I knew since high school that I wanted to go into medicine. I wanted to help and heal people. In 1966, I graduated from the University of Tennessee Memphis. I did my residency training at the Mayo Clinic, with an externship in Chicago at Cook County Hospital. That is where I learned about abortion.
One of the rotations I did was on the Infected OB ward. I was in charge of the women coming in from the emergency room after incomplete abortions from the back-alley mills in the city. I would stabilize them, start IVs, give blood, and administer antibiotics. The next morning, I took them to a treatment room to do a Suction D&C (dilation and curettage), to scrape out whatever tissue the abortionist had left inside. At that time, I became outraged. That’s when I decided to try to help women by offering safe abortions. What I didn’t realize at that time was that abortions are never safe for the woman or her child.
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