called ahead to their collaborators when I left one airport for another. They followed me in cars and communicated by walkie-talkie and cell phone. I felt as if I were in a spy movie, always watching my rearview mirror, looking for the enemy’s face in the crowds.

Sometimes I’d leave in the dead of night and drive five hours rather than face the airport scene. I never checked baggage. The thought of waiting at a baggage turnstile surrounded by antis was too much.

At this point, my schedule required daily flights or drives of two hundred miles or more. At least three nights a week I was in a motel room. Most weeks, Sunday was my only day off. Trying to stay one step ahead of the protesters became a game of nerves.

Within a year of my first visit to the Milwaukee clinic, the protesters were no longer simply circling the entrance and shouting their insults. They had taken to physical blockades, locking themselves together and forming a human barrier. I routinely had to wait outside the building for the police to come, wait while they methodically arrested and removed each person so I could get into the door. It was either that or break through myself—
physically
break through.

Some days the antis were sitting on the ground blocking the door, and the clinic staff would push them out of the way by forcing the door open. I would climb over their bodies, actually step right on these people, to get in.

In several towns, the protesters who were arrested suffered no consequences. The Milwaukee city attorney refused to prosecute them, for example, which meant that they’d have a brief ride down to the police station, be released within minutes, and be back in front of the clinic later the same day. Some were arrested more than a hundred times in one year and never served time or paid a fine.

It became necessary to vary my routine and even the means by which I came and went from the clinic in Milwaukee. There was a back door to the clinic, rarely used because of the poorly maintained alley. I was given the key, however, and on occasion would enter through it. I typically arrived in a taxi from the airport and would let staff know my approximate arrival time. They would try to watch for me.

I had also begun writing in a journal on a regular basis in order to process some of the insanity. I would write on airplanes, in motel rooms, in the clinics while waiting for the day to begin, and at home sitting up late at night, when images and stories filled my head, preventing the sleep I was so in need of.

 

Journal Entry, August 1990:

The protesters became enough of a danger and daily hassle that friends and staff suggested I consider using disguises. It seemed like a possible solution, and at least a way of avoiding some of the direct confrontations. I began collecting clothes and hats and scarves completely out of character for me. I practiced making myself up and tried to change my mannerisms like an actress assuming different characters.

I made friends with a man who often flew on the same commuter flight as I did to Appleton every Tuesday. Sometimes we sat together, but our conversations always centered on his life, his work, his family, not on mine. I would always hang back when we got to Appleton, taking extra time to gather my things so I would be the last one off the plane and the other passengers wouldn’t see the circus created by the protesters when I entered the airport.

I sat near him one of the first times I wore a disguise. It was a hideous costume—brightly beaded jean jacket, an auburn wig, polyester pants, and a big purse. I hated the deceit, the fact that I was going to these extremes to avoid the harassment. And now it meant I couldn’t sit and have a pleasant conversation with a friend.

He didn’t recognize me, and at the airport in Appleton I walked out with all the other passengers. The protesters never suspected. I walked right past as they craned their necks, searching the small group of passengers. That anonymity was the only thing that made the demeaning effort worth it.

A day later, on the return flight, I sat across the narrow aisle from my friend, undisguised. I had the unmistakable jean jacket folded carefully in my lap so that only the denim showed. We talked as usual, but at one point I dropped something and in bending over, the jacket fell open into the aisle. His eyes moved to the gaudy coat, back to my face.

“That was you,” he said finally. “That was you yesterday. What the hell is going on? Who are you, anyway? What’s the gig? Are you running drugs or something?” He was really angry with me.

I didn’t want to explain. The airplane was my place of refuge and anonymity. What would he think? But he kept interrogating me, unrelenting.

“No, no, it’s nothing like drugs. It’s much simpler. No. It’s much more complicated. I’m a doctor. I do abortions. Every week I fly here to work in a clinic. There are people who try to stop me from doing my work. People who harass me. Haven’t you ever seen the protesters at the airport? They are waiting for me. I have had to resort to disguises because I can’t stand them in my face anymore.”