This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Sue Wicklund (Author), Alan Kesselheim (Author)
Key Phrases: Flower Grandma, United States, North Dakota (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In rational, compassionate and honest language, Wicklund chronicles more than 20 years as a medical doctor and women's health provider with a "fundamental commitment to patients and to the cause of keeping reproductive rights safe and legal," a commitment that would put herself and her family under direct threat from anti-abortion extremists, and cause her to adopt disguises and even a personal bodyguard in order to continue her work. Wicklund's story is gripping and poignant, not only for its numerous personal accounts-including Wicklund's own experience terminating her pregnancy-but in her consideration of current and proposed reproductive rights legislation; in addition to eye-opening statistics ("In 2006, 87% of counties in the United States had no abortion provider"), Wicklund provides a fine resource guide for further reading. Though a digression concerning her parents' unrelated health issues derails the narrative, and she fails to discuss abortion law in other developed countries, this topical memoir will make a compelling read for anyone interested in women's health and reproductive rights in America.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Emily Bazelon

In the 35 years since Roe v. Wade, human stories and hard science have been the dueling weapons of the abortion wars. Abortion opponents have presented emotional accounts of the destruction of fetuses -- and, more recently, tales of distress from women who regret their abortions. Supporters of legal abortion have often countered with data on the decline in backstreet abortions and improvements in women's health and welfare.

So it's a welcome change to see two new books in which the pro-life and pro-choice camps switch their usual tactics. In This Common Secret, Susan Wicklund tells riveting stories about patients she has treated during nearly 20 years as an abortion provider. Meanwhile, in Embryo, Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen argue on scientific and philosophical grounds that from its first moment as a one-cell organism, the embryo is a living human being and, thus, entitled to legal protection. If Wicklund's book is the more effective, perhaps that's because she's not claiming to prove one objective truth, just conveying her own experience -- and because she has good, multifaceted stories to tell.

As a 26-year-old single mother working part-time and getting by on welfare and food stamps, Susan Wicklund became one of the first members of her large Wisconsin family to go to college. Before she decided to become a doctor and specialize in women's health, she had her own abortion to surmount -- a 1976 procedure that she did not understand, and that she sobbed and fought her way through until a doctor told her to shut up and drugged her. This horror story could come straight out of an anti-abortion pamphlet were it not for the determination Wicklund drew from it as she began medical school: "I could make sure my patients were treated differently than I had been -- with respect and decency. The memory of my own abortion troubled me, but it also hardened my resolve."

Such clear-eyed depictions of abortion services, and the close-up descriptions of the women Wicklund has treated, are the source of the book's power. This is a doctor who spent years working 100-hour weeks, crisscrossing the West to reach remote clinics and pregnant women. Over the years, Wicklund endured stalking and physical threats. She wore a bulletproof vest and carried a gun. One desperate morning in 1991, she woke to the sound of protesters chanting, "Susan kills babies!" outside her rural home. They stayed for weeks; Wicklund's daughter had to ride to school in a police car. And her marriage fell victim to the work and strain. "I have to recognize the truth," she writes. "My commitments have demanded a great deal from the people I love."

Her zeal is not for simple abortion on demand, but for medical care that ends in abortion only when both doctor and patient are sure of that choice. "My biggest fear has always been to do an abortion on someone who will later come to regret it," she writes. When she is afraid a woman is being coerced or has doubts, Wicklund says, she sends the woman away. In her book, Wicklund prints a grateful letter from one such patient. And she tells the story of a patient who opted for abortion because she'd thought she'd conceived through a rape, only to grieve inconsolably when she realized she'd mistaken the timing of her pregnancy.

These are not typical stories, and Wicklund does not present them as such. But she uses them to underscore the importance of counseling, which she describes as the biggest economic challenge of abortion practice, since it's hard to recoup the costs from insurers. And Wicklund's sensitivity to the fraught nature of abortion, as some women experience it, makes her stories of the damage wrought by the "antis," as she calls them, more credible and vivid. On the satisfied customer side of the ledger, she counts a prim woman who let loose a terrific scream of joy when assured she was no longer pregnant. And to illustrate the hassle of state-imposed restrictions, Wicklund describes a teenager who missed days of school and had to wait a month because of a state parental consent law, and a woman who lost her job because of the multiple visits necessitated by a mandated 24-hour waiting period.

George and Tollefsen's prose is dryer than Wicklund's because of the nature of their project. The authors -- George is a Princeton professor of jurisprudence and member of the President's Council on Bioethics, and Tollefsen a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina -- set out to prove that "a human embryo is a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stage of his or her natural development." As such, from the moment of fertilization, the embryo deserves full moral respect as well as "the rights that people possess simply by virtue of their humanity." George and Tollefsen deliberately set aside religion in making their case, relying instead on the classic tools of philosophical proof.

