The Last Abortion Doctor

The Last Abortion Doctor is a  journalistic piece that we can use to examine reportage, use of information and sources, writing, details and organization.

Here are my insights on the piece:

1. “The Last Abortion Doctor” is an investigative story about the last abortionist in Wichita, Kansas after the other one was assassinated. John Richardson reports on what life was like for Dr. Hern after Dr. Tiller was killed. He reports the details of the Hern's homelife and work life. There are a lot of anonymous sources because printing their names would have endangered them. His style is poetic at times, but Richardson's style captures the emotion and chaos of Dr. Hern's life.
2. The reportage was thorough because Richardson asked all the right questions and did his research. He read Dr. Hern's essays and spoke to Hern's wife and mother. He spoke to Hern's receptionist and one of the patients. Over the course of the story it is clear that Richardson developed a good repertoire with the doctor. Richardson gained Dr. Hern's trust. He gained Hern's wife's trust. More importantly, Richardson gained the trust of a patient who went through a painful and traumatic abortion. For privacy reasons, he does not name the patient. Richardson observes and listens to his surroundings. He records the receptionist's quotes on the phone with a patient. He recorded every time the receptionist answered the phone and when patients entered the clinic. Also, Richardson's questions are specific. He asks about relevant information such as why the patient chose the abortion, if the pregnancy was planned, what she did when she arrived in Wichita and what the complications were. He asks Dr. Hern if referring to man as a malignant ecotumor invites hate. Richardson demonstrates his ability to incorporate relevant information into the interview. The question is based on one of Dr. Hern's papers. Richardson asks Hern why doesn't he retire and what the limits are to performing abortions. Richardson reports details that humanize the characters. For example, he writes that Hern's wife likes good coffee so he interviewed her in an Italian coffee shop. Instead of cutting to gist of things, Richardson takes the time to use his observations to his advantage. Intimate details like that humanize the subjects. The focus of the story is clear. Hern is not just another abortion doctor facing death threats. He is the last abortion doctor in that town. He was close to Dr. Tiller who was murdered. Richardson's reporting answers the question about why this is relevant. He goes beyond answering the five W's.
3. Richardson got his information from the people he interviewed and from Hern's scientific papers. He spends a great deal of time around Hern. Richardson also interviewed Hern's wife and mother. He spoke to a receptionist and patient. Richardson did research about the antiabortion and pro-choice conflict. He demonstrates that he researched laws concerning abortion. He writes, “The opponents of legal abortion often use the phrase 'abortion on demand,' implying there are no restrictions at all. This characterization is untrue. It has always been illegal, even under Roe v. Wade, to perform abortions after viability without a compelling medical reason.” Richardson refutes the antiabortion advocates’ logic with historical facts. He follows up with an example related to Wichita and Dr. Tiller. Richardson writes, “In Kansas, for example, where Dr. Tiller practiced medicine, the law for any abortion after twenty-two weeks requires two doctors to agree that failure to abort would put the mother at risk of 'substantial and irreversible harm'.” Richardson spoke to a receptionist referred to as Amanda in the story. He did not use her last name for safety reasons. Richardson asked the right questions when he interviewed Dr. Hern. When Hern told Richardson about a woman who had to get an abortion due to fetal anomalies, Richardson asked, “What kind of fetal anomalies are we talking about?” He interviewed Hern about his personal life asking him about whether he likes to cook or not. Richardson asked this question because Hern did not have a lot of time to eat. Richardson was not able to talk to a lot of patients because they were traumatized and Hern did not want him to. However, there was the one couple that he focuses on at the beginning and end of the story. The couple arrived in Wichita the day Dr. Tiller was shot.
