From the front line of the abortion wars
Abortion is the subject of many books, but it鈥檚 highly unusual when a volume that looks like yet another partisan salvo actually contradicts the expected 鈥減arty line鈥� in important and revealing ways. Such is the case in Susan Wicklund鈥檚 This Common Secret.
Wicklund enlisted as a front-line soldier in America鈥檚 abortion wars in 1989, when the conflict was most intense. Extreme right-to-life groups like Operation Rescue physically besieged abortion clinics, and many abortion providers feared for their personal safety.
Wicklund was an unusual recruit. She started college as a 26-year-old single mother, but went on to win admission to medical school. In 1988 she completed her professional training and took a job at her hometown hospital in Grantsburg, Wis.
Wicklund replaced her own family doctor, who was retiring after a long career that included the quiet provision of abortions both before and after Roe v. Wade鈥檚 nationwide legalization in 1973. The Grantsburg hospital forbad elective abortions, and so Wicklund soon found herself assisting old childhood friends with unwanted pregnancies after hours and then treating their ensuing miscarriages. Her own experience in obtaining an abortion in 1976 had cemented Wicklund鈥檚 pro-choice stance even prior to medical school. (However, here the book鈥檚 ugly depiction of a doctor who told her to 鈥渟hut up and lie still鈥� differs radically from an account Wicklund gave to a Washington Post reporter in 1993 when she spoke instead of 鈥渁 real kind physician.鈥�)
But Wicklund relates how, during her internship year, she witnessed a late second trimester abortion of a fetus whom ultrasound had shown suffered from a fatal abnormality. She already knew that 鈥渁n eight-week embryo is about the size of my thumbnail,鈥� but 鈥渢he visual reality of a twenty-one week fetus鈥� undergoing disarticulation in what physicians call a 鈥淒&E鈥� (for dilation and evacuation) abortion was something else entirely. A glimpse of one of the fetus鈥檚 arms during the procedure almost undid her. 鈥淥ne of the nurses in the room escorted me out when the color left my face.鈥�
Wicklund had no second thoughts about early abortions like the one she had sought, but 鈥渃onfronting a twenty-one week fetus is very different,鈥� she honestly admits. 鈥淚t was not something I could be comfortable with. From that moment, I chose to limit my abortion practice to the first trimester,鈥� with an absolute ceiling of fourteen weeks.
In April 1989, during her first year at Grantsburg, Wicklund attended a huge women鈥檚 rights march in Washington, D.C., an experience that left her thinking she should be doing more as a doctor than she was. Two weeks later she telephoned an abortion clinic in nearby St. Paul, Minn., and offered to work at clinics that needed a doctor. In June, Wicklund began providing abortions one day a week in Milwaukee, and in July she added a second clinic in Appleton, Wis., to her busy weekly schedule. Come October she gave up her Grantsburg job and expanded her travels to encompass three more clinics in St. Paul; Duluth, Minn.; and Fargo, N.D.
鈥淢y schedule required daily flights or drives of two hundred miles or more. At least three nights a week I was in a motel room,鈥� Wicklund recalls. But far more draining than the travel was the almost constant presence of antiabortion protesters intent on persuading 鈥� or coercing 鈥� doctors to stop providing abortions in the far-flung locales that made up Wicklund鈥檚 weekly circuit. 鈥淎t every airport I had to run their gauntlet,鈥� and she donned outlandish disguises in order to pass unrecognized.
Wicklund鈥檚 one refuge was her home, in a rural setting at the end of a long, dead-end road, but one morning in October 1991 she was awakened by the cry 鈥淪usan kills babies鈥� outside her bedroom window. The protesters also blocked her driveway with cement barrels to prevent her from traveling. Armed with a loaded pistol, Wicklund sneaked through the woods in the early morning darkness to rendezvous with a friend and then drive to Fargo in time for that day鈥檚 scheduled abortions.
In February 1992, Wicklund was featured on CBS News鈥檚 鈥�60 Minutes鈥� and her appearance buoyed her spirits. 鈥淣ever again would I feel as alone or exposed as I had before I spoke out publicly.鈥�
Two years later, enactment of the powerful new federal 鈥淔ACE鈥� statute 鈥� protecting Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances 鈥� curtailed obstructive protests and intimidation with its threat of significant prison sentences. By then Wicklund had opened her own clinic in Bozeman, Mont., but she later closed it in order to care for her mother during a terminal illness.
Wicklund resumed work, first at the St. Paul clinic, then at several in Montana, but her frank account of how the St. Paul clinic now 鈥減rioritized billing protocol over patient well-being鈥� ends with Wicklund herself being 鈥渇ired for putting a patient first鈥� after she treated a woman who could not pay in advance.
That story, like Wicklund鈥檚 blunt confession of her aversion for second-trimester abortions, makes this gripping, deeply moving book a compelling memoir rather than a dogmatic pro-choice tract.
David J. Garrow, a senior fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, is the author of 'Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade.'
