This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor

by Susan Wicklund

  The next six weeks were outrageous. Schedule chaos was a familiar syndrome, but this was a new level. Within two months of opening the clinic I’d fallen into a routine where every week, on Wednesday, I flew back to the Midwest after work to share a short night home with Randy and Sonja. Too short to reconnect much beyond hearing about Sonja’s school life and Randy’s work before dropping into bed. Early on Thursday morning, I’d fly to another clinic to finish out the week.

  Most Saturdays I worked at a different clinic. Finally, on Sunday, I could sleep in, share a late family breakfast, then start in on laundry, bills, chores, trying to catch up. Sonja, as a high school sophomore, took my place in the household, sharing the cleaning, cooking, chores, and laundry with Randy. She took it in stride, but I felt deep guilt for the burden my work placed on her and for my absence in her daily life.

  On Sunday mornings I made a point of cooking breakfast and almost always burned the bacon. When Sonja noticed me bustling around in the kitchen, she quickly learned to make a beeline for the closet, where she’d unhook the alarm system. The smoke alarm was combined with the burglar alarm, a security system we’d had installed in the old farmhouse. Another reminder of the underlying threat we all tried to ignore.

  Too soon it was time to drive to the airport for the late flight to Bozeman. I couldn’t let myself think about how frenzied it all was and how tough it was on my marriage and my relationship with Sonja. If I fell into that trap, I’d never climb out again. Each week before leaving again I held Sonja tight in my arms, smelled her hair. Randy and I would hug, look at each other, and make every effort to ignore the distance my work was putting between us.

  Back in the Bozeman airport, a security person met me. The protesters were often in attendance too. Gone was the initial impression of this small, friendly western airport. It had become another place to fear and dread as I came up the ramp from the plane. I’d made arrangements with airport officials to exit the plane directly onto the tarmac when the protesters were particularly riled up. My security person picked me up in a protected lot. On our drive back to the apartment we’d make a few evasive turns and loops, watch for cars behind us.

  The next morning it started again. On Monday I’d take my roundabout walk to the clinic and open up. It was lonely, hectic, numbing, but the clinic was thriving, and that kept me going. Once inside the office, I loved my work and the freedom to create an atmosphere that reflected my personality and priorities. Without that satisfaction, I could never have pulled it off.

  Airplanes became my auxiliary office. Flying across the country, I wrote in my journal, thought about problems, read books. Sometimes I fell into deep, strange sleeps full of dream collages from my scattered life.

  Water and Sky, the book by the couple I’d met, took me away to that wilderness place full of wind and river current and isolation. I savored every page. I read the last chapter on a flight from Bozeman to Minneapolis. In the story, Marypat and Al had arrived at a tiny town at the end of their fourteen-month journey. A plane would soon fly them back to civilization. Marypat wandered away to a nearby rise. She mourned the end of their yearlong immersion in nature, questioned their return.

  Sitting on the plane, I was completely transported. I became Marypat. I was caught up in the power and vastness of this experience, resisting the end, fundamentally torn between realities. I ached to be in that wilderness place. The flight attendant shook my shoulder, asked if I was okay. Only then did I realize that I was sobbing.

  I’d lived in Bozeman long enough by then to make some contacts. I had been to Al and Marypat’s house for supper. There were a few people who made a point of getting me out once in awhile. A lawyer I’d met invited me out for some late night in-line skating on Main Street when the weather permitted. It was completely against city ordinance but also an incredible release to be out late at night cruising down sidewalks, doing laps around parking lots. More than once we had to skate in the front door of a bar, through the crowd of people, and out the back door to escape apprehension. It was giddy and exhilarating, but also another reminder that my life was on the edge.

  One week in early March my schedule changed. It was the weekend Dad and I traveled to the concert in Iowa, when Dr. Gunn was murdered in Florida by anti-abortionist Michael Griffin. I stayed an extra night in Minnesota before flying back to Montana on Monday.

