From a writer whose father was an abortionist:
“Every day at the Erie Medical Center, women arrived pregnant, and, a few hours later, returned home having decided not to become mothers. As my father would come to appreciate, few did so without some internal conflict. Some cried afterward. Others were deeply shaken. Many years later, after spending a day in my father’s office on a day abortions were performed and coming home emotionally drained, I wondered whether this ever gave him pause. There were few smiles on the faces of the women I saw that day. There was, on the other hand, a palpable sense of loss and sadness. Did this ever make my father question whether perhaps the protestors had a point: that these women might be making a decision they would come to regret? …. When I worked up the nerve to ask him, he admitted that sometimes women did seem unsure afterward whether they’d made the right decision- and less then genial in their feelings toward the staff. On one occasion, he told me, a patient was so distraught after her abortion that she started screaming at him, “How can you do this?” He was unsettled. More often, though, he said what patients expressed was a sense of relief.”
Eyal Press “Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America” (New York: Henry Holt & company, 2006 64
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