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Tag: abortion

Due Date

It’s the bright orange color that catches my eye. Nestled in a box under my home office desk, alongside unused breast pads and pumping supplies left over from the birth of my first daughter.

My first, because there should have been a second. A girl.

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An Exception to the Rule

“I usually talk through the procedure as I go,” I say, pulling on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. “So you aren’t surprised by anything, so you know when to expect a sensation.”

The patient is lying on the table, eyes fixed upwards. One of the ceiling panels is illuminated with the green leafy branches of a tree—an image meant to calm and soothe, though I doubt it’s doing much for this woman.

“Or I

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My Abortion Story

I am a seventy-year-old Jewish grandma and a retired women’s health nurse and educator. I’ve enjoyed many blessings.

And I had an abortion in 1974.

Three months ago, the constitutional right to abortion was reversed. Reflecting on that Supreme Court decision led me to share my own experience. I hope my story will help other women considering an abortion to know that they are not alone.

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Desperate Measures

Desperate Measures

In my very first job as a doctor, working in a London hospital in the 1980s, I always took a ridiculously detailed past medical history for every patient I saw. I started to notice how many elderly women had had septicemia, a life-threatening infection in which enormous amounts of bacteria enter the bloodstream.

The neighborhood surrounding the hospital had once been the worst slum in London, and it didn’t take me long to guess

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We Pretend That We’re Not Afraid

Caitlin Bass

We stand outside in the heat. We swat at the occasional persistent mosquito. We try to ignore the sweat beading down our foreheads and the backs of our necks. We retreat to the deepest recesses of shade we can find. We wish for a hint of a wisp of a smidgen of a breeze. We hold court on life and love. We laugh and tease and are determined to have a good time.

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Sharing Secrets

Maria Gervits

“I feel bad…” Amy whispered, then paused.

I’m a family-medicine resident, and I was doing my gynecology rotation, which involved spending a few days at a Planned Parenthood facility. This was my first day. I’d been assigned a patient to shadow: a young woman named Amy, who was here to have a first-trimester abortion.

I’m a fan of Planned Parenthood’s work providing high-quality, affordable contraceptive and gynecological care. In college, when I lost

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Behind Closed Doors

Sophia Lee Ryan

I’d prepared as much as I could: I had a huge coffee, a water and every kind of snack imaginable stuffed into my bag. In my head I carried as much information about dilation and curettage as I’d been able to absorb during a study session at Starbucks the night before.

I was a third-year medical student doing my obstetrics and gynecology clerkship, and I was about to spend

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