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At the clinic where I was trained, which closed in 2013, we called patients who had been with us before our "sisters." We wrote it on their charts and their intake cards, and we made sure to try to honor their experience and expertise, as in:
"I see here you are a sister — you've been with us before. You probably remember our process, but the state requires that I go over it again with you. Don't hesitate to speak up if I say something that doesn't mesh with your experience here.”
Some of our patients started to call themselves "sisters" in this way. I might answer the phone and the person on the line might say, "I'm a sister — was there last year." It was a nice way to acknowledge that people came back to us.
But we still dealt with multiple abortion stigma in both patients and staff. I remember one patient who was designated "difficult" because she refused to answer the gestational history questions on her chart and in counseling, even though we knew she had been with us before.
By the time I got to her in the procedure room, she was in a pretty grouchy mood, and I got the impression that the counselor had leaned on her a little bit, asking, "How many abortions?”
I asked her, "Was I your advocate last time?" She said yes, she had met me several times. By the end of her procedure, she was just fine. She said, "I love you guys, but I'm never coming back here. I have an appointment to get my tubes tied."
I always wondered if we could have made her last abortion experience more positive by telling her that it is normal to have more than one abortion, and that we recognized that she was making good choices for herself and her family — instead of asking her "how many?”
Why does it matter how many? I mean, medically. Why does the doctor need to know how many times she has been pregnant and the outcomes of all those pregnancies? I understand why the doctor needs to know about c-sections, excessive bleeding, fibroids, perhaps even pregnancies with multiple fetuses — but not how many pregnancies/abortions.
~ Jeannie Ludlow, former abortion patient advocate, and professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
@Decades2Doodles