This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor Read online

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t confront that woman,” I apologized. “It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while someone comes along who I simply can’t deal with.”

  We talked about the danger a patient like that could present. From that time on, we established a clinic policy that prevented patients from bringing purses, bulky coats, or bags with them beyond the waiting room.

  One of the most galling realities is the lack of consistency within the medical community. In Montana, as in other places, I was repeatedly attacked by anti-choice factions in editorials and letters to the editor. Statements containing false medical information and misleading “facts” went unchecked. Only one physician in Bozeman publicly supported me. The rest either were silent or professed to be against abortion, knuckling under to anti-choice pressure. Yet more than once I was asked to perform a secretive abortion after hours for a girlfriend or wife of a local doctor.

  I remember meeting one such doctor at eight PM in the quiet hallway outside my office.

  “Thank you for seeing us tonight,” he said, shaking my hand. He looked up and down the empty hall. “This is just so awkward, you know.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself, focused instead on the woman by his side. When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Well, at least there’s an accountant’s office nearby. I can always say we were going there if someone sees us tonight. They work late sometimes, don’t they?”

  Then there are the patients who come to us, admitting they have been against abortion, but struggling with the uncomfortable fact that they are now the victims of unwanted pregnancies. Suddenly, for them, the black-and-white parameters turn a decided shade of gray.

  Early in my career, in a Midwestern clinic, I saw a twenty-two-year-old single mother in the waiting room whom I recognized as one of the group of protesters who had recently chained themselves together with bike locks, blocking the clinic entrance in an attempt to close us down. She had been sitting against the side doors, pounding her fist in a rhythmic way, doing her best to mimic a heartbeat. Thump thud. Thump thud. Thump thud. At the same time she screamed, “Mommy, don’t kill me!”

  What was she doing in our waiting room? Was she a spy, gathering information? Would she open the doors and let in a flood of protesters? Was she faking a pregnancy in order to find out more about our facilities?

  It became clear that she was actually there for an abortion. Unbelievable. The initial reaction from all the staff was anger and disbelief. How dare she expect us to take care of her? Did she take us for fools?

  Our most seasoned counselor volunteered to talk with her. The two of them stayed cloistered in the room for perhaps an hour before the counselor reappeared with a look of determination and amazement on her face.

  “She really is pregnant and really does want an abortion. I think we should help her, but I also think each of us needs to talk with her first. She should know how we feel about this. More important, she needs to understand the impact she has had on our lives and the lives of our other patients.”

  There was a lot of resistance from the staff, myself included. The counselor persisted, telling us to be forgiving and understanding and to allow this woman the chance to learn the truth about us and about abortion.

  “You never know,” she said. “This young woman might end up being an ally. Even if she doesn’t, it will be pretty hard for her to go back to the protesters.

  “She knows now that things aren’t so ethically clear and simple as she was led to believe. Those pat answers aren’t working for her. Forget that she was a protester, and listen to her with an open heart.”

  When I went in to see her, I started with a straightforward question: “Do you believe abortion should be legal?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so. Yes. I do. Well, now I do. But I didn’t before . . . ,” she stumbled over the words.

  “What has changed your mind?” I asked.

  “This is my second pregnancy. The first time I got pregnant I came here to get an abortion, but the people out front stopped me and promised to help me if I had the baby. They told me I might die in here and that you were awful people that just wanted to kill babies.”

  I kept listening and prodding her to tell me more.

  “They said they’d pay for my prenatal care and give me baby clothes and diapers and all that.”

  “So you had the baby?” I asked.

  “Yes. And I really love him, but he’s only five months old, and I am really having a tough time taking care of him. I have to work, but I’d like to go to the community college. I don’t know how I could possibly do it with two kids.”

  “So what happened to the people that promised to help you?”

  “All they gave me was a layette set and two boxes of diapers. That’s it. They were all friendly and took me to church and wanted me to demonstrate with them, but they really haven’t helped me at all with anything. I feel like all they cared about was that I didn’t have an abortion.”

  “But after all the things they told you about us, how do you know who to believe? How could you even dare to come here?” I asked.

  “I talked to my aunt. She’s a nurse and told me a lot of things I didn’t know. I trust her, and she said I should trust you. She said this was a good clinic and that I’d be safe.”

  I leaned back in my chair, thinking hard about the next thing on my mind. “Tell me,” I looked her in the eye. “Are you ever going to protest outside an abortion clinic again?”

  “Absolutely not,” she replied without hesitation.

  “And if your best friend got pregnant and came to you for advice, what would you tell her?” I wasn’t going to let up.

  “I’d be her friend no matter what. It would be up to her, but I wouldn’t try to talk her out of an abortion like I would have last year.”

  We talked a bit longer. I told her I believed that everything happens for a reason, and that she and I were both learning lessons in forgiveness and understanding.

  After the abortion, that young woman became a pro-choice advocate. She kept in contact with us. Every time she stopped in, she expressed gratitude for our care and for our ability to see who she really was.