4. Richardson’s writing is very detailed and captures the emotions of the people around him. He records what the receptionist says on the phone, what the patients look like, their demeanors, their reactions and their communications with the doctor. Richardson does not write the quotations in the traditional format. He puts quotations in italics to give the piece a more conversational tone. The readers can put themselves in the situations when they do not feel like they are reading normal quotations. Richardson also writes his questions into the story to convey a conversational tone. His writing puts the readers into the story because of the descriptive details. When Richardson enters Hern’s house, he devotes two graphs to describing the inside of the house. He writes, “Inside there's a beautiful Bösendorfer piano with Beethoven on the stand and a primitive bow and arrow from the Amazon rain forest, where the abortionist has traveled to cure diseases and conduct ethnographic studies for more than forty years.” Richardson describes the house instead of cutting to the chase. Another example of this is when Richardson describes the nurse's office with “a soft felt flower” weaving through the inbox. On the wall is a poster of the female reproductive organs that remind him of the mother alien from Aliens. Details like these increase the reader's vantage point because they will that the doctor is a sympathetic human being in the story. He wrote that the doctor goes home in a bullet-proof car surrounded by U.S. marshalls. Richardson describes the patients' facial expressions to show that they are human. He describes a 15 year old girl's voice as so high-pitched that it would remind you of Beanie Babies in your daughter's closet. He describes the receptionist's voice as carefully modulated as described in Hern's book: “sufficiently involved to make full use of his/her own emotional experience and sufficiently detached to differentiate his/her own emotional experience from those of the other." Richardson shows the sympathetic side of the doctor when he interviewed him in his home. In response to a question the reporter asked the doctor responded, She was raped. I'm very sympathetic, but I can't risk my medical license for someone who just didn't get around to doing anything about it. I've done some cases over thirty-six weeks, but very few. This quote shows that the doctor does care about his patients, but he needs to keep his medical license so he can continue to help women in need.
5. Richardson uses a lot of details that he obtained through interviewing and observing. Richardson writes that Hern's seaweed process is gentler and safer of the cervix. Richardson describes why the seaweed procedure is safer on the cervix. He writes that the tissue dehydrates, the tissue starts to pull apart, the uterus gets softer. If you do a forceful dilation, you're going to tear the cervix. All around, his way is safer.” Richardson uses these details to clarify for the reader why the method is safer. He answers almost all questions the reader would ask while reading the story. The reporter asked if it was safer for the mom, but the doctor “snapped”, “Not the mom. The woman. Till she's had a baby, she's not a mom.” Richardson emphasizes throughout the story that the woman is not a mom until she has a baby. This is what Hern emphasized to Richardson, so Richardson relays the message back to the readers. When Richardson interviewed Hern's wife, he wrote that she likes good coffee, so they met in an Italian coffee shop. He wrote that she has a “strong Roman nose and black hair that breaks against her cheeks in an ebony wave. Her earrings are shaped like dolphin tails.” These are details from his observations of her. Richardson goes on to discuss her life in Cuba which is information her interviewed her for. He uses details about her life that are relevant to the story. For example, he spoke to her about the women she saw trying to induce miscarriages and bled to death. Here is one of her quotes that is important to the story, But I know that many women don't feel nothing when they're pregnant and many women feel sad, feel angry. In this situation, you never can judge who's God. You need to respect women. This quote coveys the message of the story. It is wrong to judge a woman for wanting an abortion if she does not want a child. Not all women want children, so when they accidentally get pregnant they need to get abortions.
6. The story is organized so that each begins with another source Richardson interviewed. For example, the lead of the story opens up with the couple arriving in Wichita on the day Tiller was killed. The second page begins with Dr. Hern heating his microwave tamales. The third page is about his mother. The second starts with his wife. The fourth page goes back to the inside Hern's office. The fifth page is about Richardson interviewing Hern at the clinic. The sixth page starts with the reporter attempting to speak with the reluctant clinic staff. On the seventh page, Richardson reports what he overhears in the clinic waiting room. On the final page Richardson jumps back to the young couple he describes at the beginning of the story. Richardson broke up the story like this because it is easier for the readers to digest the information. The story starts with the young couple, but he does not elaborate on their situation until the very end of the story. All of the information in between is about the doctor and his life. The information about the doctor is important to understanding why the young couple are in Wichita. Understanding the events surrounding Hern is important to understanding why Tiller was killed. It is important to know why Hern performs abortions for a living. All of this information leads up to the young woman's abortion so when the readers get to the end they understand the situation.