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Abortion. The word itself elicits a visceral reaction. It stirsthe images, rhetoric, and experiences that have shaped our responses. It evokes fear, outrage, heartache, loss. It recalls physical pain and emotional torment. But it may also signify relief, healing and restoration.
I am particularly sensitive to the word at this moment because an abortion could have saved the life of a dear friend. Whitney died on December 12, 2023, six days shy of her 32ndbirthday. A month earlier, she had begun her dream job as Clinical Research Coordinator at Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, pursuing life-changing work that would benefit the community’s children. Whitney had secured this meaningful vocation after having devoted a decade to study, pursuing associate’s and bachelor’s degrees and, finally, earning a master’s in public health. The daughter of a single mother whohad instilled in her a fierce tenacity and strength, Whitney had accomplished her goals with pure grit, determination and intelligence. Those of us who watched her grow into an accomplished professional could only marvel at the obstacles she had overcome to achieve her success.
About the same time she began her new job, Whitney discovered she was pregnant. She had already miscarried three times, so one can only imagine the conflicting feelings she experienced when her test flashed pregnant. Surely, she was filled with joy, but hers was a joy tempered by doubt and worry.Others in the same circumstance might have stopped trying, but defeat wasn’t in Whitney’s lexicon. She remained undeterred, resolute in her desire to become a mother. She shared the secret of her pregnancy only with her husband, waiting to tell her mother and friends until she was farther along. In typical form, Whitney was more concerned with saving others’ disappointment than sharing her own hopes and dreams.
Unfortunately, experiencing those miscarriagesundoubtedly caused Whitney to misunderstand what was happening on the fateful day she lost her life. Her symptoms were different this time, more consistent with a stomach virus than with miscarriage. Indeed, the last words she typed into her Google search bar were “stomach bug.” There was no way for her to know that she was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, most often characterized by severe pelvic pain and vaginal bleeding, effects of the fetal tissue implanting outside the uterus. Only a few weeks along, Whitney had not yet had a sonogram, leaving her condition undetected. She could not have known that, where it implanted, her embryo could not expand to accommodate growth, that her baby could not survive, that a fatal rupture was imminent. Whitney’s tragedy is all the more difficult to accept because, had she only known, an abortion would have saved her life.
We lost Whitney, our bright light: a woman who radiated empathy and generosity of spirit. She was a positive force who’d not-so-long ago texted me that, despite the troubled state of the world, she was hopeful we, as a society, would reach a new level of understanding. We’ll never know the many ways her promise would have been fulfilled, the ways her benevolence would have manifested in the world, the children her work would have saved, the devoted mother she would have been, the love she’d have shared.
So what can we do? Our grief wants to hold us hostage; iturges us to pull down the shades, to fold ourselves inward, to give up. But, if we are to follow Whitney’s example, defeat cannot be in our lexicon. More to the point, what would she want us to do? She would want us to step up, to help others — especially the less fortunate, the disenfranchised, the outcast. She would want us to call out injustice. And, above all, when we hear the word “abortion,” she’d remind us that, despite the judgment and negative connotation that word may conjure in the minds of some, for others it conveys a life-sustaining, rather than life-taking, procedure.
As a resident of Pennsylvania, had she gotten to the hospital in time, Whitney would have received the health care needed for her survival. She would want the same for all those critically ill women miscarrying in Texas, Idaho, Tennessee and elsewhere who have been turned away from hospitals rather thanreceiving health care that could save their lives.
Finally and most importantly, Whitney would want us to vote like our lives depend upon it. Because, for women in the United States in 2024, it does.
(For more information on ectopic pregnancy and hospitals’ refusal of care for women in states with strict abortion laws, see https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9687-ectopic-pregnancy; https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/12/09/texas-supreme-court-halts-emergency-abortion-ruling/; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/us/politics/supreme-court-idaho-abortion-ban.html?searchResultPosition=1; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/21/us/abortion-ban-exceptions.html?searchResultPosition=1
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