Why the dearth of abortion providers?
Not many, Randall, not many. “The number of abortion providers dropped from 2,908 in 1982 to 1,787 in 2005,” the Post’s Sandra G. Boodman reports. “Eighty-seven percent of counties in the United States and 31 percent of metropolitan areas have no abortion services.” Put simply, in the words of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: “The availability of abortion services is in jeopardy.” A generational gap between those who do and do not remember the days when abortion was illegal has only aided antiabortion intimidation. Boodman explains, “Unlike their younger counterparts, many older doctors cite searing memories of days before the procedure was legal, when they cared for women who tried to perform abortions on themselves using lye or coat hangers.” For example, 62-year-old OB-GYN David Grimes detailed a long-past case of his where a woman had a “catheter protruding from her cervix and a fever of 106 degrees” and said, “You see something like that as a young doctor,
