Your work is valuable. Thank you.

This is so awesome.  YOU are awesome. 

As someone who also works "out" in the field, thank you, but as someone who also has had an abortion, a big double-thanks. Choosing to be out, and risk more than usual in doing so, in service of all of what you've talked about here at heart, is an amazing act and gesture.

I have said this here before, but I think it bears repeating. If Dr. Smith's story warms your heart (it certainly does mine), you owe it to yourself to read Dr. Susan Wicklund's memoir, This Common Secret. In the first chapter, she comes out to her grandmother about her work as an abortion provider. That little story alone is worth the price of the book. No exaggeration, it will blow you away.

Thank you for sharing :) I all agree, Susan Wicklund's book is a must read, truly amazing.

Absolutely agreed on the recommendation of "This Common Secret"... and yeah, you're going to be a sobbing mess by Page 8. So worth it, though.

Dr. Smith, thanks for your work AND for your voice. It means so much.

How stupid is "do your job for free or else clearly you have no principles?" Do you do your job for free? Do you think Dr. Smith's medical degree was free? Do you think her facility is free? Her mortgage, her groceries? Do you live in a fairy land? And can I come visit if so?

I swear, people should have to pass an IQ test before being given internet access...

It is incredibly sad that it is necessary to remain anonymous for the purposes of posting, but you have the right to safety and well-being in a society that has a marginal fringe harming so many who provide services. Thank you for your bravery in ensuring women have access to all of their health care needs when it can be so difficult and dangerous to do so. Years ago it was a family doctor who helped me in my time of need and his kindness and compassion surely helped a great many women just like me. In my mind physicians like yourself who are truly concerned about their patients health and well-being truly encompass the Oath.

I have had the privilege of knowing and working with abortion providers all over the country since 1985. What I know from this experience is that they are the heroes of the prochoice movement -- everyone who works in a clinic to provide abortions to those who need them. It is way past time for our movement to find ways to honor providers -- not just once but every year. Our local and state organizations must put in place an annual event in our communities where we show our appreciation for all of those who take such great risks to make abortion rights a reality. We must use the term heroes when referring to the physicians, nurses, technicians, administrators, receptionists, accountants, and cleaning people who make it possible for the women in our communities to carry out a decision to end a pregnancy. These brave providers are picketed at home, their children are harassed at school, they are followed to the supermarket, and obviously, their religious affiliations are known. None of us has a target on our backs for being prochoice, nor for our choice of work. If we honor those who take this level of risk, we can contribute to ending the stigma of abortion. Thank you, Dr. Smith, and everyone who works with you, and everyone else in the US who bravely provides a medical service that is obviously needed by more than 1 million women a year.
Without providers, there is no choice.

Thank you Dr. Smith!

Thank you for your service to women. Providing safe abortion procedures definitely saves women's lives.

I used to be anti-choice, when I was young and ignorant. And I was lucky to never need an abortion. But I matured and came to really appreciate what it means to deny a woman agency over her own body, and how messed up the "pro-life" movement is, and how little interest they have in women who aren't pregnant or whose children are already born. And I began to see clearly what the truly ethical side was in this debate.

You are doing good work, and brave work, and helping women in an essential way. Thank you for what you do, and may there be many more like you in future.

how little interest they have in women who aren't pregnant or whose children are already born.

Well put, emjaybee. May I quote at need?

Dr Smith, count me in with those folks who are truly grateful for your courage and commitment. By remaining silent about abortion, I contributed to the marginalization of abortion and, more important, the women who have had abortions. These women are our neighbors and teachers; members of our churches, synagogues, and mosques; sisters, mothers, and daughters. All of us know women who have had abortions (one in three women will have had an abortion by the age of 45). If you are not aware of any, it is only because they choose not to share their stories. It is also because we don't ask or provide safe spaces in which to tell. Physicians like you are the true advocates for women and their families.

I've read Susan Wicklund's book which is excellent. You and she and other providers are why I stand at a clinic once a month to make sure that patients can access the property without being targeted and harassed.

Dr. "jane Smith"
Although I admire your thoughts about Dr, Tiller, I am confused about your continued anonymity about being an abortion provider. Dr. Warren Hern's clinic in Boulder, CO is called The Boulder Abortion Clinic. He tells it like it is.At first I used the title "Family Planning Consultant" on my business card. Many of us marginalized our existense and only came out of the closet at NAF meetings. We made it easy for the antis to assault us. Several were murdered. Others had their licenses revoked for "botched abortions"
a pejorative term for some complications.Dr. Kenneth Edelin was charged with homicide for performing a legal 3rd. trimester abortion in Boston.His book,Broken Justice, describes the torment and injustice he had to endure. I too was charged with homicide for the tragic death of a patient following an abortion. I wrote a memoir about my trial and incarceration , Jailhouse Journal of an OB/GYN. I agree that it is time for abortion providers to come out of the closet. Bruce Steir, M.D.,MPH,(retired abortion provider)

Thank you for providing a much needed service!!

