Pro-choice writer Wendy Simonds interviewed abortionists and clinic workers for her book, Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic. She quotes one abortionist saying:
24 weeks
The thing I like about the procedure [abortion] is that… When you feel like you are indeed a talented abortionist, you can get through the difficult cases… it’s dealing with a fibroid in the uterus; knowing what to do if you have an infection on the cervix, or if someone has put laminaria in there… when they really shouldn’t have because the cervix was friable, then knowing how to do this with such delicate precision that you don’t injure the cervix. Those kinds of things help me feel like I have really mastered something that I’m very proud of… In the past year, I’ve probably done close to 5000 procedures, which is more than many people do in 10 years of work.
Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 68
The clinic where this abortionist works does abortions up to 26 weeks — when babies are fully viable and able to live outside the womb.
