Why I Am an Abortion Doctor
Poppema, a pro-choice feminist and physician, runs Aurora Medical Services, a birth control clinic in Seattle that she founded in 1986. Both an affecting, outspoken autobiographical memoir and a veritable manual for women considering abortion, her personal testament (written with Henderson, who teaches at the University of Washington School of Communications) begins with her 12 years of rigid Catholic schooling in rural New Hampshire followed by the ordeal of Harvard Medical School, where her classmates disdained her choice of family medicine over a lucrative specialty. She also discusses her own abortion while an intern in Seattle. Poppema believes that wide availability of abortion would alleviate misery by preventing unwanted children and helping poor women break out of the cycle of poverty. She describes in clear detail the counseling of patients and how abortions are performed, and discusses her clinic's trials with the drug mifepristone (brand name RU 486), the French abortion pill, which she hopes will become easily available in the U.S.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.