“I remember that the doctor who was to actually performed the D&C was an unpleasant person – he seemed to be eaten up with anger (no wonder, what a ghastly lot in life was his if that was his main occupation)… The staff involved seemed callous – callous people, callous in their approach – not that they were rough with me; they strongly impressed me with their indifference to a woman in pain… Inside I screamed protest at their treatment of me – the lack of attention when I awoke with severe pain; the looking through me as if I didn’t really exist; the fact that they weren’t interested in me, as a person, to hear my story or to help me make sense of it all. I remember that, after the pre-med had been administered and I was waiting on the cot outside the [operating room] doors for my turn, I actually managed to lift my heavy head from the pillow to look through the windows in the doors to try and see who and why the surgical staff were creating such a ruckus – there were hooting, and laughing, and regaling loud and apparently hilarious stories to each other while performing these abortions.”
Melinda Tankard Reist Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief after Abortion (Springfield, IL: Acorn Books, 2007) 35 – 36
Share on Facebook