Academic

Abortion and Medical School

By Ann Bartow

The Wapo has a lengthy article entitled A Hard Choice on this topic, an excerpt is below:

You think you are pro-choice, Carole Meyers was saying. But, really, “how pro-choice are you? What does it mean for you? What’s your limit? Will you do an abortion on a woman who is 12 weeks pregnant? Twenty-four weeks pregnant?”

What’s your limit with birth defects? she asked. “Would you do an abortion at 28 weeks if the baby had a club foot? How about hemophilia?”

Meyers, a 51-year-old obstetrician and genetics expert, has performed hundreds of abortions over the course of her career and, until earlier this year, served as the medical director of Planned Parenthood of Maryland. She loves her work — it’s very rewarding, she said, and women always thank her — but she doesn’t shrink from examining abortion’s ethical dilemmas or from setting her own limits. The truth, she told Lesley and the other medical students, is that abortion is not a black-and-white issue, not for patients and not for doctors.

“If you are going to perform abortions, how is your family going to think about it?” she asked. “How will you tell your kids? What are you going to do if your church doesn’t want you to come anymore?”

How are you going to feel about a patient who admits she has picketed the clinic in the past? she continued. “What about the woman who comes in for her third abortion and doesn’t want to hear about birth control? How are you going to feel about that?”

I’ll tell you how I feel, Meyers declared. “I get mad, frustrated, angry.”

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on November 25, 2008 (boomark / email).