Lovejoy: A Year in the Life of an Abortion Clinic
by Peter Korn (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996)
Reviewed by Rick Cochran
I first heard about Lovejoy while listening to Terri Gross interview Peter Korn on NPR’s “Fresh Air”. In the course of the interview, Korn commented that his experiences observing abortion counseling sessions at Lovejoy had caused him to reject the rhetoric of “choice” in the context of abortion rights. This comment, and the speed with which Terri Gross changed the subject, prompted me to read the book.
It was only after reading about three-quarters of Peter Korn’s book that I realized how effectively he had expressed the thoughts and feelings of the various players in the daily drama surrounding this Portland, Oregon abortion clinic. Although his book has its deficiencies, Korn has performed a great service by refusing to caricature – by refusing to make people and issues simpler than they really are.
Korn follows the daily activities of several people in varying degrees of detail. Allene Klass, founder and administrator of the clinic, and Carye Ortman, the director of counseling, receive the deepest coverage. Dr. Harold Suchak, the surgeon who is both chief of medical staff and performer of the majority of late-term abortions, and Andrew Burnett, a radical anti-abortion activist, receive less detail. These characters form the framework around which weave the stories of the clinic’s patients and their partners, parents, and friends. It is greatly to Korn’s credit that he keeps his personal ideologies almost completely concealed. He presents his characters as straightforwardly as possible with their complexities of strengths and weaknesses – no canonization or demonization.
The only possible clue regarding Korn’s prejudices lies in his choice of the book’s primary representative of the anti-abortion argument – Burnett, an unappealingly dogmatic and judgmental ideologue. In addition, Korn’s lengthy treatment of Shelley Shannon, the woman who was convicted of multiple clinic arsons and the shooting of an abortionist, betrays a morbid fascination with the dark side of the anti-abortion movement. Korn could easily have found people who are no less committed to the end of the current abortion-on-demand regime but who are furthering their goals by working to provide women in crisis pregnancies with real choices: the choice to speak truth to their partners, parents, and friends; the choice to recognize the truth regarding the nature of the act of abortion; the choice to allow a human life to continue.
Given the thoughts and actions of his three main characters, however, it is impossible to accuse Korn of serious pro-abortion-rights bias. Indeed, his book strongly confirms many of the allegations of the anti-abortion-rights movement. Given the competition of other abortion providers in Portland, the financial “bottom line” is necessarily the chief concern of Allene, who invests much thought in how she can nurture this kind of practical thinking in the more ideological Carye, her likely successor. It is of paramount importance to keep the “numbers” (of abortions) up:
“After setting the phone back in its cradle Carye contemplates the monthly figure. ‘We need numbers desperately,’ she thinks. She asks one of the medical assistants to look up the running total of procedures for the month. The woman comes back a minute later with the answer – 195 so far. Not enough, Carye thinks. They should be up to 230 by now.” (p. 241)
Scenes like this make it extraordinarily difficult to argue that abortion clinic-based counseling does not involve a phenomenal conflict of interest. This is not to say that counselors who work at abortion clinics are greedy, unethical people who regularly attempt to coerce women into having abortions against their will. “Conflict of interest” is a well known concept in our society. A judge is expected to recuse herself from presiding over any case in the outcome of which she has a financial interest. A lawyer is prohibited from accepting a client who is bringing a suit against an existing client of the lawyer or his firm. These measures are not meant to imply character faults in the people involved, but are taken in recognition of the difficulty we human beings have in sorting out our own motives. The goal is to provide an environment as free from conflicting interests as possible in cases where serious decisions are being made. I have yet to hear anyone in the pro-abortion-rights community acknowledge, much less address, the conflict of interest inherent in abortion clinic-based counseling.
