Category: Stigma and Abortionists

From a doctor who does some abortions:

“I hate doing [abortions], but I do them every once in a while. But the real reason we try to avoid then is that I don’t want to be known as a local abortionist. I want to be known as a doctor who loves mommies and their babies. I don’t care what is said, there’s a stigma attached to doing abortions.”

Quoted in Jonathan B Imber, Abortion and the Private Practice of Medicine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)

One abortionist said:

It is an unfortunate irony that abortion work has been cast to the fringes of medicine. Many of my colleagues, if they know at all what I do … think that abortion work is for doctors who can’t do anything else. They would rather not know about me or our patients, preferring to imagine that none of this goes on either for me or them. This makes for what is, in many ways, the hardest part of abortion work — the isolation. It is hard to find people outside of immediate colleagues and family to share the stresses and difficulties of the work.

TONY “I am an Abortion Provider” Maine Family Planning MARCH 24, 2011

According to a reporter who interviewed late term abortionist Dr. Warren Hern:

Nothing pains him more than the disdain of other doctors. Sometimes the young ones ask to come in for an afternoon so they can learn to make a little money while their careers get started–they think it’s as simple as changing a tire. There’s no sense that this is an important operation that has to be done well, that a person’s life depends on it. But let’s face it, abortion is the lowest-status activity in medicine. That’s why they always call their clinics Family Planning Centers or Women’s Wellness Facilities or some crap like that.”

John H. Richardson “The last abortion doctor” Esquire September 1, 2009

“Our research with a range of workers providing abortion care has shown that stigma is a common challenge. The question of ‘what do you do for work’ can be loaded for this group, often couched in fears of judgment and rejection (not so much fear of violence). For some, this means they don’t tell friends, acquaintances, and even some family members what they do. Or, as one person in our recent publication explained, “I edit, I omit.”

Jenny O’Donnell “Abortion providers aren’t passive victims of stigma” ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) Blog October 18, 2011

Dr. Nancy Stanwood,  abortionist:

There still persists to this day almost 40 years after Roe this perception that any doctor who would do abortions on a regular basis — not the casual, four patients once a year, but those who make it a part of their integrated practice — that they must be quacks or bad doctors. There’s this stigma of the abortionist that — two generations later — still looms large.

LOLA PELLEGRINO “Ask (Another) Abortion Provider: Roe vs. Wade, 39th Anniversary Commemorative Edition” The Hairpin JANUARY 23, 2012

In 1867, abortion was illegal. One prominent physician, Detroit doctor Morse Stewart, describes the prevailing attitude towards abortionists in a publication:

“What language can express the utter baseness of that man, whose education has been that of a physician, whose standing in society is that of a physician (a word, which should be held by every man in the profession as synonymous with honor, honesty, integrity, and an earnest, single hearted purpose to preserve human life) what shall we say of such a man, dishonoring his profession, making it a stench in the nostrils of society, debasing his own conscience, by becoming a murderer? Stimulated to murder by no hot and fiery passion, he breaks the 6^th commandment for what? For greed! He sells his own soul; he demoralizes all with whom he comes in contact; he sells that boon which no wealth can buy, for 30 beggarly bits of silver. May the doom of the arch traitor fall upon him! “Let his days be few, and let another take his office, – let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.”

Morse Stewart, “Criminal Abortion,” Detroit Review of Medicine and Pharmacy 2 January 1867 6. Quoted in Frederick N Dyer The Physicians’ Crusade against Abortion (Sagamore Beach, Massachusetts: science history publications, 2005)

This is one quote of many that shows that abortion was considered murder among the medical profession when it was illegal. Indeed, it was doctors who pushed to make abortion illegal to begin with. Some pro-abortion writings will claim that abortion was opposed by doctors because it was dangerous to women, but quotes like those above show that many doctors viewed it as murder.

There is still stigma against abortion providers in the medical profession. Read quotes on this here. 

One clinic worker, who later left her job, said:

“When you say abortion, people think about killing babies and why such a decision. So this isn’t the kind of job to go around broadcasting about cause you can get all kinds of comments, looks, and questions

So I don’t like to comment on it, so I don’t talk about where I work, because to be truthful about it, I wasn’t proud about it.”

Tonya P From behind Closed Doors: “Abortions” (Xlibris, 2013) 16