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IF HE HAD NOT BEENgiven detention by the nuns in seventh grade, Louie Ward might never have become an obstetrician. In the school library, he picked up a book that was lying on the table—a biography of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Out of sheer boredom Louie started to read. He didn’t put the book down until he was finished. Louie was convinced that this man was speaking directly to him.
He began to read everything he could that the reverend had written.Life’s most persistent and urgent question,Dr. King had said,is what are you doing for others?He read those words and thought of his mama, bleeding out on the floor.
Like his mentor, Louie wanted to be a doctor, but a different kind: an ob-gyn, because of his mother. He worked hard enough to get a full scholarship to college, and then another to medical school.
When he was a resident, he came in contact with multiple women who had unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. As a practicing Catholic, he believed life started at conception, so he referred these patients to other doctors, other places. Much later in his career he would learn that although 97 percent of doctors had encountered a patient who wanted to terminate a pregnancy, only 14 percent performed abortions themselves. When the gap was that great, it was not like abortions stopped. They just got done unsafely.
One Sunday, Louie’s priest was giving a homily about the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke. A traveler, beaten and left for dead on the side of the road, was passed by a priest and a Levite—neither of whom stopped. Finally, a Samaritan offered his help, even though historically Samaritans and Jews were enemies.
On the day before Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed, he had talked about that parable. He considered why the priest and the Levite might have walked past the beaten man—maybe they thought he was faking; maybe they were worried for their own safety. But most of all, he mused, the reason they passed was because they were thinking of what would happen tothemselvesif they stopped—not what would happen to that man if they didn’t.
Louie knew in that instant, he had to be the Samaritan. So many of the women he met who were seeking abortions were, like him, southerners of color. These were the women who had raised him. These were his neighbors, his friends, his own mother. If he didn’t interrupt his own journey to help them with theirs, who would?
It was the one truly miraculous moment of Dr. Louie Ward’s life.
At that moment Louie realized why his mama had gone to see Sebby Cherise. It wasn’t because she was having the child of a prominent married white man. It was because she had been protecting the child she already had, at the expense of the one she hadn’t wanted to conceive. This was a variation on a theme he had heard from patients:I have a child with a disability; I don’t have the time to parent another one. I can barely feed my son; what will I do with a second baby?I already work three jobs and take care of my family—there isn’t any more of me to go around.
So although Louie still went to Mass like clockwork, he also became an abortion provider. He flew several times a month to offer his services at women’s clinics. The only person who didn’t actually know what he did for a living was his grandmama.
She was in her nineties by the time Louie went back home to confess. He told her about the runner who had worked her whole life to secure a spot on the Olympic team, and then found herself pregnant after a condom broke. He told her about the woman who learned, in an opioid treatment program, that she was twelve weeks along.
He told her about a lady from a small, narrow-minded place who had been so blinded by the sun of a respected married man that she believed he would support her and claim their child as his own, only to learn that wasn’t how the world worked. They both knew who Louie was talking about.Grandmama,he said.I think Jesus would understand why I do what I do. I hope you can, too.
As he expected, his grandmama started to cry.I lost my baby and my grandbaby,she said after a long moment.Maybe now some other woman won’t.
In fact the only objection his grandmama had had to his career was that Louie might be killed by an anti-abortion activist. Louie knew that his name had been published on a website, along with other doctors who performed abortions, with information about where he lived and worked. He had known George Tiller, a doctor who’d been murdered while he was at church. Dr. Tiller had been wearing a protective vest at the time, but the gunman had shot him in the head.
Louie refused to put on a vest. The way he saw it, the minute he did,theyhad won. And yet, every morning he had to run the gauntlet of protesters. He would sit in his car for an extra minute, taking a deep breath, steeling himself for the vitriol and the love bombers—We’re praying for you, Dr. Ward. Have a blessed day!He would think of George Tiller and David Gunn and John Britton and Barnett Slepian, all killed by activists who were not satisfied to simply stand in a line and hurl insults.
Louie would count to ten, say an Our Father, and then in one smooth movement, gather his briefcase and exit the car. He’d hit the power lock while he was walking, face forward, eyes on the ground, refusing to engage.
Mostly.
There was one anti, a middle-aged white man, who repeatedly called out, “Sinful Negro baby killer!” Louie had ignored him, until one day he yelled, “Do I have to call you aniggerto get a rise out of you?”
That—well. That stopped Louie dead in his tracks.
“What part of me is most upsetting to you?” Louie asked calmly. “The fact that I am African American? Or the fact that I perform abortions?”
“The abortions,” the man said.
“Then what does my race have to do with anything?”
The protestor shrugged. “It doesn’t. I just throw that in.”
Louie almost had to admire the man’s scorched earth tactics.
There was only one reason he got out of his car every damn morning: the women he treated, who had to walk through that same gauntlet. How could he be any less brave than they were?
The antis wanted the women who chose abortions to feel isolated, the only people in the universe who had ever made such a selfish decision. What Louie wanted, for every woman who walked through the doors of the Center, was to make her understand she was not alone, and never would be. The most ardent antis didn’t realize how many women they knew who’d had an abortion. Wipe away the stigma and all you were left with was your neighbor, your teacher, your grocery clerk, your landlady.
He imagined what it felt like for them—to have made a decision that came at a colossal emotional and financial cost—and then to have that decision called into question. Not to mention the implication that they were not capable of managing their own healthcare. Where were the protesters at cancer centers, for example, urging chemotherapy patients to steer clear of the risks of toxins? Women were capable of taking aspirin if they had a headache, and the intrinsic risk of aspirin was far greater than that of any of the abortion medications that currently existed. If a woman chose a medication abortion, why did the mifepristone have to be taken in front of a doctor, as if she were an inpatient in a psychiatric ward who couldn’t be relied on to swallow a pill?
Louie believed that those white men with their signs and slogans were not really there for the unborn, but there for the women who carried them. They couldn’t control women’s sexual independence. To them, this was the next best thing.
Louie shifted and cried out as pain stabbed through his leg. The tourniquet had slowed the bleeding, until the shooter had—in a fit of pique—kicked him hard in the spot where the bullet had entered.
