How do doctors come to provide second trimester surgical abortion services (or how do they decide not to). . . . We do not know as no study has specifically explored these questions. . . . [O]nly 20% of abortion providers offer services at 20 weeks of pregnancy, and only 8% of providers offer services at 24 weeks. Why do most clinicians not provide services to the extent permitted?
When I was a little over 18 weeks pregnant with my now pre-school child, I did a second trimester abortion for a patient who was also a little over 18 weeks pregnant. As I reviewed her chart I realised that I was more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus. . . . I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. I felt lucky that this one was already in the breech position – it would make grasping small parts (legs and arms) a little easier. With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick – a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes – without me – meaning my conscious brain - even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling – a brutally visceral response – heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics.
Providers of second trimester abortions see things that most people don't. What kind of dissociative process inside us allows us to do this routinely? What normal person does this kind of work? . . . [T]here is always violence involved in a second trimester abortion, which becomes acutely apparent at certain moments. . . . I must add, however, that I consider declining a woman's request for abortion also to be an act of unspeakable violence.
Currently, the violence and, frankly, the gruesomeness of abortion is owned only by those who would like to see abortion (at any time in pregnancy) disappear, by those who stand outside clinics and in front of sports arenas holding placards with pictures of fetal parts and partially dismembered fetal bodies. The pro-choice movement has not owned or owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts. . . . [F]rank talk like this is threatening to abortion rights. Science Direct (original article), Abortioneers blog
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