  Not all encounters with patients who have been strongly anti-choice end this way. I have had patients who admit that they have been protesters, but rather calmly and rationally explain why they need to end a pregnancy in spite of their beliefs. We give them accurate information and perform safe, legal abortions if they choose to go forward. Some of those same women are back out in front of the clinic protesting within a week of their procedure.

  Mostly I’m able to ignore and minimize the impact of protesters, but a few of them make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Mostly they are men: people who will never experience the personal, agonizing trauma of an unwanted pregnancy but who preach their version of truth, bully patients, and emanate hatred. I’m utterly convinced that, for these people, the abortion issue is not about morality but about power and control. Control over women’s lives. Nothing I’ve observed in them shows any sincere concern or sympathy for children or families.

  The first time I saw Chet Gallagher was in Fargo, North Dakota. He was aggressive with patients and staff, swaggering around on the sidewalk in front of the building as if it were his domain. When patients approached, he’d shout in their faces. “You’ll die in there,” he pointed to the doors. “Your baby will scream in pain. You’ll never be able to have another child!”

  If a young woman was accompanied by her boyfriend, Gallagher would get in his face, too. “Be a man,” he’d yell. “Don’t let her do this.”

  Over the months we learned that Chet Gallagher had been a police officer, a person hired to uphold the law. That he had once been in charge of protecting the public seemed absurd. Here he was breaking laws left and right, racking up many arrests. Over time, he has become one of the national leaders in the anti-choice movement. He now claims to have been arrested more than a hundred times and calls himself a lay ministe
r.

  During my years in Bozeman I was targeted by several local men who were obsessed with my clinic. One of them was particularly rabid. He was eventually arrested for trying to burn down the building where my offices were located. Before that, however, he stalked me, put up “wanted” posters with my picture on them, and repeatedly harassed people associated with any aspect of family planning or reproductive health.

  At one point he burst into a mother/daughter seminar sponsored by a local medical practice. The weekend session was devoted to fostering family communication and discussing issues of puberty. He rampaged around the room, ranting about teen sex and abortions. He accused the facilitators of fostering promiscuity and loose morals. The facilitators finally had to call the police before the man would leave.

  The same man stood up and disrupted church services where some of my employees worshiped, telling the minister and congregation that they were sinners for allowing baby killers in their midst.

  The most blatant hypocrisy takes place outside clinics, but inside it isn’t uncommon to witness fateful intersections between patients that force them to face their decisions rather than keep them hidden.

  One day I heard two very audible gasps in the outer waiting room when a couple of women, both patients with appointments for abortions, came face to face.

  “WHAT are YOU doing here?” one of them said.

  “I don’t know,” stammered the other. “What are YOU doing here?”

  They stared at each other, both at a loss. The receptionist quickly stepped in and signaled them to follow her to a more private area.

  “If the two of you know each other and would like to talk privately, we can provide you with a quiet space. Or one of you can reschedule if you’d like.”

  They chose to talk. They stayed in there a very long time.

  It turned out that they were coworkers at a Catholic school. One of them was an administrator, the other a teacher. No doubt they had each hoped to keep their secret safe and go on with life. The public face they presented to the world could remain unchanged, except for their chance meeting. No doubt they had some rationalizing and explaining to do, but when they came back out, they both seemed resolved and under control.

  Both women stayed for their procedures. In fact, they scheduled their follow-up exams for the same day so that they could carpool for the three-hour drive. I have little doubt, given their positions, that they still publicly denounce abortion and tell their students abortion is a grievous sin. Except for their awkward encounter, they might have avoided any confession at all.

  For the most part, my knowledge of personal hypocrisy is protected by my commitment to confidentiality. The insights that come to me stay locked up tight by necessity. Occasionally, though, an opportunity comes along to call on someone to live up to public statements.

  The first time I turned the tables on the local “crisis pregnancy center,” I had a patient in the clinic who really did not want an abortion but who had no resources to cover the costs of prenatal care or childbirth. She was single and without insurance coverage but made just enough money to be ineligible for state assistance. She already had outstanding bills at the hospital and with the local ob-gyn practice. No doctor would see her without payment up front.

  We were willing to do the abortion for a reduced rate or for free if necessary. But she really didn’t want an abortion. Once I understood her situation, I went to the phone and called the local “crisis pregnancy center.”

  “Hello, this is Dr. Wicklund.”

  Dead silence. I might as well have said I was Satan.

  “Hello?” I said again. “This is Dr. Wicklund.”

  “Hello,” very tentatively, followed by another long silence.

  “I need help with a patient,” I said. “She came to me for an abortion, but she really doesn’t want one. What she really needs is someone to do her prenatal care and birth for free.”

  “What do you expect us to do?”

  I let that hang for a minute.

  “Well, maybe this is your chance to save a baby. Isn’t that your mission? Here you are. My suggestion is that you find her the care she needs, or she will be forced to have an abortion.”

  “But no one does free prenatal care and births.”

  “How about Dr. Abott? He is always publicly preaching about the evils of abortion. Why don’t you call him and see if he’ll put his money where his mouth is? Tell him I am willing to do the abortion for free, but it won’t be necessary if he can match my offer.”

