A Spark of Light(18)
It was the one truly miraculous moment of Dr. Louie Ward’s life.
At that moment Louie realized why his mama had gone to see Sebby Cherise. It wasn’t because she was having the child of a prominent married white man. It was because she had been protecting the child she already had, at the expense of the one she hadn’t wanted to conceive. This was a variation on a theme he had heard from patients: I have a child with a disability; I don’t have the time to parent another one. I can barely feed my son; what will I do with a second baby? I already work three jobs and take care of my family—there isn’t any more of me to go around.
So although Louie still went to Mass like clockwork, he also became an abortion provider. He flew several times a month to offer his services at women’s clinics. The only person who didn’t actually know what he did for a living was his grandmama.
She was in her nineties by the time Louie went back home to confess. He told her about the runner who had worked her whole life to secure a spot on the Olympic team, and then found herself pregnant after a condom broke. He told her about the woman who learned, in an opioid treatment program, that she was twelve weeks along.
He told her about a lady from a small, narrow-minded place who had been so blinded by the sun of a respected married man that she believed he would support her and claim their child as his own, only to learn that wasn’t how the world worked. They both knew who Louie was talking about. Grandmama, he said. I think Jesus would understand why I do what I do. I hope you can, too.
As he expected, his grandmama started to cry. I lost my baby and my grandbaby, she said after a long moment. Maybe now some other woman won’t.
In fact the only objection his grandmama had had to his career was that Louie might be killed by an anti-abortion activist. Louie knew that his name had been published on a website, along with other doctors who performed abortions, with information about where he lived and worked. He had known George Tiller, a doctor who’d been murdered while he was at church. Dr. Tiller had been wearing a protective vest at the time, but the gunman had shot him in the head.
Louie refused to put on a vest. The way he saw it, the minute he did, they had won. And yet, every morning he had to run the gauntlet of protesters. He would sit in his car for an extra minute, taking a deep breath, steeling himself for the vitriol and the love bombers—We’re praying for you, Dr. Ward. Have a blessed day! He would think of George Tiller and David Gunn and John Britton and Barnett Slepian, all killed by activists who were not satisfied to simply stand in a line and hurl insults.
Louie would count to ten, say an Our Father, and then in one smooth movement, gather his briefcase and exit the car. He’d hit the power lock while he was walking, face forward, eyes on the ground, refusing to engage.
Mostly.
There was one anti, a middle-aged white man, who repeatedly called out, “Sinful Negro baby killer!” Louie had ignored him, until one day he yelled, “Do I have to call you a nigger to get a rise out of you?”
That—well. That stopped Louie dead in his tracks.
“What part of me is most upsetting to you?” Louie asked calmly. “The fact that I am African American? Or the fact that I perform abortions?”
“The abortions,” the man said.
“Then what does my race have to do with anything?”
The protestor shrugged. “It doesn’t. I just throw that in.”
Louie almost had to admire the man’s scorched earth tactics.
There was only one reason he got out of his car every damn morning: the women he treated, who had to walk through that same gauntlet. How could he be any less brave than they were?
The antis wanted the women who chose abortions to feel isolated, the only people in the universe who had ever made such a selfish decision. What Louie wanted, for every woman who walked through the doors of the Center, was to make her understand she was not alone, and never would be. The most ardent antis didn’t realize how many women they knew who’d had an abortion. Wipe away the stigma and all you were left with was your neighbor, your teacher, your grocery clerk, your landlady.
He imagined what it felt like for them—to have made a decision that came at a colossal emotional and financial cost—and then to have that decision called into question. Not to mention the implication that they were not capable of managing their own healthcare. Where were the protesters at cancer centers, for example, urging chemotherapy patients to steer clear of the risks of toxins? Women were capable of taking aspirin if they had a headache, and the intrinsic risk of aspirin was far greater than that of any of the abortion medications that currently existed. If a woman chose a medication abortion, why did the mifepristone have to be taken in front of a doctor, as if she were an inpatient in a psychiatric ward who couldn’t be relied on to swallow a pill?
Louie believed that those white men with their signs and slogans were not really there for the unborn, but there for the women who carried them. They couldn’t control women’s sexual independence. To them, this was the next best thing.
Louie shifted and cried out as pain stabbed through his leg. The tourniquet had slowed the bleeding, until the shooter had—in a fit of pique—kicked him hard in the spot where the bullet had entered.
It was hell being a physician but being too injured to treat the others who’d been hurt. That had fallen to the other medical professional trapped here—the nurse, Izzy. He hadn’t worked with her before, but that wasn’t unprecedented. Vonita, the clinic owner, employed a rotating parade of healthcare professionals brave or stupid enough to show up every day in spite of the threats.