Dr. Carolyn Westhoff: I can look back to setting up an abortion service in my own hospital. When I first arrived there in ’86, I’d say, there was a small abortion service in the hospital. There was somebody running it. And he left and I was offered the chance to take it over. I was a brand-new faculty member and writing grants, and I didn’t want to. I thought, “Oh, I’m getting sucked into operations here,” and that was the wrong choice. [laughs] And then what happened was that the state took away approval of the space. There are some kind of rules out there. It was a small operating theater, and the state just said, “Oh no, the conditions of this space don’t meet state standards,” so they just closed down the whole space. Years ago. And then the hospital did gradually develop some new spaces, but you can see, during that, abortion access disappeared because the space disappeared. I don’t know if such a junior person, if I would’ve found an effective way to deal with that back then. But so, our abortion access really deteriorated, and I mean my research and activities were sort of in a different area at that time. I always cared about this area, but it wasn’t my primary focus, and so what did I do? Talking to the department, talking to people in the hospital, they agreed that we ought to be able to provide these services with our patients. That we had to do this. They designated some space, they had some funding streams for like medical assistance and things like that, and a person who was in fact in charge of that space overall diverted the space and the resources for other projects.

Interviewer: Just like that?

WESTHOFF: Just like that.