How it all began

I've been a physician since 1969 and a board certified OB/GYN since the mid-seventies. Before I began my residency in 1971, I took a year off and quickly ran out of money. This was 3 years before the Roe v. Wade decision, but New York was one of three states which began permitting legal abortions in 1970. I wound up working in an abortion facility doing histories and physicals and soon developed great compassion for the patients, who were emotionally needy. This was the impetus for my going into OB/GYN. During my residency, many of the pregnant patients took their pregnancies for granted, and just as many were't happy to be pregnant at all. Of those, there were frequently groans of "Oh, no" after their child was born, because there was another mouth to feed. This is not to say that other patients weren't overjoyed, because they were. But with abortions, which I began performing in 1972, the patients were uniformly grateful to have been medically cared for in a safe manner. Remember, only a few years before, they had to resort to illegal, often back-alley procedures which cost more than a few maternal lives. Yes, there were all shades of emotional overtones, including grief; but what I recall most was the gratitude for being being treated safely and respectfully. And I've been doing abortions ever since. This wasn't my only field of endeavor, of course. As a Board-certified OB/GYN, I delivered over 5000 babies before retiring from OB. And while most of the new parents were extremely happy, it's hard to adequately describe the the look of utter relief on the faces of abortion patients -- women who, shortly before their procedures, felt trapped, boxed-in, and hopeless.