How a conservative, gun-toting doctor defended abortion access in Appalachia
To be a physician who performs abortions in a small southern town is to be in a state of rational hypervigilance, a whisper of worry that pervades the everyday.
BRISTOL, Va. — When Wes Adams’ youngest son was little, he’d sometimes toddle over to the TV, pop in a cassette, and watch himself being born. It was a home video, filmed by his older brother. There was his mother, her belly anesthetized but her head very much awake, asking the doctors to keep the incision small, please. There was his dad’s medical partner, making the cut for the C-section. And there was his dad, an OB-GYN, helping to maneuver him, slick and bawling, out into the world.
It took a few tries. He wasn’t head down, the way he’d ideally have been for a vaginal delivery. Instead, he was horizontal, back to the floor, as if lying in a hammock. That meant delivering the legs together, so one didn’t get caught. “You have to reach up, get both feet. But we reach up, get a leg and an arm,” Adams recalled. “Put ‘em back, reach up, and get a leg and an arm.” Finally, they got the right hold. “He grew up about two inches as we were pulling him out, just ‘cause he’s got a big head like me.”
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