  Tom, my security guard, picked me up and drove me to the apartment. It was a ground floor unit, the door directly off the driveway. Right away I saw that the outside light was off. I always left it on. It could have burned out, but I was immediately on alert. Tom and I walked up to the door together. I got out my key, but it was already open. Even the deadbolt was unlocked.

  We looked at each other. Tom took the lead, shouldered into the hallway. I stuck close behind. Nothing was disturbed in the tiny kitchen/sitting area, but a trail of muddy boot prints led out from the bedroom. We followed them to the window by the bed. It had been pried open. Whoever broke in made no attempt at secrecy. On the bedside stand they had left a stack of anti-abortion pamphlets.

  I tried to process the possibilities and smother my fear. They had located me. Presumably, they also knew my routine. Had someone been here in the past twenty-four hours, when I would normally be home? Had they come in the window the night before, expecting to find me?

  I kept a loaded pistol in bed with me. If I had woken to an intruder, that gun would have been in their face. I could have killed someone. The possibility was a tremendous burden, even if it would have been a justifiable instance of self-defense. At the same time, this was a fundamental, bone-chilling violation of my space, my privacy, my safety. It made me angry, frightened, resentful.

  Clearly, whenever the break-in occurred, it was intended to put me on notice. I turned and fled, taking nothing, pushing past Tom, almost running for the car.

  Tom locked up the apartment and drove me to a phone. I called Al and Marypat. They had mentioned a guest room in their basement that I could use whenever I felt the need. My apartment had become a crime scene. I would report it to the police in the morning.

  That week, one of Michael Ross’s letters referred to Dr. Gunn’s killing. “I wonder if a similar fate might come to you,” he wrote.

  Even armed with that evidence, I couldn’t get the attention of the local law enforcement people. The best they could offer was to suggest that I apply for a concealed weapons permit. In order to get it, I had to demonstrate that I was competent with a firearm and with a pistol in particular. I went with one of the officers to the shooting range and outscored him. I got the permit but didn’t feel much safer. More important, I hated that it had come to this.

  What started as a one-night refuge at Al and Marypat’s house ended up lasting for a year. Days before I moved in, their second son, Sawyer, was born in their bedroom. The baby needed a lot of comforting, holding, walking. I helped out in the evenings. Sawyer and I were a good match. I craved his warmth and contact as much as he needed mine. I would hold his small body against me, rub his back, walk back and forth across the living room. I’d forget time, the stress of the day, the dizzy spiral of my life. The warm weight of Sawyer against me, the rise and fall of his breathing—this was medicine.

  Eli, their older son, was a year and a half and fast on his feet. He would kick a ball in the yard with amazing accuracy and great delight. After a day at the office, I’d spend an hour in the yard, running after balls, kicking them back and forth with him, laughing at his antics. Becoming part of the family, and contributing, was an island of serenity. I found solace there, felt safe. I could almost fool myself into thinking that life was normal.

  Late that spring, Blue Mountain Clinic in Missoula, two hundred miles west of Bozeman, was the target of an arson attack. It was a facility that provided all types of family medicine, family planning, and prenatal care, as well as abortions. Missoula was also where Michael Ross’s letters came from. When I heard the news, I thought immediately of him. I sent copies of t
he letters I had received to the Missoula fire chief, including one that came just days after the arson. In that letter Ross suggested that my clinic would be the next to burn.

  Nearly a week later the Missoula county attorney’s office called me. They were appalled that no one had taken action against Michael Ross. “You’ve got to be kidding,” they said. “This is a clear case of felony intimidation, no question. That’s a federal offense.” More than that, they were going to have him arrested and charged without delay.

  I hung up and slumped onto my desk. Finally, someone who took this seriously, took my safety and well-being into account. As much as it would mean to be rid of this daily threat, it meant even more to have my concerns acknowledged.

