Susan Wicklund with Alan Kesselheim | This Common Secret

Published: April 2, 2008

My Journey as an Abortion Doctor

Susan Wicklund, a physician who has worked in the field of women's reproductive health for more than 20 years, knows first-hand the trauma of a difficult abortion, and also, as a doctor, how safe, legal abortions can be "about life: quality of life for infants, children, and adults. Everywhere and in every sense of the word. Life, not death."

Her riveting and passionate memoir describes her own courageous journey, as a young, single mother who musters the resources - both mental and emotional - to become a doctor, and then to pursue a career that lands her in the midst of America's war over abortion and reproductive rights.

It is a battlefield that has posed considerable personal risk for herself and her family, as the increasingly violent protesters blocked entrances to the clinics where she worked, assaulted her, threatened her life, barricaded her house and harassed her daughter.

Still she steps forward, to tell her story and to continue her work. Her book "puts flesh and blood on the issue and gives it a woman's face," writes activist and author Barbara Ehrenreich.

- Kristi Niemeyer