After some time in practice, Dr Susan Wicklund was forced to wear a loaded pistol and a bulletproof vest when going to work as an abortion provider (she served several states, flying and driving constantly to help women). She would be met not only at work, but at every airport she landed in, by protesters. She has had “wanted: babykiller/murderer” posters posted in her hometown, in her daughter’s school and at her various clinics with her face on them. She has had protesters regularly circle her private home and barricade her exit with cement barrels, with little to no help from the authorities at times. Her teenage daughter has had to be escorted to school in a cop car. She has been physically assaulted by male protesters who slam her up against walls and scream in her face that she is a murderer. Her house has been broken into more than once. She has received countless death threats from people who have later been arrested for arson and murder. She has been ostracized and marginalized in her own field, medicine, by doctors and health professionals who would rather not be involved in the fraught field of reproductive care. Though abortion is legal, in the decades she has been in practice her job has been made more an more needlessly difficult by unnecessary legal barricades. One such barricade: being mandated to read a speech to patients laden with hyperbolic and medically irresponsible language written by politicians and lawmakers rather than by medical professionals.
As a personal choice, she only performs first trimester abortions. She has built her practice based on painstaking and careful counseling and education of the women she cares for. She takes as many hours and days with a patient as needed until she is 100% sure the patient is making her own choice and is not being pressured. She would rather be sued for not performing an abortion than performing one for a woman who isn’t sure of her choice. She cares; she has compassion.
Excerpt, from towards the end of the book:
“When I was working in the Midwest, one young protester followed me everywhere. Once, in a grocery store, I came around the end of the aisle, and we came face to face. We stood perfectly still. I looked hard at him.
‘So, instead of following me around all the time and trying to intimidate me, why don’t you come and have a cup of coffee?’ I asked. I was as surprised at my words as he was.
He stared at me. ‘N-no, no, I don’t think so,” he stammered. But he didn’t turn to go.
‘Why not?’ I continued, emboldened. ‘I want to hear what you have to say. You can’t possibly think I’d hurt you, do you? Why follow me around if you’re afraid to even talk to me?’
He thought for a minute. I had him cornered. ‘Well, okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you at the coffee shop in twenty minutes.’ He turned and walked quickly away.
I didn’t know whether to believe him, but twenty minutes later we faced each other across the table.
‘Why do you follow me everywhere?’ I asked.
‘I want you to stop killing babies,’ he said.
‘Oh come on. You can do better than that. Why don’t you tell me what you know about abortion?’
‘I know its dangerous,’ he said. ‘I know women are scarred for life, physically and emotionally.’
‘I wish you’d do some reading on your own rather than just believe what the other protesters tell you. Abortion is the safest minor surgery performed in the United States. Women are not scarred from it.’
I wrote down some references for him to look up, including government publications. I walked him through the procedure. ‘Even though it’s classified as a minor surgery, there is nothing sharp, no cutting instruments, no stitches, no scalpels.’
I could tell he was shocked. He’d been immersed in the rhetoric of the [anti choice advocates], where knives and scalpels killed babies and maimed women. ‘But you’re taking a human life,’ he argued. ‘You are a murderer.’
‘Would you really call me a killer?’ I asked him, point blank.
‘Yes, I would. It’s a human life you’re taking. I don’t know what else to call you.’
I thought of the small sac and villi I remove in an abortion procedure, tissue that has no capacity to feel pain, think, or have any sense of being. To people like this young man, that tiny sac is a human being.
To me, that tissue represent potential, and the women carrying it has to have the freedom an ability to nurture and grow that potential. Not every seed that falls from a pinecone becomes a tree. The soil has to be fertile; the climate and topography and timing have to be favorable. If those ingredients are wrong, the potential growth never takes place.
For the black-and-white protesters, women are reduced to little more than incubators. Their role is to produce babies, no matter what the circumstances. Where do their rights, their pursuit of happiness, their ambitions enter the equation? Why, like for the seed that falls, aren’t the conditions for growth considered?
We talked for more than an hour. I gained respect for his convictions and earnest beliefs. He, I think, learned a few things about the realities of abortion and the tough life dilemmas women are faced with.
Several times over the ensuing months we met and talked more. The last time we spoke was just before he was entering a seminary. At the end of the conversation, before we parted ways, he said, ‘You know, I can’t hate you anymore.’
I don’t know what happened to him after that, but I never again saw him protesting outside of a clinic.
The professional protesters are the ones I fear. They are mostly men, and for them, protesting is a full-time obsession. They target different regions in the country or particularly vulnerable clinics. They bring their hate-filled slogans, their planes that fly over towns and cities pulling banners depicting bloody babies, their confrontational tactics. When they come to town, I wear my bulletproof vest and carry my gun. Unfortunately, their views have infiltrated the laws and policies of our country and the lives of my patients.”
Real Live Me 