This is the true story of Susan Wicklunds life as a doctor who specialized in womens health and who travelled extensively, at risk to her and her familys life, performing abortions.
She starts the story with the day that she came home to tell Flower Grandma (a name her daughter had given her maternal grandmother) that she was working as an abortion doctor. She had to do this, because she was about to be interviewed on a segment of 60 Minutes and she knew that Flower Grandma watched 60 Minutes every week.
She then relates her experience when she had an abortion. She found it to be a horrible experience. Not because of the abortion but because of the way she was treated by the staff at the clinic. No one would answer the questions she had about the procedure and they treated her like she was a toddler rather than an adult woman.
Shortly after that, she found herself pregnant again but this time her circumstances had changed and she and her boyfriend decided to marry and have the baby, her daughter Lisa. Theyre marriage eventually dissolved and she moved back to the Midwest with her daughter.
While back in the Midwest, she was telling someone how much she missed helping women deliver babies (shed been working as a midwife until laws were passed against her doing this work.) He suggested that she become a doctor. She mulled over this idea and soon found herself enrolled in college studying to be a doctor.
While in medical school, she caused controversy first by refusing to perform pelvic exams on sedated women who were there for other procedures and unaware that the doctors were going to have students perform these procedures on them while they were unconscious. Then she caused more controversy by insisting that she be taught how to perform abortions.
She eventually took over a clinic in Montana that provided health services for women. Her clinic provided all healthcare services for women, but one of the rules was that any woman who wanted an abortion had to be positive beforehand this was what she wanted to do. It had to be her decision not her boyfriend, mother, father or best friends decision. During this time she also continued to work at clinics throughout the Midwest doing abortions.
This was very dangerous work. She was constantly stalked by antiabortionists (she refers to them as antis.) They would stalk her at the airports, blockade her home, send her threatening mail anything to intimidate her. She constantly changed her routes to and from work and her routines. The police were rarely willing to do anything to protect her. They always told her they couldnt do anything until someone did something to her.
A very interesting and sometimes maddening story. She tells stories of patients desperate to have abortions and a story or two of those who thought they wanted abortions, but didnt get them and contacted her later to tell her of the joy they are getting from their child.
This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor is a profile in courage. Susan Wicklund writes about her untraditional entry into medicine and experiences on the front lines of abortion provision in various clinics in the Upper Midwest. Inspired by her own poor experience with an abortion in the 1970s, Dr. Wicklund, once a single mother on welfare and food stamps, devotes herself to womens reproductive health, first as a travelling doctor and then as the owner of her own clinic in Montana.
Chronicles of the obstacles created by the anti-abortion protesters are eye-opening. (Reading this book in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting offers another perspective on gun control.) Although Dr. Wicklund most definitely deserves recognition for her courage and conviction in providing abortion services, there is a hint of my way or the highway. The standard pro-choice arguments are relayed, along with real-life examples of how desperate women are to end unwanted pregnancies. The first chapters are very poignant, but towards the end there is an abrupt and weak transition as Dr. Wicklund takes time off to care for her aging parents. The book is written in very simple sentences. Nonetheless, this is an important first-hand account of the abortion wars, although those who really should read this would probably not care to do so.
