"I'm an abortionist"

Dr. William F. Harrison has forgotten how many children the woman had. He remembers she was poor and, most vividly, he remembers her response when a physician diagnosed her distended stomach as pregnancy."Oh, God, doctor," the woman said. "I was hoping it was cancer."

In 1968 he trained on a maternity ward. In a 24-hour shift, it was not unusual, he said, for four or five women to come in feverish or hemorrhaging from botched abortions.Harrison opened an obstetrics and gynecology practice, but after the Supreme Court established abortion as a constitutional right in 1973, he decided to take on an additional specialty. Now 70, Harrison estimates he's terminated at least 20,000 pregnancies.

Harrison warns every patient he sees that abortion may be illegal one day. He wants to stir them to activism, but most women respond mildly."I can't imagine the country coming to that," says Kim, 35, in for her second abortion in two years. A high school senior says the issue won't weigh heavily when she evaluates candidates. "There's other issues I see as more important," she says, "like whether they'll raise taxes."

He calls himself an "abortionist" and says, "I am destroying life."But he also feels he's giving life: He calls his patients "born again.""When you end what the woman considers a disastrous pregnancy, she has literally been given her life back," he says.

Before giving up obstetrics in 1991, Harrison delivered 6,000 babies. Childbirth, he says, should be joyous; a woman should never consider it a punishment or an obligation."We try to make sure she doesn't ever feel guilty," he says, "for what she feels she has to do."

So what does Dr. Harrison actually do? Harrison glances at an ultrasound screen frozen with an image of the fetus taken moments before his next abortion.

Against the fuzzy black-and-white screen, he sees the curve of a head, the bend of an elbow, the ball of a fist."You may feel some cramping while we suction everything out," Harrison tells the patient. A moment later, he says: "You're going to hear a sucking sound."

The abortion takes two minutes. The patient lies still and quiet, her eyes closed, a few tears rolling down her cheeks. The friend who has accompanied her stands at her side, mutely stroking her arm.

When he's done, Harrison performs another ultrasound. The screen this time is blank but for the contours of the uterus. "We've gotten everything out of there," he says. As the nurse drops the instruments in the sink with a clatter, the teenager looks around, woozy.

"It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," she says. "I thought it would be horrible, but it wasn't. The procedure, that is."She is not yet sure, she says, how she is doing emotionally. She feels guilty, sad and relieved, all in a jumble."There's things wrong with abortion," she says. "But I want to have a good life. And provide a good life for my child." To keep this baby now, she says, when she's single, broke and about to start college, "would be unfair."

Three abortions before lunch and three more after: The appointment book is always full.

LA Times