LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - At Little Rock Family Planning Services, the women filed in without making eye contact, a demographic that remains unrecognized.
Leah works in a clothing boutique. Alicia is in high school. Tammy pulls espresso. Regina is a sergeant in the Army, recently home from Iraq.
Far from Washington and the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., here in Little Rock on an August weekend, 26 women from as far away as Oklahoma joined the more than one million American women who will probably have abortions this year.
Their experiences, at one of only two clinics in the state, offer a ground-level view of abortion in 2005, a landscape altered by shifts in technology, law, demographics and the political climate.
Brittany, 17, brought her mother for support. Linda, 39, brought her daughter.
Alexia, who wore a cross pendant,= prayed all through the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Delta State University in Mississippi. At 23, she was having her third abortion. "My religion is against it," she said, adding that she is a Baptist. "In a way I feel I'm doing wrong, but you can be forgiven. I blame myself. I feel I shouldn't have sex at all."
Venetia Grunder, 21, viewed an ultrasound image of the fetus in her womb. She was 12 weeks pregnant, though she had taken birth control pills as directed. "I feel pretty messed up," she said after seeing the image. "It's different, just knowing. My husband told me not to look. This changes my feelings, but I'm sticking by it. Damn it, $650, I'm sticking by it."
More than 25 million Americans have had abortions since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in 1973. Often kept secret, even from close friends or family members, the experience cuts across all income levels, religions, races, lifestyles, political parties and marital circumstances. Though abortion rates have been falling since 1990, to their lowest level since the mid-1970's, abortion remains one of the most common surgical procedures for women in America. More than one in five pregnancies end in abortion.
In the squat, nondescript brick building here, the lofty rhetoric that has billowed through public debate for the last 32 years gave way to the mundane realities of the armed security guard and the metal detector, the surgical table and the settling of the bill before the procedure - $525 to $1,800, cash or credit card only.
While public conversation about abortion is dominated by advocates with all-or-nothing positions - treating the fetus as a complete person, with full rights, or as a nonentity, with none - most patients at the clinic, like most Americans, found themselves on rockier ground, weighing religious, ethical, practical, sentimental and financial imperatives that were often in conflict.
Regina cried on the operating table.
Kori, 26, who was having her third abortion, asked to watch the procedure on the ultrasound monitor. "I wanted to see what it was like," she said. "It was O.K. to watch. Once you had your mind made up to do it, you just suck it up and go with it."
The solitary protester outside , Jim Dawson, 74, stood a court-mandated distance from the clinic with a video camera, taping women as they entered, and promising them hellfire if they went through with it - as he has for a decade. Mr. Dawson drives 40 miles from Vilonia, Ark., bringing cardboard signs that say "Abortion Kills," and usually departs by midmorning. On days when the clinic is closed, he pickets the Clinton presidential library. "I don't stop many of them," he said, "but a little bit goes a long way."
The Women
At the clinic, patients allowed a reporter to attend their consultations and even operations, but most spoke only if they could use just their first names. "It's not something I would talk about," said "M," a high school teacher who agreed to be identified only by her middle initial. She wore a miniskirt and T-shirt, her blond hair pulled back from her forehead. She said she had never discussed abortion with relatives or colleagues. Only two friends knew she was here.
"I'd lose my job," [Huh?] she said. "My family's reputation would be ruined. It makes me nervous even being in the waiting room. You don't want to know who's here, you don't want to be recognized, and you don't want to see them ever again. Because in society's eyes, you share the same dirty secret."
Even most staff members at the clinic insisted on using only their first names - "to protect my identity from the antichoice people," said Lori, a nurse practitioner. Several said they had not told family members what they did for a living, or were ostracized if they did.
"My oldest son won't let me see my grandchildren," said Sherry Steele, 57, a surgical assistant who started working at the clinic after her daughter had two abortions. The New York Times agreed to anonymity to encourage candor and to get a representative sample of women. (Those who volunteer their full names are by nature an unrepresentative minority.)
On this August weekend, the women entering the Little Rock clinic resembled those who have abortions nationwide. They were mainly in their 20's, more likely to be poor and African-American than the area population. Most were already mothers, many single. They arrived as a result of failure of one sort or another: a poor sexual decision, a broken relationship, a birth control method that just did not work. More than half of all women who have abortions say they used a contraceptive method in the month they conceived, [Huh?] according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
While abortion rates have been falling generally since 1990, the decline has been steepest among teenagers, and rates are lowest among educated, financially secure women. Researchers attribute the drop in teenage abortion to reduced rates of pregnancy, as a result of better access to contraception - including the three-month Depo-Provera injections - and abstinence.
Conversely, for poor and low-income women, rates increased during the 1990's, possibly in response to the 1996 welfare overhaul, which reduced support systems for women who carry their fetuses to term. At every income level studied by the Guttmacher Institute, African-American women were more likely to terminate their pregnancies than white women.
Leah, 26, said money was a factor in her decision to have an abortion. A former college track athlete, she works in a clothing boutique, a job that she said did not pay enough to support a child.
Like many women at the clinic, Leah had conflicted feelings about what she was doing. "I always said I would never, ever have an abortion," she said. "I probably will regret it. I'm pro-choice for cases of incest or rape, but if it's your own fault, you should accept responsibility. And it's my own fault."
In Arkansas, as in many states, abortion providers are required to offer women their ultrasound images before an abortion. Because Leah was just five weeks pregnant, her image showed a formless mass. "If I saw an actual fetal baby on the ultrasound, I wouldn't have been able to go through with it," she said. She said she felt selfish, "but hopefully this will set me on a straighter path."
The procedure took only minutes. Afterward, in a recovery area, she said she was less shaken than she had expected. "I thought I'd be crying," she said. "I feel goofy now, but not in a bad way. I feel relieved more than anything. I know I'll never forget it, but I'd rather do that than have a child I can't take care of."
Karen, 29, who arrived at the clinic 20 weeks pregnant, expressed no qualms about ending her pregnancy. Like nearly half of all women who have abortions, she had had one before, when she was 18. She did not look on abortion as shameful, she said, adding, "All of your past goes into making you who you are." [Abortion as coming-of-age rite?]
She has a 9-year-old son, and she said she felt she could not start again with a newborn child. This, too, is common. More than half of all women having abortions have had children, a percentage that rose in the 1980's but has not changed since 1990, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Karen and her boyfriend have an unstable relationship plagued by money problems, and they lived with a relative after being evicted from their home. She did not come in earlier in the pregnancy, she said, because she did not have the money. In the end, because she was so far along, her abortion took two days and cost $1,375, nearly three times what it would have cost if she had come in at 12 weeks.
"People tell you you can put your child up for adoption," she said. "But if your kid has medical problems, no one wants to adopt him. And you never know."
For many women at the clinic, their desire to end their pregnancy clashed with their religious beliefs. Tammy, a Muslim, had her first abortion a year ago, after having three children. She is married and works in a coffee shop in Tennessee. She became pregnant this time after erratically taking her birth control pills.
"I know it's against God," she said of her abortion. "But you have three kids, you want to raise them good. My friends and sister-in-law say, 'You care about money problems but don't care about what God will do.'
"I believe it's wrong. I pray to God to forgive me. This will be the last one. Never, never again."
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