Abortionist talks about stigma, isolation from peers

An abortionist who wrote an article on the Maine Family Planning website praises himself and the women who come to him.  He also admits that many doctors in mainstream medicine look down on abortionists like him.

The abortionist, who credits himself only as “Tony,” had been doing abortions for ten years as of 2011, when the article was published. He says that committing abortions is “a profound privilege and honor.”  Nevertheless, he describes abortion as a “daunting and probably painful procedure” for women.  Despite acknowledging that abortion is a terrible experience for many women, he touts each abortion as a “victory”…

… in abortion work, clear victories happen every day as we give people back their lives. I can remember a young woman, a high school student… I thought about what might have been her future if abortion were not available. Almost certainly a life of poverty, a slim chance of even finishing high school, let alone the college career she was planning. What is that worth?  Everything.

Because a woman can’t possibly have both a child and an education. The abortionist’s view underestimates women’s strength and resourcefulness. His way of “helping” women is robbing them of their children.  While pro-life groups such as Students for Life and Feminists for Life work to set up resources for pregnant and parenting students, this abortionist attempts to eliminate the problem by eliminating the child.

But perhaps the most striking part of the abortionist’s article is this passage, where he admits that other doctors look down on his profession:

It is an unfortunate irony that abortion work has been cast to the fringes of medicine. Many of my colleagues, if they know at all what I do — and most don’t and don’t want to know — think that abortion work is for doctors who can’t do anything else. They would rather not know about me or our patients, preferring to imagine that none of this goes on either for me or them. This makes for what is, in many ways, the hardest part of abortion work — the isolation. It is hard to find people outside of immediate colleagues and family to share the stresses and difficulties of the work.

The isolation and stigma he describes may be a reason why so few doctors perform abortions. The shortage of abortion providers is a huge problem for those who promote abortion.

The isolation and ostracism abortionists face make abortion practice very unappealing to doctors who can make a living in other ways. A huge incentive in performing abortions is the money that can be made. But that money comes at the cost of stigma and isolation. As fewer and fewer doctors enter the abortion field and more and more leave, pro-lifers have cause for hope that abortion numbers, already falling, will fall even more.