The pregnant woman showed up at the medical center in flip-flops and in tears after walking there to save bus fare.
Her boyfriend had lost his job, she told her doctor in Oakland, Calif., and now she wanted to abort what would've been her fourth child.
"This was a desired pregnancy -- she'd been getting prenatal care -- but they re-evaluated expenses and decided not to continue," said Dr. Pratima Gupta. "When I was doing the options counseling, she interrupted me halfway through, crying, and said, 'Dr. Gupta, I just walked here for an hour. I'm sure of my decision.'"
Other doctors are hearing similar tales. For many Americans, the recession is affecting their most intimate decisions about family planning. Doctors and clinics are reporting that many women are choosing abortions and men are having vasectomies because they cannot afford a child.
Planned Parenthood of Illinois clinics performed an all-time high number of abortions in January, many of them motivated by the women's economic worries, said CEO Steve Trombley, who declined to give exact numbers.
And abortions at Planned Parenthood's St. Louis-area clinics were up nearly 7 percent in the second half of 2008 from a year earlier - ending a stretch in which the numbers were dwindling.
Planned Parenthood said it has no up-to-date national abortion figures, nor do other private or government agencies. However, Stephanie Poggi of the National Network of Abortion Funds, which helps women in need pay for abortions, said calls to the network's national help line have nearly quadrupled from a year ago. "A lot of women who never thought they'd need help are turning to us," Poggi said. "They're telling us, 'I've already put off paying my rent, my electric bill. I'm cutting back on my food.' They've run through all the options." Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, said her organization's help line is receiving many calls from women who postponed an abortion while trying to raise money to pay for it. Such delays often mean riskier abortions at even higher cost -- the price can double in the second trimester. Among the women recently obtaining financial aid was Lalita Peterson, 23, of Painesville, Ohio, who in a thank-you note described the partial subsidy of her abortion at Cleveland's Preterm clinic as "probably the only relief I've felt during this very lonely time." Peterson, who is studying cosmetology and has a 3-year-old daughter, learned in February that she had become pregnant despite using contraception.
"I thought, 'I totally cannot afford another child,'" she said in a telephone interview. "I knew immediately what I had to do." Peterson said she is a single mother, unable to collect child support from her daughter's absent father and struggling to get by with the help of food stamps. Her financial situation, she said, "is tighter than tight." Sometimes, the decision goes the other way. Brooke Holycross, 25, of Port Orange, Fla., was offered financial assistance for an abortion and went to the clinic this month, but changed her mind after seeing a sonogram of the 15-week-old fetus. Holycross already has three daughters, and her common-law husband was laid off. "We're in a spot where we're scared," she said. "Babies are expensive. ... I'm just praying to God I did the right thing." Dr. J. Stephen Jones, a urologist at the Cleveland Clinic , said he has seen a surge of men seeking vasectomies, with his monthly caseload rising from about 45 to more than 70 since November. He said most of the men were married, had kids, decided they couldn't afford more and opted to get a vasectomy while they still had job-related health insurance. "Several articulated very forcefully that the economy was the motive," Jones said.
