the awful truth about illegal abortion

 

I was a third year medical student in 1973 when the Supreme Court of the United States legalized abortion by declaring it a constitutionally protected right that applied to all women. As a health care provider, this came as a huge relief to me because it guaranteed women access to a safe procedure performed by a trained specialist under sterile conditions, unlike the illegal abortions that were performed in back rooms and basements by frauds and quacks with no training...or worse, by desperate women themselves, with contaminated instruments, dangerous chemicals, and deadly manipulations. 

For those of you who don't remember, or who choose to ignore or to deny the brutality of illegal abortions, let me remind you how they were accomplished before Roe V. Wade. By pushing a straightened clothes hanger through the closed cervix and penetrating the amniotic membrane...without anesthesia. By drinking lye. By injecting air around the amniotic sac to separate it from the uterine wall...

...which is why women died from overwhelming infections (sepsis). From air and amniotic fluid embolism. From hemorrhage. From suicide.

Here are some of their stories.

There is little doubt in my mind that some women will be forced again to resort to these horrifying measures now that they no longer have access to safe, sterile abortions. There is no question that many will die...and with them, the fetuses who were supposed to have been saved by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

And here, compliments of Amie Lynne Jordan who posted this on Facebook, are a few stories about women who will now be forced to carry their unintended, or non-viable, or life-threatening pregnancies to term:

• Becky who found out at her 20-week anatomy scan that the infant she had been so excited to bring into this world had developed without life sustaining organs.
• Susan who was sexually assaulted on her way home from work, only to come to the horrific realization that her assailant planted his seed in her when she got a positive pregnancy test result a month later.
• Theresa who hemorrhaged due to a placental abruption, causing her parents, spouse, and children to have to make the impossible decision on whether to save her or her unborn child.
• Vanessa who went into her confirmation appointment after YEARS of trying to conceive only to hear silence where there should be a heartbeat.
• Courtney who just found out she's already 13 weeks along, but the egg never made it out of her fallopian tube so either she terminates the pregnancy or risks dying from internal bleeding.

Regardless of your religious, moral, or ethical stand on abortion rights, you may want to consider the cruel consequences of illegal abortion before you strip women of their right to a safe medical procedure. You should at least try to imagine the psychological and emotional toll it will take on victims of rape and incest to be forced to carry their pregnancies to term. You should ask yourself what will become of these unwanted children. Who will care for them? How will they survive? You should weigh in on decisions that put a pregnant woman's life in danger. You should think long and hard about what it must feel like to carry a dead baby inside of you until it is expelled spontaneously, or "evacuated." You should understand that carrying a dead fetus puts the mother at risk of infection, hemorrhage, and coagulation disorders that can be fatal.

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, five of our esteemed Supreme Court judges will, I fear, have blood on their hands. Before they deny women their reproductive rights, perhaps they should be working to codify a foolproof plan to absolutely end incest and rape in the first place. Good luck with that. 

It doesn't seem fair for men to retain the right to violate women, while women lose the right to protect, and indeed, to save themselves. 

~No means no...~

...in so many ways.

jan

the importance of authenticity and vulnerability in storytelling

I spent last week at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, NY, at a storytelling workshop with this man, Chris Wells.

https://mrchriswells.com/

"Chris Wells is an Obie award-winning writer, actor and community leader who creates live events, music, and stories. He is the founding artistic director of The Secret City, a nonprofit community arts organization in New York City founded on the principals of creative mindfulness. Chris serves as curator, lead artist, and producer of The Secret City's dynamic live performances in NYC, Los Angeles, and Woodstock. His theatrical work has been honored with two LA Weekly Awards for Best Actor, a shared Garland award for playwriting, and many Ovation awards for participating in ensemble-created work. In 2010, Wells received a special citation Obie Award for service to the NYC artistic community. Through his storytelling workshops, Chris serves not just as a coach but as a creative midwife who helps writers get to the core of their project. His Writing Life process is designed to explore a person's work and their ideas through a series of conversations, investigations, exercises, and homework, while getting them to make huge strides on the project at hand."

...not to mention that he is a patient and supportive human being with a great sense of humor.

This workshop unfolded like many I've attended.

On Monday, each of us arrived sporting the face we like to put forward among strangers. For some, exuberant self-confidence. For others, timid uncertainty. For a few, tentative curiosity. The first time we gathered, we sized each other up based on nothing more telling than what we were wearing, or which seat we took, or how we introduced ourselves...all of which would change as the week wore on, as we worked on our stories, mined them for truth, and prepared to tell them in front of an audience. Three difficult tasks. 

On Tuesday, tears fell for the first time. We learned what it meant to be authentic. How it felt to be vulnerable. How hard it is to tell the truth.

"All you have to do is write one true sentence.

Write the truest sentence that you know."

~Ernest Hemingway~

On Wednesday, it finally dawned on us that we were safe among these people. That our stories, with all their missteps, all their pauses and rough spots, all the pain, and anger, and shame they revealed were received with mercy. With support. And, often, with applause.

On Thursday, we polished our stories, and practiced telling them. A sense of insecurity and dread crept up on some of us. But this is the thing about storytelling: it frees us. It heals us. It connects us with people we scarcely know, in ways we can't imagine...

...which is why, on Friday, each of our stories was received in silence, with rapt attention, followed by enthusiastic applause. 

I spend a lot of time encouraging people I know to tell the stories they hold tight in their hearts. To write them down, or get them onto a canvas, or put them into movement or song. As a physician, I do this because I know that storytelling is a healing practice. Why is this important? In the words of poet Sean Thomas Dougherty:

"Because right now

there is someone out there 

with a wound in the exact shape of your words."

~Sean Thomas Dougherty~

People need to know they're not alone. They need to know how you survived. That there is hope. That their story is important, too.

We hesitate to begin out of fear. We tell ourselves we don't write well enough. We don't know where or how to get started. We are sure no one could possibly be interested in what happened to us, so we make up excuses. I don't have time to write. My grammar and spelling stink. People will never believe me.

Sometimes, shame silences us. We have been conditioned to keep secrets. We blame ourselves for what happened to us. Or perhaps we're still struggling with the issue. It's too painful, or sad, or maddening to put into words.

If you're having trouble getting started with your story, if you have no confidence in your ability to tell it, or you have no time or energy to devote to one more thing...welcome to the club! This is where we all started.

The important thing is to get started, and then:

"Fill your paper 

with the breathings of your heart."

~William Wordsworth~

jan

what good is a story without a teller

 

 

What good is a story without someone to tell it? A story without someone to hear it?

True story:

A few years back, a young man in our community was involved in a terrible automobile accident. Prior to that day, he had a reputation as the high school jock, athletic and good looking. He was described as cool and cocky. He was well-liked, if sometimes irresponsible.

The accident left him in a coma for weeks. His doctors gave his family no hope for recovery based on the appearance of his scans. Nevertheless, his parents insisted upon continuing life support. He went from the intensive care unit to acute care to rehab over a period of six weeks or so with no improvement.

Then one day he opened his eyes. He started responding to simple commands. He was able to recognize the people at his bedside. Long story short, he went on to make a full recovery with the exception of a few subtle cognitive deficits. He came out of the experience a humble, caring young man with no recollection of the weeks he spent unconscious.

During his entire hospitalization, the boy’s mother kept a daily journal. It helped her remember what the doctors told her from day to day so she could process it when she had a few moments to herself.

  "Write what should not be forgotten..."

~Isabel Allende~

She kept track of who visited her son, how kind and concerned they were, how heartbroken they felt. She recorded everything the doctors and nurses who cared for him said and did, and she recorded her own thoughts and feelings about her son’s condition.

The point is that without his mother’s journals, this entire period in his life would have been lost to him. He had no memory of it. It helped him immensely to read his mother's journals in order to make sense of what had happened to him and what a miracle his recovery represented. They reconnected him with his friends when he read about their bedside visits. He came to understand how close to death he’d come.

"I do not sit down at my desk

to put into verse something that is already

clear in my mind.

If it were clear in my mind, 

I should have no incentive or need

to write about it.

We do not write in order to be understood;

we write in order to understand."

~C.S. Lewis~

His mother's journals weren't lovely flowered books filled with beautiful prose. They were honest and raw and desperate. They recorded reality for her son and filled in the blanks for him.

She wrote them at a time when she never imagined her son would be able to read them for himself. That chapter in his life would have remained, forever, a story without a reader…and, except for his mother's journals, it would have remained a story without a writer.

PS: It will remain a matter of faith vs speculation as to whether a bedside visit from the boy's beloved dog had any effect on his recovery…but he first opened his eyes three days later.

"DOG is GOD spelled backward."

~Duane Chapman~

jan

 

living in a state of perpetual awe

One of perks you get to enjoy as a physician is living in a state of perpetual awe. It starts with the first pass of the scalpel on the first day in the anatomy lab. It continues as you tease out every organ, blood vessel, and nerve in the body you've been assigned to dissect. A sense of wonder punches you in the gut the first time you hear a beating human heart and realize your own heart has been pumping steadily and predictably without any effort on your part since before the day you were born. In fact, your heart has been beating, on average, 72 times every minute of your life. This adds up to approximately 100,000 times every day, or 3,600,000 times per year, and depending on how long you live, as many as 2.5 billion times...until the moment it stops.

But then, who's counting?

That, in itself, would be amazing enough, but I learned a few more facts this week that astounded me. Did you know that the human eye can detect a single photon? That the inner ear can detect vibrations less than the diameter of an atom, and it can distinguish sounds that are just ten millionths of a second apart? That the human olfactory system can detect a trillion distinct smells? Did you realize we can detect tactile sensations down to one billionth of a meter? 

Yay, human body!

"There is more wisdom in your body

than in your deepest philosophy."

~Friedrich Nietzsche~

This is how reality manifests on the quantum level. It reminds me once again that every process in the human body is carried out with utmost precision, perfect timing, and uncanny coordination...in ways we are just beginning to appreciate. 

But what if you've never heard of the quantum domain? What difference does it make whether you know this about your Self or not? 

The way I see it, if knowing this brings you a sense of wonder, you might be motivated to take better care of this one amazing Self you live with. Feed it well. Give it some exercise. Let it rest. Avoid poisoning it with chemicals. Encourage it. Love it. 

"Self care is a divine responsibility."

~Danielle LaPorte~

Knowing this about your Self might bring you closer to the perpetual state of awe that I enjoy. And it might affect the way you see everyone else...as something of a mystery. A wonder. A miracle. 

 

"We touch heaven when 

we lay our hand on a human body."

~Novalis~

The fact that the body knows what to do to keep itself healthy is extraordinary. The fact that it knows how to heal itself--to heal a broken bone, to close an open wound, to reanimate a lifeless heart-- is beyond the wildest imagination. The way it accomplishes it is incomprehensible.

Biologists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, and quantum theorists are hard at work trying to figure out what it is that makes us tick...while our bodies are mysteriously, silently, and predictably doing what they do best: making us who we are...beings worthy of reverence, loving-kindness, connection, peace, and joy. 

"Be good to yourself.

If you don't take care of your body,

where will you live?"

~Kobi Yamada~

To this I would add: 

Be good to everybody.

If you don't take care of them,

how will you live with yourself?

jan