David R. Mace tells the stories of two women rushed through abortion procedures:
“Let me dramatize the crisis the woman faces by giving you two illustrations, both witnessed by a nurse in a New York hospital. The first was a girl who was having difficulty in making up her mind about abortion and was quickly moved through the routine hospital procedures in a state of increasing bewilderment and shock. By the time she landed on the examining couch, she broke down completely and was convulsed with sobbing that shook her whole body. The doctor was understandably taken aback and somewhat exasperated. He faced the girl rather brusquely and barked at her a question, “Do you or don’t you want an abortion?” In despair, she nodded feebly, and the operation went ahead. When it was over, the nurse told me she was in pitiful condition, but the doctor had no time for her, and the nurse had no time either. In the other case the woman, equally disturbed, had taken a night plane to New York at the insistence of her boyfriend, arrived at the hospital in the morning, had been aborted and discharged in the afternoon. In the limousine back to the airport, she became disoriented, saying she had committed a terrible crime and could not go back and face her parents. Inquiries indicated the hospital from which she had just come, and she was returned there and left in the emergency room, where no one knew quite what to do with her.”
David R. Mace Abortion: The Agonizing Decision (Oliphants: 1973) 111
These women’s experiences occurred when abortions were mostly done in hospitals. Now, when abortions are done in clinics, the process is even more impersonal and, quite often, the counseling is more inadequate.
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