Beacon Broadside

Today's post is from Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us. Joffe is a professor in the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco (however, the views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Regents of the University of California, UCSF, or the UCSF Medical Center). This post originally appeared at RHRealityCheck.

“So
we got in around 5:30 a.m., there is two inches of water in the surgery room,
water on the carpets, two offices totally soaked, water leaking in from our
large windows…we put out hundreds of towels and started mopping up… we started
seeing patients at ten a.m.”

Rose
Codding, director of Falls Church Healthcare Center, a Virginia clinic that
provides abortions and other reproductive health care services, is calmly
telling me about her and her staff’s response in the immediate aftermath of
Hurricane Sandy. These efforts were successful—the clinic did not close at all,
a tribute both to very careful planning and to the extraordinary dedication of
those who work in the abortion field.

FCHC was able to see patients on both
Monday and Tuesday, the days of the greatest disruption by Sandy in Virginia.
Of her staff of 11, all but two were able to make it to the clinic on those
days, despite quite challenging driving conditions. And half of that day’s
patients were able to reach the clinic as well on Monday and somewhat more on
Tuesday. (Those unable to keep their appointments were mainly women who
depended on public transportation, which was suspended).

Patients, according to Codding, were
surprised and grateful that the clinic was opened. Ironically, the storm in one
sense provided a benefit to the clinic’s patients—given that most workplaces
were shut down, these women did not have to take time off from work. The only
disgruntled patients were those scheduled for Tuesday abortions who had to make
their way to the clinic on Monday for their sonograms, mandated by the state to
take place at least 24 hours in advance of their procedure. “I can’t believe I
had to drive through the rain just for this!” was a not uncommon refrain.

It has finally stopped raining in
Virginia, and while things are getting somewhat easier, they are still not back
to normal. Codding, for example, has been dealing with the aftermath of soaked
carpets and the need to eliminate mold, which can cause a special risk to staff
and patients with asthma. And of course, she and her staff, who heroically rose
to the occasion for several days running and had to add heavy-duty cleanup to
their already crowded work lives, are tired.

The willingness of Rose Codding and the
staff of FCHC to go to such lengths to keep open in the face of natural
disasters mirrors other stories I have heard over the years—stories which speak
both to women’s determination to get their abortions, no matter what, and the
abortion-providing community’s attempt to accommodate these women. I recall
being told by the staff of a clinic in the Seattle area that when a rare earthquake in
the region destroyed half the clinic, women still showed up for their
scheduled abortions. I think of the efforts made by Southern abortion providers
to offer free procedures to victims of Hurricane Katrina who had to flee New
Orleans and thus miss their scheduled abortions. The willingness of FCHC staff
to rise at dawn and deal with their water-logged facility (when most other
workplaces in the region remained closed) reminds me of the efforts of the staff
some years ago at a West Palm Beach abortion clinic who worked
furiously at cleanup efforts after a firebombing, and who were able to reopen
the clinic in a remarkably short time.

Codding is of course proud of her
staff, and by extension, her field. “We always rise to the occasion. We are
dedicated to the profession, and to the women we serve. We just keep on keeping
on.” But she also puts the natural disaster of Hurricane Sandy in perspective,
and makes clear that she, as an abortion provider, faces greater challenges. “It’s
never been easy for the 30 years I have been doing this. A natural disaster at
least is something we can cope with and then it’s over.”

FCHC as a Virginia-based clinic has
been subject not only to protestors, but to relentless attacks by the Virginia
legislature, and is currently facing uncertainty over the fate of the notorious Ambulatory
Surgery Center measure passed by that body—which would require her
facility, which provides only first trimester procedures, to be regulated like
a hospital. Should the current version of the law be upheld, it is widely
agreed, FCHC and nearly all of Virginia’s other freestanding clinics would
close. The Virginia Health Commissioner has resigned
in protest against this blatant politicization of health-care
regulation. It speaks volumes about the current status of abortion care in the
United States that Hurricane Sandy’s impact is trivial next to that of a red
state legislature.