New book shows lives of abortion doctor and counselor
Dr. Curtis Boyd and Dr. Glenna Halverson-Boyd have for decades been at the forefront of the abortion rights movement.
A recently released book shows how the lives and careers of two abortion providers intersected and encompassed illegal abortion and the ever-changing landscape after the Roe v. Wade decision and its overturning.
We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe was written by Dr. Curtis Boyd and his wife, Dr. Glenna Halvorson-Boyd. Both of their life narratives are told in separate chapters before they overlap.
Curtis begins by talking about a powerful account of how his clinic was set on fire. It was part of a rash of fires set in the 1980s by antiabortion terrorists. His son, Kyle, asks them if they must continue doing the work. Then Curtis said, “No. We Choose to.”
From there, the book retraces the early part of Curtis’ experiences as an abortion provider. He was unique in that his career began when it was widely illegal. He had worked in a hospital and had sought to be clandestine about helping women get abortions in his capacity there. He also collaborated with the Clergy Consultation Services, which was a group of religious leaders who counseled young women and referred them to reliable doctors and abortionists who could perform the procedure safely.
Glenna’s story shares her experiences of sexual abuse as a child and how she dealt with early forms of sexism and an unhealthy first marriage. She discusses how she first interacted with Curtis and how they grew to fall in love with each other. Glenna first encountered his name during an interaction with the clergy consultation services, but she met him when she started working at his clinic.
One of the more fascinating parts of medical history is how abortion care developed from the time when Curtis started doing it illegally to how it was done decades later. When he first began, it was a lot of self-teaching and learning. But soon after Roe, doctors across the country formed the National Abortion Federation, and there was communication about the safety and efficacy of different medical approaches to abortion. I had heard a similar account when I interviewed Dr. Warren Hern of Colorado.
Both Dr. Curtis Boyd and Dr. Hern provided abortions later in pregnancy and played a large role in developing the recommended methods for it.
The book covers the psychological experience of being an abortion worker, with a keen focus on how it feels to work at a clinic that does abortions later in pregnancy. It also detailed how one patient died, though they were cleared of any culpability by the coroner, who ruled it an accidental death.
The rise of Christian fundamentalism and its connection to antiabortion terrorism is discussed later in the book. In addition to the clinic arson they experienced in 1988, protestors broke into the clinic and chained themselves to tables. They yelled into megaphones, “Mommy, Don’t Kill Me!”
They responded by removing their number from the phonebook as the FBI told them to. They also installed more cameras and monitors. Glenna became the president of the NAF board of directors in May 1984. Their offices were attacked in 1984 by a bombing. Both Curtis and her suffered another arson at their clinic in New Mexico in 1007
Overall, the book shows a compelling journey between two people who had uncommon lives of people who risked their safety to advance reproductive rights. As the country changed, so did their philosophies toward politics, work, and each other.