The first steps of their argument are fairly unassailable -- sperm fertilizes egg, and a pencil-point-sized embryo, or zygote, is formed "fully programmed" to become a baby nine months later (assuming no missteps along the way). But can science or philosophy prove that this zygote has the same moral claim to legal status as any member of the "human family," such that the destruction of embryos in the service of stem cell research is akin to Nazi experiments on the mentally retarded?

The "living Homo sapiens" language that George and Tollefsen defend has been adopted by the legislature of South Dakota and is the subject of a legal challenge that may end up before the Supreme Court. The judges who have ruled in the case so far reject the notion that the status of the embryo can be objectively resolved by science. George and Tollefsen's book probably won't change their minds.

Here's an example that illustrates why. Harvard professor Michael Sandel, one of the authors' academic sparring partners, has posed this hypothetical: Suppose you're escaping from a building that's on fire, and you have to choose between saving a crate of frozen embryos and a 5-year-old girl -- which do you rescue? George and Tollefsen have to admit that most people would save the girl. But they insist that if the rescuer were the parent or grandparent of the embryos, he "might well choose to rescue them, and most people would not regard this as immoral."

Really? Is this an accurate representation of the moral stance of "most people," or a mirror that George and Tollefsen are holding up to themselves? Last fall, scientists in the United States and Japan announced they had reprogrammed adult cells to give them the qualities of embryonic cells that are so valued in stem cell research. This development takes the urgency out of George and Tollefsen's plea -- and most people would probably agree that if it leaves us with less to fight over in this arena, so much the better. But if science helps ease the embryo debate, it will be for reasons that these authors don't anticipate.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (December 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158648480X
• ISBN-13: 978-1586484804
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #184,831 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #14 in

  Books > Nonfiction > Women's Studies > Abortion & Birth Control

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really makes you admire this woman., February 1, 2008

By	Chris - See all my reviews

I just finished this book and I cried through half of it. Dr. Wicklund is extremely open about her life and what she's had to go through to provide women with the choice that is their legal right to make. Flying to 3 states every week. Spending 6 days a week away from her family. Death threats. Being surrounded and screamed at by angry protesters in the airport every-single-week for years. Having her house surrounded and her daughter targeted. She constantly fears for her life. Could you do this? Even if you really believed in what you were doing? I can only hope to be as strong as she is.

I will be interested in what reasonable pro-lifers think of this book. As written, Dr. Wicklund is the kind of doctor that they should look as kindly on as possible for them. She believes in real counseling. She sends patients home if she doesn't think they are sure about their choice - and she asks them if they are sure over and over and over. She only performs 1st semester abortions. She reports statutory rapes to Social Services. She's even honest about issues in women's clinics that aren't as well run and works to fix the problems. Does she really deserve the treatment she's subjected to?

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking reality---The intolerance of extremists, February 28, 2008

By	Lydia Becker - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazing, shocking, and educative piece of literature. Easy, impressive read. Describes what steps extremists are willing to take who seem to lack the ability to accept, or respect, people's opinions, if they are different from their own. The actions the extremists take border on or sometimes even cross into insanity.
The book offers excellent material for a movie that most likely would turn into a huge success, which may offer the possibility for people like Sue Wicklund to go about their jobs without fear for their lives, help people who are seeking Sue's services to not get harrassed for what they believe needs to be done.
I have the utmost respect for Sue Wicklund and other abortion doctors, as they do not give up, even in the face of danger.
Well done, Sue!!!! A++++++++++++++++

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent Clear-Eyed Courage, March 8, 2008

By	grrlpup (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This is the voice of Dr. Susan Wicklund, telling stories from her practice as an abortion provider, and stories of the effect her career had on her life, her family, and the communities where she worked.

The prose is even-keeled and quietly eloquent, but her description of life under seige as anti-choice fanatics grew bolder and bolder in their violence and intimidation literally made my heart pound while I read some passages. I had to tell myself that her book is in my hands, so obviously she made it through alive. Even if you remember the news stories from those years, the immediacy of her account will give you fresh insight.

Dr. Wicklund is a hero in this book, and she's a hero to me. Still, I wondered occasionally what it would be like to hear someone else's side-- not an enemy, but maybe a colleage or family member whose perspective could broaden the view a little. However, she does talk about regrets and the price she paid for her choice of career, in time away from her family and the strain put on those who cared about her.

This is the first book in a long time that I've read straight through in one day. Powerful.