  Buffeted by this legal and personal turmoil, I found solace in holding tight to the memory of being supported by hundreds of thousands of people. In April of 1992, Flower Grandma, Mom, Sonja, and I, four generations of women, had attended the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC. It was a glorious sunny day. Once again I was carried along in a wave of support and energy, surrounded by an ocean of commitment and goodwill. I marched on the front lines and was one of the speakers who addressed the crowd of a million pro-choice supporters.

  As I spoke, I searched for Flower Grandma, seated at the front of the crowd.

  “As long as you’ll continue to stand up and support me,” I said. “I’ll continue to work. With you alongside I’ll never have to feel alone.” My words were for all the escorts, volunteers, staff, and political activists, but most of all, for Flower Grandma, for her childhood friend whose life was needlessly cut short, for all the women through time, everywhere, whose lives have been compromised. As I spoke, I could feel her strong, soft, loving hands holding mine. That promise, and the continued support of women’s advocates, are what keep me strong to this day.

  The first year in Montana went by in a blur. Michael Ross was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sent to federal prison. Even so, every day continued to be crowded with security guards, circuitous routes, tangled instructions, life on the run. I wore my shoulder harness with a .38 Special nearly all the time.

  I took personal protection classes from a firearms instructor. I had grown up in a house full of guns, dozens of them. We had an indoor shooting range under the house, and all the siblings would compete after supper, routinely going through hundreds of rounds. We were all good shots and thoroughly versed in firearm safety.

  There was never a loaded gun in the house, except in the shooting range. We were not even allowed toy guns. If you pointed your finger at another person and said “Bang!” you were in big trouble. Firearms were respected weapons, never toys.

  The thought of having a loaded pistol on my body was completely foreign, and the feel of a gun under my clothes never got comfortable. It went against everything I had been taught. I kept having flashes of Dad and the lessons he hammered home. The instructor sensed my apprehension. He set out on a program to desensitize me. He had me shooting at cardboard human targets over and over. I shot from a standing position, sitting, lying across the hood of a car, kneeling beside a tree. He taught me to react quickly and accurately. Eventually, I could get my hands on the pistol, get it out of the holster, and be firing in seconds.

  He told me I should have the pistol on me all the time, if only to get completely used to it. I always unloaded it when I came home to Marypat and Al’s, but every day I wore it.

  One of the first days I wore the gun, two acquaintances came by and asked if I would join them in a nearby café for a beer and a sandwich after work. I changed into jeans and a large, loose-knit sweater and went out the door, happy for the invitation. Midway through the meal I felt one of the loops on the sweater catch on the release of the holster. The pistol came loose and slipped under my arm. The heavy weapon flopped into the sweater fabric, started to slide toward my hip.

  Just what I need, I thought. Way to make a great impression, guns falling out of my clothes. I shifted in my seat, squirmed to catch the gun against my hip, felt it slide further. Then, pretending I was arranging my napkin, I snatched the pistol and slipped it under my thigh. I sat on that gun for the rest of the evening. I couldn’t even get up to use the bathroom.

  When I told my father the story, he was not amused. To him, it was appalling. “I understand your need to carry a firearm,” he said. “But you have to be responsible with it.”

  Actually, hardly anything was amusing for Dad anymore. His health had badly deteriorated. He’d lost weight and looked pale and drawn. Most of all, he had no energy. On good days it was all he could do to make a round trip from the house to the barn. We had very little idea what was going on. Tests and doctor visits hadn’t turned up anything conclusive. I had made a decision to stay clear of his medical care and diagnoses. I wanted to be his daughter, not his doctor. With hindsight, I would realize that it was a bad decision, one that I’d feel debilitating guilt over.

  I knew better than to tell Dad about the first time I actually drew the pistol, ready to protect myself. It happened on one of the many nights I worked late. When I finished, I really didn’t want to sleep in the recliner, surrounded by work. I craved contact with a family.

