andrewsaysblog

Residency doesn’t prepare you for listening to someone you have never met pleading over the phone for help, their breathless desperation as they try to tell their sad story between sobs, intertwined with intimate details. They would say random, heart breaking things like, “What do we do with the crib?”

They were similar in many ways. A state with a 20 week ban on “elective” pregnancy terminations. The ultrasound that diagnosed the catastrophic collision of chromosomes performed too late. Often there was the suggestion that the doctor might have been offensively “pro-life,” the kind that orders the second trimester scans a little later than recommended for those women they know are pro-choice.

I didn’t set out to do post 20 week abortions, I just kind of ended up doing them because with each turn in medical school and residency it seemed no one else was. I was always pro-choice. I…