Capacity for sympathy lacking

WHEN I RETIRED from practice as a physician, I knew that I could continue to serve my community and women if I became involved with organizations that support women’s access to safe abortion services.

Nowhere else in medicine are my colleagues endangered by offering the best, safest medical care. Nowhere else in medicine are patients, not clients, treated to derogatory and demeaning catcalling when walking into a clinic. That we, the beacon of a free society, allow women and physicians to be vilified for doing what is best for themselves and their families, is disgraceful. Women make this decision despite how society has made it more and more difficult. Why? Because each woman knows, no matter whether old or young, her capacity.

I have met women at the bus station: tired after 30 hours of travel. These women are not seasoned travelers. They may be hurting, exhausted and have never been this far from home before.

I take them to my home where they spend their time when not at the clinic. And I see them back on the bus: resolute, at peace and ready to face their full and already complex lives. When the Religious Coalition (for Reproductive Choice) calls and says that a woman needs a place to stay, I am grateful to be able to be there. I would challenge anyone who opposes women’s right to make these decisions to walk with just one of them and listen to her story.

I fear that too many people do not have the capacity of empathy or sympathy and cannot experience someone else’s condition and pain. That is a sad statement about our society.

Perhaps it is why we still do not have universal health care and why a large number of children in our communities go to bed hungry. It is why children languish in foster care or are found to be abused by their caregivers. We can and should do better. SANDRA F. PENN Albuquerque