A Different Abortion Story

Scott Klusendorf of LTI has invited both Steve and I to contribute to the excellent LTI blog.  This is my first post on that great blog:

Hello! I am honored to be invited to join this already impressive team at LTI. Since this is my first post here, I will join my blogmate Steve (we post here at Imago Dei) and describe a bit about myself and part of the reason in my interest in this challenging issue. I’m going to describe a true event which helped to mold my view on the issue of abortion.

I am a board certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon practicing in Michigan. Being on the other side of the doctor/patient relationship sometimes brings a different perspective.

One of the most common procedures that I perform is extraction of third molars (wisdom teeth) under IV sedation or general anesthesia. What makes my career a bit unique is that OMF surgeons are also trained in anesthesia, and we simultaneously administer anesthesia and perform surgery. The normal course of events is that a patient has a consultation where a history and exam is done, consent is discussed, and the surgery is described in detail. They then return for a future appointment where the surgery is completed.

A few years back, I was ready to begin surgery on an 18 year old woman who I had previously consulted with. After beginning the IV, I administered Versed and Fentanyl, which are usually the medications that I start out with. As the patient began to get sleepy (it is not an instantaneous process), she suddenly stated “I forgot to tell you – I just found out that I’m pregnant.” The pregnancy began in between the consultation and the surgery date. It was very early on in the pregnancy.

This was not good news. You see IV sedation of the type that we administer is contraindicated on pregnant women. There is a saying in anesthesia - the two scariest patients are bad asthmatics and pregnant women. Although it is perfectly safe for the woman – Versed is well known to be a cause of birth defects to the child when given in the first trimester. The feeling that I had when informed that I just gave a medication that could harm this woman’s child was awful. I can only compare it to backing up in your car and hearing a thump. What did I just do? Did I just hurt a child?

I made the quick decision to not do the surgery and reversed the anesthesia (which can be done with narcan and romazicon). Although these medications essentially cancel the sedative effects of the agents I had given, they do not remove the medications from the body. In other words, there was nothing I could do about the Versed that I had already given.

The patient woke up very quickly, and I calmly explained to her the situation. She became angry, which did not surprise me, but quickly the reason for her anger did come as a surprise. She was upset that I had woke her up and did not complete the procedure. When I explained again why this was done, she simply said “so what, I plan on getting on abortion next week.”  She returned a few months later (no longer pregnant) and I completed her surgery.

I realized at that time that the only difference between the child that I had been concerned about harming and the one that was scheduled for death was the fact that she was not wanted by her mother. If I, as a physician, gave a medicine that caused a wanted prenatal human being to die, no one would ask about which trimester the mother was in. They would simply acknowledge that a horrific thing occurred. However, if the child is unwanted by their mother, killing it is no big deal. This makes no sense.

I’m looking forward to interacting with others on both sides of this issue, and am always interested in other points of view. At least tentatively, I plan on cross posting both here and at Imago Dei