Abortion Clinic Worker: We Don’t Say the Word “Baby”

“I feel some sadness [about second trimester abortions]…And I think part of the problem is that we don’t talk about that…Do you see what I’m saying- that somehow your pro-choice stand is compromised by saying the word “baby.”…We don’t allow ourselves to say or think that word…

When a woman says, you know, “Does the baby go through there?”, we just, you know, alarm bells go off and, “Oh God, is she ambivalent?” … And… it’s like “Yes!” Celia’s [another clinic worker] saying, you answer the woman, “Yes, the baby goes through that tube.” We’ve been trained to say, “Yes, the tissue goes -” … It’s using this language  that’s in complete denial of the fact that to this woman “baby” doesn’t have to mean that she’s ambivalent. It can mean that’s the word she knows. … We’ve lost that. It’s something that we’ve had to give up because the antis [pro-lifers] have claimed that word.”

Clinic worker Mira

Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic. (Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick) 1996, p 79

The clinic where Mira works does abortions up to 26 weeks.