After years of working in the family planning and obstetrics field, my husband and I saw so many weary,poor, physically and emotionally overwhelmed grand and great-grandmothers take on multiple results of their teen's (as in age 12, 13, 14 years )unplanned pregnancies: women in their 60's, 70's and even 80's who could not bear to see their "children raising children" which guaranteed disasterous results (specifically the unbroken cycle of poverty.) My husband reluctantly became a provider himself in response to this visable need in our community. He helped out on weekends at the local PP for several years until someone "outed" him and consequently his life and his job, at a Women's Hospital, were threatened. We had to make the difficult decision to stop provding terminations, and I have never gotten over it. Stories like these of Dr. Smiths reassure me that there are those out there that are stronger than we could be. Thank you for what you do, Dr. and hang in there.

I am Pro-life of the woman and the baby.

I have been a practicing physician for over 28 years and I simply cannot understand how anyone who is an abortion provider can justify what they do. I would like to recommend a little informative reading to my colleagues. It's called the Hippocratic Oath. The foundation of our care is that we first do no harm. No one has been able to argue successfully that an unborn child is not a human being.[I refer you to the site:"I am not answering these Questions" for one such very public debate between Senator Boxer and Santorum]. This fact is ignored, disregarded, or otherwise obscured by the pro-abortionist but never refuted. Our government has chosen not to protect the right to life these unborn people which is a horrendous crime of which we must all share part of the blame but that does not change the absolute fact that unborn children are truely our fellow human beings. The arguments for the murder of these innocents are so lame. They claim the so-called 'right to choose' extends to taking the life of one's child. Anyone who has gotten as far a 7th grade biology can tell you that the child you carry is not part of your body. This child is a seperate and distinct human being with totally different DNA, half the time a different sex, with different capabilities, different potential different aspirations. You are blessed with the priviledge of hosting and nourishing this new life in it's beganning until it can live outside of you [but not without your help and protection]. The health of the mother, the possibility of an imperfect child, the wrong sex, too many people etc.,--all the lamest of lame arguments to justify the murder of a person. Think about it. What is there about the passage of a child through the birth canal [or through the abdominal wall in the case of a C-section]that somehow makes an infant a human being. If he or she is human and you can be prosecuted for murdering her or him one minute after birth why then is it not equally wrong to murder this person when everything but her head has cleared the introitus. A physician [or any person for that matter] cannot be vicariously exempted from wrong action by deferring the the decision of another person to have something intrinsically evil done to their child. You're not off the hook if it was the mother's decision. It is still completely, unequivocally, fundamentally wrong for you to murder a innocent human being.

Thank you for your services. You're very brave, to stand up and to fight for our reproductive rights like this. Thank you.

I second this:

Thank you for your services. You're very brave, to stand up and to fight for our reproductive rights like this. Thank you.

Brava!

I see Annonymous, July 29, has some opposing thoughts. Let me be a little clearer. I said the health of the mother was a lame excuse because it is extremely rare that this is truely a reason a termination of pregnancy would be considered. This is typical rethoric for Pro-Abs to claim every abortion is a case of dire poverty, incest, rape, or some terrible threat to the mother when, in fact, the overwhelming majority of abortions are preformed because the mother found it inconvienent to have a child. The reasons I have heard are: "We just wern't ready for another child yet." "I'm just not the mothering type [this is from a woman who had 3 abortions]." "It's too soon after we got married to start having children" There are very few actual situations in medicine when the life of the mother is actually threathened by pregnancy. My comments were directed toward the annomoyous Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith if you are still reading this column please consider what you are doing. You are taking the lives of innocent children. The very lives that you became a doctor to protect. George Tiller used to brag about how he aborted a woman on the day she was due to have a baby. He had 'going away parties' in his office for the infants he had murdered. I have seen the pictures of a woman codling her mangled dead baby in his clinic alongside of the note she later wrote expressing her horror and regret at what she had done. You are not helping women by assisting them to kill their children. Gorge Tiller was a sadistic serial murderer of innocent defensless infants. You don't have to be. Please stop now you don't have to do this anymore.