  In this case, it worked. Dr. Abott provided her prenatal care and birth without charge, although he reminded her of his noble gesture at every visit. The young woman came by several times to let us know how things were going.

  “He always moans about being tricked into the deal,” she told us. “Then goes off on these tirades against abortion.”

  Not surprisingly, the people who pay the greatest price in the abortion war are always the ones without power, without resources, without advocates, the most vulnerable of our culture. Poor women in the United States are four times as likely to have an unwanted pregnancy than affluent women. They are five times more likely to have an unintended birth and three times more likely to have an abortion. The correlation between poverty and unwanted pregnancy is stark.

  Too often poor women become pawns in the battle—used while they serve a purpose and abandoned the moment their usefulness ends. People like Martina Greywind.

  Fargo, North Dakota. 1992. Martina Greywind is a local figure, one of those people everyone averts their eyes from on the street. Her hands are weathered, her hair disheveled. Her face is creased with the lines of her life’s trials—winters spent sleeping on heat grates and mattresses of newspaper, repeated physical abuse, excessive alcohol and drug use. You’d guess she was fifty, but she is twenty-eight years old.

  She regularly sniffs paint. Her face is often flecked with gold from spray paint cans. She is no stranger to jail.

  She is pregnant and wants an abortion. She has already given birth to six children, cares for none of them. For weeks she has been manically sniffing paint, not simply to get high but in hopes that she will provoke a miscarriage.

  Now she is in jail again, charged with recklessly endangering her fetus, sentenced to an ironic nine-month term. She makes no secret of her desire to obtain an abortion.

  In her cellblock two members of the Lambs of Christ are also incarcerated, held for their illegal actions against the local clinic. They hound her with rhetoric. “Don’t kill your baby,” they shout. “We will help you. Your baby will be loved.”

  Martina tells them to leave her alone, that it is none of their business, but they persist. For weeks I am kept abreast of the case through clinic staff. I make it clear that I’m willing to come to Fargo if Martina is able to have an abortion.

  The story makes local daily headlines: “Greywind Still Wants Abortion.” The New York Times picks up the story. Her plight is featured on the Today Show.

  When a local resident offers to cover Greywind’s abortion costs, the Lambs of Christ accuse the clinic of bribery. They raise $11,000 and offer it to Greywind if she will continue her pregnancy. She rejects them.

  Then Martina is sentenced to thirty days of rehabilitation in a state hospital more than a hundred miles away. Authorities refuse to transport her for medical appointments, saying it is a waste of taxpayer money. By the time she returns, it will be too late for an abortion. A last-minute court order delays her rehabilitation sentence for a few days.

  Martina requests a leave for a clinic appointment. It is granted for Sunday. The clinic is normally closed on weekends, but the staff agrees to be available. I will fly in from Milwaukee. When the antis get wind of this, they go wild. Desecrating the Sabbath, they cry. We will stop this!

  They go to court for an injunction, claiming Greywind is mentally incompetent. They are rejected.

  I follow the drama from afar. It becomes clear to me that there is no way we will su
cceed on the publicly announced day. Too much fervor has built up. The antis will stop at nothing.

  “We have to change the day,” I tell the administrator by phone.

  “But it’s already Thursday,” she says. “We have to go to court to do that. There isn’t time.”

  “We need to try,” I persist. “Otherwise it’ll be a circus, a standoff, and Martina will be trapped in the middle.”

  The clinic administrator goes to the city attorney. “Lives are at stake here,” she tells him. “If we go ahead on Sunday, there is no telling what might happen.”

  He agrees to try, but the presiding judge is away on vacation. Finally we reach the judge by phone and get his verbal agreement. The court order is filed seconds before the office closes on Friday. We can only hope that the antis haven’t gotten wind of the change.

  On Friday night, after a full day of clinic in Milwaukee, I fly to Fargo. Before boarding the plane I call Sonja.

  “Hi Sonja. How was school today?” We talk about the day. I try to sound reassuring, but Sonja knows something is up. “Listen, I won’t be able to get home tonight. I have to fly to Fargo for a special case. I’ll be home by tomorrow afternoon, okay?” I can hear the disappointment in her voice, but she bucks up as she always does. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s important, or I wouldn’t go. Tell Randy what’s going on. I love you.”

  It is nearly midnight when I slip in the back door of a Fargo hotel and register under a false name. My sleep is restless, but at six-thirty AM I meet a van at the back door. The clinic director and lab tech are already in the vehicle.

  At the same time, two volunteers drive to the garage at the Fargo jail. Martina climbs behind the back seat and hides under blankets. They make their way to the clinic.

  The Lambs of Christ still in jail somehow get the word and raise the alarm, but they are too late. Martina is already inside the clinic offices by the time protesters start swarming around outside like angry insects. Police cars pull up. The media arrives, sniffing the next headline.

  Inside, Martina and I sit in a small room. I turn a radio on to help drown out the shouts and commotion from the street.