| Show I Choosing a career in abortions abortions' i Stephanie Simon Los Angeles Times year Fourth medical student Megan Lederer recently helped deliver a premature baby at barely six months gestation The newborn was vas tiny unimaginably fragile but she survived Caught up in the moment Lederer didn't think about the implication for her chosen career Later though she wondered Could I have aborted that pregnancy She could have she decided She would have felt an obligation Lederer 30 cant can't relate to the images that drew drewan an older generation of physicians into abortion work She can barely picture it when they talk about life before legal abortion the spattered blood-spattered apartments the women racked with infection from stabbing sticks into their wombs But she and other young training in have found their own motivation to enter a field that they know will put them at risk of isolation harassment and hatred For them doing abortions is an act of defiance a way of against mounting restrictions on ona ona ona a right they've taken for granted all their lives Its like when your big brother says you cant can't do something Lederer said That just makes you want to do it even more Abortion is one of the thc most common surgical procedures in the US U.S. terminating about one in four pregnancies not counting miscarriages Yet the number of providers has fallen steadily for decades dropping 37 percent between 1982 and 2000 the thc thelast thelast last year a census was taken During the same period the number of abortions fell 17 percent Anti-abortion Anti activists attribute the drop to a growing aversion to killing fetuses Its corrosive to the soul said Douglas Johnson legislative director for National Right to Life Abortion rights advocates counter with a litany of other reasons starting with aggressive picketing of doctors at work and increasingly at home Physicians who choose to provide abortions also chafe at a lack of autonomy In Inmany Inmany Inmany many states every detail of their practice is regulated the width of clinic hallways the number of air vents even how often their staff must take physicals On the federal level Congress has banned a particular technique for ending midterm pregnancies known by critics s as partial- partial birth abortion The US U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld that ban doctors can be prosecuted for using the method even if they determine its it's the safest approach for a given patient Nearly third one-third of metropolitan areas and 97 percent of rural counties have no abortion providers according to the Guttmacher Institute a research g group affiliated with Planned Parenthood One in four patients must travel a aleast at least 50 miles to end a pregnancy y Guttmacher researchers are working on updated statistics but as of 2000 they reported that the United States had about 1800 abortion providers many of them near or past retirement age By comparison the American Medical Association reported that the same year there were about plastic surgeons dermatologists and Each spring the advocacy group Medical Students for Choice brings several hundred students nearly 90 percent of them women weekend convention to a to nudge them into considering abortion work One of the most effective tools introducing them to veteran providers It was amazing to see all these people who have made this a career and it works for them Lederer said was wasa That upbeat message was wasa a marked contrast from the lecture Lederer and her friends heard last fall at the University of Colorados Colorado's medical school in downtown Denver Medical Students for Choice had invited Dr Warren Hem a legend in the thc abortion rights movement to give them encouragement He offered none None of you you will be an abortion provider he told the students You dont don't have haveit it in you Do something else Fix broken legs he often advises No reasonable person would do this Hem Hern 68 practices in Boulder Colo a liberal college town Still hes he's afraid to open his blinds at night for fear of a sniper hidden in the bushes His clinic is protected by a fence and four layers of bulletproof glass H Horn Hern rn specializes in late second- second and trimester third-trimester abortions his patients come to him from around the thc world many with late diagnosis of fetal deformity Although he feels certain hes he's doing right by the women Hem Hern still feels conflicted when he steps into his basement surgery He once wrote that the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current and after three decades he is not inured to that feeling We Weare Weare Weare are wired hard-wired as a species to protect small young helpless creatures he said The fetus is not a baby but its it's close Some are very close Its It's difficult Lederer does not know how she will handle such emotion the closest she's come ome to performing an abortion was suctioning the seeds out of a papaya to learn a trimester first-trimester technique She may in the end restrict her practice to early abortions But that's not an easy solution to accept She cant can't see how she could ever justify taking one woman as as a patient while turning away another because her pregnancy is a afew afew afew few weeks more advanced Lederer grew up talking women's rights around the dinner table I still have a signed Gloria book that my mom morn bought me ille me when I was 2 she said Her first year in college she sampled a womans woman's studies course and instantly felt at home It was like These are my people she said Lederer majored in women's studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder but also took premed premed premed pre- pre med requirements with the goal of following in the footsteps of her father a pediatrician In her junior year she combined her two interests with an internship at a planning family-planning clinic that offered trimester first-trimester abortions It was an incredible life-changing life experience she said She was surprised that the clinics clinic's patients included women of all income ages and education levels Lederer helped out a bit sterilizing instruments but spent most of her time observing ng these women as they ended pregnancies that for one reason or another they felt they could not handle This was something tangible you could do for people she said You could make a difference in these women's lives She completed the internship determined to perform abortions one day It was my mission As Lederer soon learned theres there's no straightforward career path to an abortion clinic Most medical schools barely mention the subject and its it's rarely included in n post-graduate post clinical programs known as residencies Just half th the nations nation's obstetrics- obstetrics gynecology residencies and only 20 out of practice family-practice residencies integrate abortion into physician training according to Lois Backus executive director of Medical Students for Choice Most residents interested in inthe inthe inthe the field must study on their own often through after- after hours electives in abortion clinics They have to be enormously committed to work it in Backus sa said d. d Lederer plans to apply for residencies that offer abortion training but beyond that she's uncertain how to shape her career |