  The fact that Michael Ross was in custody had relieved my general sense of apprehension. There were a few local people who scared me, men who followed and harassed me, but they hadn’t gotten to me the way Ross had with his incessant flow of letters.

  I had become a regular topic of discussion in the local letters to the editor, the usual ugly rhetoric. There had been some wanted posters put up around town. At the same time, people regularly dropped by the office to express support. Several people left me their house keys and directions, no strings attached. If you need a refuge, just use it, they said.

  It was almost midnight. I was nervous about leaving the building, but there were times when I couldn’t stand any more of the clandestine sneaking around. The ability to leave and go home without an escort offered a thin thread of normalcy, a hint of sanity. The third floor was dark. I got into the elevator and pushed the button. At the first floor I was standing in the brightly lit elevator as the doors began to open. Suddenly, all the other lights on the first floor snapped off. I heard footsteps running in my direction.

  Without thinking, I pulled the pistol and hugged the inside wall of the elevator. The man who charged in saw me and immediately threw his hands up, a terrified look on his face. I recognized him as an employee I’d seen around the building. I brought the gun down, stepped off the elevator, and hit the main floor light switches. Both of us were shaken up, but when he heard my explanation, he understood completely. After that night I resigned myself to calling Tom to escort me out of the building and get me home.

  On the one-year anniversary of the clinic opening we held a party for local friends and supporters. Out of the blue, one of the women invited me to spend time at her ranch, a few miles from town. She said it was fairly isolated and had a long driveway. You could see anyone coming from a quarter mile away.

  I’d been in Montana a year already but still hadn’t spent any amount of time in the mountains. Comfortable as it was living with Marypat and Al, I couldn’t stay forever, and an occasional night out of town sounded good.

  The clinic had grown to the point that it was supporting itself. I stopped traveling to and from the Midwest each week. Sonja planned to spend the summer with me. The first night in the ranch house, I fell in love with it. So much of it was familiar—the outdoor sounds, the quiet, the nearby barn. It was rural and comfortable, so much like my childhood home in Wisconsin.

  Before long, I moved into one of the houses on the ranch. I also bought a twenty-five-year-old Dodge camper van with a pop top. I named her Betty. On weekends when the weather was good, I’d load up Betty, hitch up the horse trailer, and head for another trailhead to explore. I’d ride one horse, pack the other with gear, and go high into the mountains. In summer, Sonja was with me. She was an accomplished camper and horsewoman in h
er own right.

  Even when Sonja wasn’t with me, we talked almost daily by phone. She told me about her classes and friends, her swim meets, what she was making for supper. In some ways we talked more than most mothers and daughters because we made such a point of staying connected across distance. There was a kind of safety offered by the telephone. We didn’t have to face each other with more difficult topics, but had the buffer of the phone line. Strangely, I think we were more honest and revealing than we would have been living in the same house.

  Randy was always reassuring. He helped Sonja with her homework, went to her swim meets, attended school conferences, never wavered in his day-to-day commitment. In spite of that, Randy and I continued to drift apart, each of us consumed with our own existence, a thousand miles from each other. More and more, our phone conversations stuck to the logistics of life and avoided the obvious—we were less and less of a couple. The very traits that were essential for my career—stubbornness, single-mindedness, independence, being firmly in control—were detrimental when it came to my marriage.

  On the ranch in Montana, I could finally have my horses with me, go for early morning rides, hike along the ridge and fish in the creek, hear elk bugle in the fall. That country place was a spiritual sanctuary, a place of soothing refreshment, a place to center myself within the storm of life.

  Always, though, above everything, it was the patients who brought me comfort. Many of them were caught up in personal turmoil and stress, but there is something fundamentally rewarding about connecting with a stranger in need, coming to grips with her situation, and acting in tangible ways to resolve problems. Each day brought a different set of stories, every one compelling and vivid—stories wrapped in life’s ironies and intricacies. Every day brought with it some piece of amazement.

  To All at Mountain Country Women’s Clinic: