Dr. Shelley Sella, the first woman in the nation to openly offer third-trimester abortions, took out a pen and began to journal as she traveled on a plane to her first day of work at a Kansas clinic.
Nearly 20 years later, she had 22 notebooks filled with medical notes and, mainly, patients’ stories.
Sella, who retired in 2021, turned the notebooks into a book, which she describes as “not a political diatribe” but a compelling look at the reasons women end up seeking abortions in the last three months of pregnancy. In “Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care,” Sella writes about real patients, but as “composites” — their stories are true, but each character’s journey to the clinic is a compilation of a few patients’ stories.
“My goal is to help people gain a better understanding of this segment of abortion care, and through understanding, gain compassion, and through compassion, really understand that this is a decision that the pregnant person makes themselves based on the reality of their lives,” she said.
When Sella, an obstetrician and gynecologist, began focusing her practice exclusively on abortion care in 2000, there were only two other doctors in the nation who performed abortions in later pregnancy. Those were Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, who retired in April, and Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in 2009 in Kansas by an antiabortion extremist.
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Author: Ray Hilbrich
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