Korn’s interview comment regarding his disenchantment with the rhetoric of “choice” is illustrated by the following passage:
“It is Carye’s belief that most of the women who walk through Lovejoy’s doors are victimized by a feminist political dogma that makes it appear as if a buffet of alternatives is available to them – they merely have to choose. Carye hates the phrase pro-choice. The phrase has nothing to do with the world in which she works.” (p. 107)
To be fair, it is clear that what Allene and Carye really believe is that many of the women who come to Lovejoy simply have no choice other than abortion. This is why it is imperative to them that abortion providers like Lovejoy continue to exist no matter how difficult and demoralizing the work involved. If one accepts their premise, the business of the clinic, be it ever so objectively appalling, is a matter of simple logic.
An example of the inappropriateness of the word “choice” is provided by Jessica, a sixteen-year-old who does not “believe in abortion”, but who has come to the clinic at the insistence of her father, who “has said that if Jessica does not have an abortion, she cannot come home.” “‘It kind of makes that whole pro-choice thing a joke,’ [Carye] thinks. From Carye’s perspective, Jessica didn’t have a lot of choice today.” (p. 221)
One of the most striking impressions I had while reading Lovejoy is the extent to which deception pervades the abortion business. The Lovejoy counselors go to some pains to get their patients to stop deceiving themselves that, abortion or no, their lives have not fundamentally and permanently changed from what they were before they became pregnant. However, there are still multiple levels of deception. Take the case of Heather, a 22-year-old who lives at home and shows up at Lovejoy 36 weeks pregnant. Heather has so far been successful at deceiving herself as to the extent to which her pregnancy has progressed. Because Lovejoy is not equipped to perform abortions at that advanced a stage of pregnancy, Carye arranges for Heather to deliver her baby and place it with a couple Carye knows who want to adopt. The only problem is that Heather must continue her pregnancy at home without her parents noticing. With Carye’s help, she tells them that her weight gain is due to a thyroid condition and plans to have labor induced while they are away for two weeks. In the ensuing weeks, and after the baby is born, it begins to appear likely that the parents realize what is going on and are, in turn, deceiving Heather into thinking that they don’t. One is left with the question – is this elaborate dance of deceit really necessary? It certainly isn’t healthy. Not realizing that Heather is pregnant, one of the other waitresses where she works has been surreptitiously dosing Heather’s drinks with methamphetamines. When the drug shows up in a regular blood test, Heather’s cover is almost blown, and we are left to wonder whether there will be any permanent effect on the baby.
In another case, Debbie and her boyfriend are soon to be married when she discovers that the child she is bearing was actually conceived during a “one-night stand with an old boyfriend who just happened to be passing through town.” Carye suggests that she simply not tell her fiancé that he is not the child’s father, but when it becomes clear that this will not work because the old boyfriend is of a different race, they decide to tell him that her abortion at 16 weeks of pregnancy is a miscarriage.
“Carye leans back in her chair and wonders what she would have done in Debbie’s situation. She knows she could never make Debbie’s choice because she could never be so deceitful with [her own husband]. And she would never risk setting him up for the anxiety Debbie’s fiancé is going to feel the next time Debbie becomes pregnant and he suffers through nine months wondering if she is going to miscarry again. But Carye is stumped trying to figure out another option that would work.” (p. 153)
The deception extends to testimony before the Oregon state legislature regarding a bill which would require that the parents of a girl under 15 be notified before she can obtain an abortion.
“Carye explains that Lovejoy rarely schedules an abortion for the same day as an initial appointment and that she routinely advises women to find family and friends with whom they can share what they are feeling. In fact, Carye does not mention Lovejoy policy has been evolving; increasingly, first-trimester abortion cases are being counseled and performed the same day.” (p. 81)
It is also interesting that Carye’s aversion to the term “pro-choice” does not prevent her from glibly using the term “anti-choice” during her testimony (p. 79).
Adherents from both sides of the abortion rights issue will find Lovejoy disconcerting, whether from the culture of deception in the clinic, or from the elaborate calculus with which Dr. Suchak determines whether he will be willing to terminate a human life, or from the deeply religious fervor with which Shelley Shannon thanks God for providing her with the 5 gallon gas can which she uses to set fire to an abortion clinic. These are very good things to be disconcerted about.