We do Abotions Here, Textual Analysis

Marie Allbee Sallie Tisdale “We Do Abortions Here” In this paper, you will hear about a nurse’s experiences working at an abortion clinic from a literary and professional nursing prospective. It takes place in the 1970’s when it was legal to perform these procedures. Sallie Tisdale offers you a very detailed and upfront explanation of what an abortion really is. I believe that the many different circumstances and situations given in this text will help give people a different perspective on how we judge others. Sallie Tisdale was an American nurse and essayist, with her writing based upon health and medical issues. She was born in 1957, in Eureka, California. She earned a B. S. in Nursing at the University of Portland in 1983. She has won many awards and honors for her work, including being deemed a “National Endowment for the Arts” fellow in 1989. The story of “We Do Abortions Here” was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1990. The nurse that works at this clinic enjoys her job and her co-workers. She cannot show her true emotions and let people know what she truly feels. Many different people come through her office, but there is some sort of similarity between all of them. Some are married, single, too young, they’ve been raped, or not capable of providing for a child. Most of these women are scared and confused, and are just looking for someone to support them in their decisions. In the story, she begins by telling you of a patient she will see. She’s 18 and pregnant for the fourth time, uses drugs regularly with her dirty needle marks in the open. But his is nothing new because the people that see her all have a different story with the same ending. You will find a couple that has become pregnant on accident. The husband wants nothing to do with having another baby and would like to know if it is a boy, so he can punish his wife for her mistakes. Apparently, some spouses have the right to abort if it is not the sex that they had wanted. If you listen to some of these circumstances, you would understand why these women choose to abort. When the author gives you the detailed description of the procedure, it is almost gut wrenching. It is just that graphic and she compares it to having a manicure ”quick, cheap, and painless”. The doctors who practice these procedures have the final say on how far in the pregnancy they will perform an abortion. Some doctors will have a gestation limit or a limit on the amount performed on a patient, yet others will manipulate the rules to make their own.

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