Dr. Susan Wicklund: Telling women's stories

The New York Times had a great profile recently of Dr. Susan Wicklund, an abortion provider who travels by plane to bring care to women. Her decision to become a health care provider for women came in large part due to a terrible experience with her own abortion where she was treated poorly and told to "Shut up" by providers.

Determined that other women should have better reproductive care, she began work as an apprentice midwife and eventually finished college, earned a medical degree and started a practice in which she spends about 90 percent of her time on abortion services.

Dr. Wicklund describes her work in an soon-to-be released book, "This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor", which she hopes will open the door for more discussion about a controversial but common procedure.

“We don’t talk about it,” she said in a telephone interview. “People say, ‘Nobody I know has ever had an abortion,’ and that is just not true. Their sisters, their mothers have had abortions.”

Dr. Wicklund, 53, said that at current rates almost 40 percent of American women have an abortion during their child-bearing years, a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health policy. Abortion is one of the most common operations in the United States, she said, more common than tonsillectomy or removal of wisdom teeth. “Because it is such a secret,” she said, “we lose sight of how common it is.”

It's a really interesting article, so make sure to read the whole thing.