I was 42 years old and found myself pregnant with my husband. We had never wanted to have children and especially at our age we felt we were too old to start a family. I couldn't believe this was happening to me at this late age. I called a friend and she kindly told me of a quiet clinic where she had had one of her four abortions. I called them immediately. They were efficient and businesslike. I made the appointment - relieved that they were there and that I didn't have to go to Planned Parenthood where the shootings had been.
But the clinic felt cold to me and so I decided that I could call my regular doctor. I felt that at 42 years old I wasn't ashamed of having become pregnant and as he was my doctor and I would ask for his help. I spoke to Glenn and he gently told me he did not terminate pregnancies but would recommend someone who did.
To my amazement he recommended Dr. P. a woman I had met a few years earlier while we were both attending a singing workshop at Omega. I had thought that she was an incredible woman then and felt that I was being divinely protected being sent to her.
Dr. P. spoke to me as if I were another woman on the path of her life. She was professional and yet absolutely real. Unlike the clinic she asked me to come in a day before the procedure to have a cervical dilator inserted. She told me it would give me a 24 hour head start to dilate my cervix and would very much help reduce the pain of the procedure. The clinic just did it all at once, so I felt fortunate.
The most amazing thing that occurred during my first conversation with Dr. P. was when we discussed her fee. She told me that it was $640 but since the shooting, which had occurred at the Planned Parenthood clinic in our city, if a woman called like myself who had no health insurance coverage she would match the reduced cost of going to the Planned Parenthood clinic. The fact that Dr. P. was committed to helping women receive safe and unharrassed legal abortions made it possible for me to have what turned out to be a deep experience of love and relationship instead of a cold, and painful, and possibly life threatening nightmare. I am so grateful to this generous and committed physician.
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