Feminist writer Wendy Simonds observed at an abortion clinic and interviewed clinic workers for her book, Abortion at Work. She interviewed one clinic worker:
Mira said, “we don’t counsel women here”; private consultations were the exception rather than the norm.… Clients met in groups with one health worker before their abortions.”
In these groups, the women were told the basics of the abortion procedure.
“During group meetings, health workers displayed a small three-dimensional pelvic model, along with various instruments that the nurses or physician would use. They showed laminaria that the nurses used to dilate clients’ cervices (in second trimester abortion groups); they showed the stabilizer, dilators, forceps (forceps are only used during second trimester procedures), and cannulae (plastic tubes) that doctors use. They did not show the needles used to inject the cervical anesthetic or, in the case of second trimester abortions, especially large dilators or forceps or the needles used to inject digoxin into women’s uteri.”
Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) page 65
They also showed no model of the unborn baby or gave any description of what would happen to him or her. This abortion clinic did abortions up to 26 weeks.
