This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor | 
 enlarge | Authors: Susan Wicklund, Sue Wicklund, Alan Kesselheim
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 91059
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 158648480X
Dewey Decimal Number: 610.92
EAN: 9781586484804
ASIN: 158648480X
Publication Date: December 31, 2007
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Condition: Hardcover. brand new
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Product Description
In This Common Secret Dr. Susan Wicklund chronicles her emotional and dramatic twenty-year career on the front lines of the abortion war. Growing up in working class, rural Wisconsin, Wicklund had her own painful abortion at a young age. It was not until she became a doctor that she realized how many women shared her ordeal of an unwanted pregnancy—and how hidden this common experience remains.
This is the story of Susan's love for a profession that means listening to women and helping them through one of the most pivotal and controversial events in their lives. Hers is also a calling that means sleeping on planes and commuting between clinics in different states—and that requires her to wear a bulletproof vest and to carry a .38 caliber revolver. This is also the story of the women whom Susan serves, women whose options are increasingly limited.
Through these intimate, complicated, and inspiring accounts, Wicklund reveals the truth about the women's clinics that anti-abortion activists portray as little more than slaughterhouses for the unborn. As we enter the most fevered political fight over abortion America has ever seen, this raw and powerful memoir shows us what is at stake.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
interesting and inspiring October 25, 2008
Jana Burson
I just loved this book. It is wonderful to read about a person who lives their convictions (not that I necessarily agree with her personally but that is nearly beside the point). She shows a great deal of courage by continuing a work that she believes in even after threats and other difficulties. Any book that makes me think about the shades of gray that exist in the world instead of my more comfortable black and white is a good book.
I hope she keeps writing
 Little-known, closely-held mis-steps; societal anger, denial October 7, 2008
Wordsmith
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Professionally qualified specialist explicates her background and experience of many years in following the pathetic result of females' unique dependence and sexual vulnerability. This problem is clearly attributable to the human condition pre-menopause, regardless of age.
As a specialist in OB-Gyn, she does her best to ensure that her patients
are examined to discuss the patient's decision thoroughly and to ascertain early stage of pregnancy. The setting provided in this way goes
to ensure minimal frequency of complications of the event in the life of the individual both emotionally and physically.
The sacrifices involved for this doctor are beyond personal. She describes the forms of protest against her self and family and the
clinic and the clinic staff.
This book is an opportunity to hear from an insider in the confidential
corridor serving "women's health."
Abortion September 21, 2008
K. saba
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ms. Wicklund's book is interesting and complex. The author travels to different states to abort fetal tissue. Protesters try to block the entrance to the clinics. They harass her family, and scream slogans in her face, such as, "Murderer, stop killing babies".
Susan Wicklund seems to have genuine concern for her clients. She writes that she lives in fear of doing an abortion for women, who would regret it latter. Instead of simply getting rid of the fetal tissue, she counselor's women so they will not regret their abortions. If a women seems hesitate to have an abortion, Ms Wicklund suggests different options like adoption. In spite of her counseling, I wonder how many women regret their abortions.
The book does a good job of describing the complexities of abortion. I learned from the book, as I suspected, that men have no rights over a fetus. Should a woman decide to end the life of their baby, a man has no choice in the matter.
While reading the book I recall seventh grade, when my teacher, Ms. Glen, taught us during environmental week how we should only have two children per couple (ZPG), and that abortion was just getting rid of useless tissue. I shyly asked "Isn't that tissue going to be a baby?' My classmates all looked at me with disdain. One boy sneered, "You must be a Catholic!"
The teacher explained again, that it was just useless tissue. In other words, the teacher explained abortion, like it was similar to taking out the trash.
In spite of the cliques of the abortion advocates. Abortion is not just about "a women's right to choose." The fetal tissue is a separate entity no matter how much women talk about "their rights."
This generation according to a poll in Time Magazine states, that teenagers' attitudes on abortion are different. They do not glorify abortion, and they recognize that abortion is ending a human life. Abortion should not be celebrated, but discouraged. Not everyone who opposes abortion is a religious zealot.
The book left me feeling sad, but I am giving this book five stars because it was well written and interesting
An inspirational, feel-good page turner September 7, 2008
Hiram Peck
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hooray for Wicklund's heroic struggle on behalf of abortion! I very much sympathized with her enduring persecution from the anti-choice fascists. Because lets face it--abortions are great! The right-wing Bible thumpers claim that abortion is "killing". But what's wrong with that? Killing, obviously, should be a choice left to a child's mother, not the government.
I was shocked to read that there are so few abortionists available in rural America. O, the trials that these women must go through to abort their fetuses! I wept in triumph as each fetus was--against seemingly insurmountable odds--aborted! Thank God for courageous warriors like Wicklund! Fight on, brave abortionists! Unite, I say! Unite behind Abortion's billowing star-spangled banner! Surely a nobler cause was never championed!
A Courageous Woman August 16, 2008
BookLover (Florida)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a remarkable story about a courageous woman who - despite ongoing threats to her self, family, practice, and property- vigilantly protects a woman's right to choose.
Dr. Wicklund's stories about her patients are both inspirational and heartbreaking; her interactions with abortion stalkers/protesters - who violated her privacy and terrorized her family - are absolutely chilling. Before I read this book, I thought I understood the risks that doctors assumed when they worked at a facility that performed abortions. I didn't have a clue.
God bless you, Dr. Wicklund, for your eloquence, grace, and devotion to woman's health. You are an inspiration.
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