Analysis Of Sallie Tisdale's We Do Abortions Here

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In today’s society, abortion is a controversial topic. Many people dispute if it is moral to eliminate the potential of the unborn fetus or if it is fair to force the parent to keep and raise the baby if the parent isn’t ready. In Sallie Tisdale’s We Do Abortions Here: A Nurse’s Story, the author uses imagery and internal conflict to recreate her experiences as a nurse employed at an abortion hospital. She does this to make her audience understand her and the people who work in abortion hospitals’ perspective. In her essay, Sallie Tisdale describes some of the clients she had and the conversations she had before and after their abortions. The first client she mentions is an eighteen year old woman. Despite being so young, this is her fourth time being pregnant (Tisdale 414). Immediately, the audience notices the awful …show more content…

Sallie Tisdale describes an uneducated sixteen-year-old girl that doesn’t even know how babies are formed. It was not the girl’s fault for getting pregnant; she was raped (Tisdale 416). Knowing this, the audience, like the author, feels compassion for the girl. It would be unfair to the girl if she couldn’t have the abortion. The audience recognizes that although abortion is cruel, it is needed. However, abortion itself is also cruel considering that it is also unfair to kill the fetus before it was born. Here, we can understand Sallie Tisdale’s inner conflict. She states that “[a]bortion is the narrowest edge between kindness and cruelty” (Tisdale 420). If she shows kindness to the women who wants to abort their children, the fetus would have to be killed. She would be showing cruelty to the unborn child. However, if she shows kindness to the unborn child by not letting the woman abort the child, she would be showing crudity to them by ruining their lives. The audience discovers that no matter the choice, whether they did or didn’t abort the child, there will always be