http://lib.tcu.edu/staff/bellinger/abortion/Tisdale.htm

For a very long time, I have wanted to pursue a career of medicine, specifically obstetrics and gynecology. My reasoning has always been that women’s health and education about her reproductive system is of the utmost importance. I am very pro-choice, so this subject area is very significant to me. I am pro-choice for two reasons: one, that the government – or anyone else – has no right to decide what a woman does with her body; and two, because the criminalization of abortions does not stop abortions from taking place, it simply makes unsafe ones commonplace. The author, Sallie Tisdale, writes from the perspective of a nurse working in an abortion clinic (it is not said whether this is true or not). She uses descriptive imagery to present the work she does. In one passage, she describes how many women are failed by unsuccessful contraceptive methods. In describing the weight of an abortion, she says, “The anger and shame of these women I hold in one hand, and the basin in the other. The distance between the two, the length I pace and try to measure, is the size of an abortion.” (The basin refers to that which collects the discarded tissue). These words truly put into perspective the burden that is having an abortion. To carry not a child, but the weight of not having a child, is truly traumatizing for some, though often necessary. However, she describes the grim reality that is the way we see the creation of life. “There are the sweet, light promises of love and intimacy, the glittering promise of education and progress, the warm promise of safe families, long years of innocence and community. And there is the promise of freedom: freedom from failure, from faithlessness. Freedom from biology.”  This statement addresses the human fear of imperfection. The fear of straying from the norm. The accessibility of abortions can be an easy fix, an eraser on an otherwise blemish free past.