What Women Do and Don’t Talk About with their Abortion Doctor
Take mismatched socks, for example.
“I love your socks!” I tell her.
It’s the third time I’ve said it today; it won’t be the last. I’m not sure how genuine it sounds. I am tired and acutely aware of the line of patients in the waiting room. But I really do like her socks: horizontal rainbow stripes from toe to calf. Her legs are pale and have been recently, recklessly shaved; I can see a spot on her knee where she nicked the skin. Her thighs tremble with anxiety, or maybe the room is a little cold. She is flat on her back, naked from the waist down, her feet in stirrups, her hips splayed open.
“Thanks,” she says. “My sister gave them to me for my twentieth birthday.”
“How nice! Is she older or younger?”
“Older. She loves rainbows. And you know, I’m bisexual, so I end up getting a lot of rainbow-themed gifts from her.” She giggles nervously.
The medical assistant and I whoop with appreciative laughter. Her thighs stop trembling, her bottom softens into the table.
Another patient, another day: “I love your socks.”
Hers are knee-high desert scenes: On one leg: a cactus and a coiled rattlesnake, silhouetted in black against a red and orange sky. On the other leg: a silhouette of a coyote howling at the moon, the sky purple, and aquamarine.
“Oh, thanks!” She is nearly forty, with thin blonde hair, freckled skin, and a self-deprecating manner. “I can only wear knee-highs with those ankle braces.” From the exam table, she gestures to the chair where her pants and underwear are folded in a neat pile. Under the chair lies a pair of sneakers with bulky black braces stuck inside.
“What do you wear the braces for?” I ask.
“Oh,” she chuckles, “My husband grabbed my ass so hard I fell off a curb.”
“Wow.”
“I tore my Achilles tendons on both sides.”
“I guess he probably felt pretty bad about that.”
“Oh he feels awful,” she says. “It happened four months ago, and not a day goes by when he doesn’t apologize for it.”
“I hope your tendons heal up soon.”
“Sure, they will. I’ve got a great physical therapist. In the meantime, it’s an excuse to wear some funky socks.”
Certain topics of conversation lend themselves to certain fields of medicine.
Apparently, dermatologists hear a lot about their patients’ favorite vacation spots, where they get all that UV-damaging sun exposure. My husband, an ophthalmologist, says he hears a lot about his patients’ pets — a frequent source of eye injuries and allergies.
I am a family physician specializing in women’s reproductive health. The nature of my work — the majority of my clinical visits are first-trimester abortions — means that I meet my patients in a moment of intense vulnerability. They are half-naked and often terrified by the time I walk into the room. It is critical that I make them feel comfortable and earn their trust.
I notice — and talk a lot about — my patients’ socks.
Socks make an easy bridge across the awkward physical and emotional space of the procedure room: They are neutral, they are quotidian, they are safe. They are also the only article of clothing I see once I’m seated between her legs.
Only recently has it occurred to me that patients may have this in mind, consciously or not, when they choose their socks on the morning of their appointment. Perhaps they choose their favorite or most “comfy” pair. (Several patients have told me as much. One woman said, “Stirrups are always so dang cold. These socks are like a hug for my feet.”) Perhaps they choose to wear socks that say THURSDAY on a Monday, just to see if I notice, or purposely mismatch their socks to add a little spunk. These small statements may be their only way of telling me something about themselves — something besides their body, their pain, their choices.
Their socks: I wish I could list them all, although such a list could never capture the essence of the women who wore them, their characters and personalities and moods, the conversations we’ve had.
Fuzzy polka-dotted knee-highs. Ice cream cones. Elvis Presley. Timon and Pumba, or Elsa and Anna. (When I see a patient wearing Disney socks, I know she has kids my age, and I can talk to her about the kids’ favorite movies and the peculiarly addictive nature of “Frozen,” which as far as I’m concerned is rivaled only by Oxycontin.) Unicorns. Penises. (!) Phrases and slogans. “I love my job.” (The patient told me a co-worker bought her these as a joke.) “I don’t f***ing care.” (Another gift — and if anyone ever gives me a pair of these socks, I will be forever grateful.)
I see a lot of unmatched socks. This in itself is a rich topic.
Unmatched socks make for an easy three-way banter between the patient, the medical assistant, and me: Who has time to dig through the drawer to find matching socks? What happens to all those single socks that go missing in the laundry cycle, never to be found again? Or we might extol those giant packs of Costco socks that all come in the same color, so that they all match, every time. No need to dig around in the sock drawer again.
On the other hand: Matching socks, especially patterned or Days-Of-The-Week socks, are an opportunity to congratulate her on her attention to detail and general put-togetherness. (Wow! Good for you! Not only did you put on cute socks for your abortion, you found two of the same pair!)
But here is where I begin to turn critical of sock-talk, to find a strand of darkness running through all that light-hearted chatter. Because there is a way in which these conversations and themes (Fashion! Laundry! Disney movies!) degrade what it means to be a woman, and a mother, in the very moment when those meanings are most blatantly at stake.
She is here today so that I can remove a fetus from her uterus. Many would say (including the protestors outside the clinic door, the ones who blocked her way and shoved pamphlets into her hands) that in becoming pregnant, she has achieved her body’s highest purpose. And that by coming to see me today, she has failed at that purpose. She doesn’t want to be pregnant; she can’t or she doesn’t want to have a baby. Not right now, maybe never. What kind of woman is she? What kind of woman does this?
These are the real conversations and unanswerable questions echoing silently through the procedure room. These are the issues and questions that matter to me, the things I would rather talk about.
To be honest, I don’t f***ing care about her socks.
So why am I talking about them? Over and over and over? “I love your socks!” Why do I keep saying it? Another unanswerable question, but I’ll take a stab at it now.
Part of being an abortion doctor is accepting that many of my patients don’t want to have the real, hard conversations — not with me, not in this room, not right now, maybe never. Plenty of them purposely hold me at arm’s length, refusing to look me in the eye, or telling me, “I don’t believe in this.” “I’m actually pro-life.” “This is just a really difficult situation, so I have to do it this one time.” You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard these things. This is the tension she and I must hold between us.
This certainly isn’t true of all my patients. Some of them hold my hand. They want to share their stories or talk about the big questions — before, during, or after their abortion. Sometimes their words move me to tears. But I must leave that up to the individual woman, to lead me to that space if that’s where she wants or needs to go.
The procedure room is a space for comfort, not controversy.
It is not a feminist space; it is not even a “pro-choice” space — at least not overtly. In order to gain a woman’s trust, I need to meet her in that liminal space of womanhood, where we both know what the real issues are, and we both agree to talk instead about laundry and Disney and fashion. I must work through, and sometimes around, the tension.
And still. Regardless of what’s being said out loud, we both know why she’s here. We both understand that she is walking into this room pregnant, and she will walk out of it not pregnant. Whether this is a “choice” or simply the best available option to her right now doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it is possible. I — a woman and a mother — am making it possible for her.
And to get her through it, I can start by talking about her socks.
