Claiming My Voice
Why I Am Writing This Book
As the 30-year anniversary approached, something shifted inside me. I realized that while I spent decades suffering emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially, these men continued with their lives, careers, and reputations—free of consequence. That realization ignited something unshakeable: I cannot undo the past, but I can claim my justice by claiming my voice.
This book is my justice.
Telling my story is my justice.
My story includes the deeply personal and painful realities of my life: childhood abuse, rape, and being sexually violated at my very first gynecological exam. It includes the moment I cried, protested, and begged for mercy as naked photographs of my pelvic region were forcibly taken—without warning, without consent—to be published in medical textbooks. It includes eight childbirth experiences attended by three male OB-GYNs, one female OB-GYN, two certified nurse-midwives, two male family practitioners, and a lay midwife.
My birth history is marked by trauma:
• Giving birth at a teaching hospital in Stamford, CT (1982)—without ever being informed it was a teaching hospital—was an experience that shattered every expectation I had of safety, dignity, and basic human rights. From the moment I arrived, I realized I had no meaningful ability to give or deny consent for anything. It felt less like a medical environment and more like a place where I was being processed, observed, and controlled. I wasn’t permitted to read or sign my own consent forms for admittance; they were signed on my behalf, as if my participation or understanding were irrelevant.
My labor room barely had privacy—only partial shutters where a door should have been, and no door on the bathroom at all. Staff came and went freely, without knocking, as if my body and my pain were simply part of the scenery of their training environment. I was separated from my husband for hours and forced to undergo “prep” procedures under protest, as though my wishes were of no consequence.
At one point, a drug was injected into my IV while I was explicitly refusing it. My verbal protests were dismissed and overridden. The most violating moment came when I was compelled—three separate times—to submit to pelvic exams by a male intern who wanted “practice.” I was in active labor, clearly distressed, crying, and repeatedly stating no. It did not matter. My denial of consent was ignored each time, and I was ultimately forced into compliance.
The culmination of the experience was traumatic beyond words. As I was pushing out my first child, I was physically restrained—tied down, immobilized, and treated more like an animal than a human being. It felt like something out of a Stephen King novel, horrifying and surreal, except it was my real life and my real body.
This birth was supposed to be one of the most sacred moments of my life. Instead, it became a nightmare I will never forget—one marked by coercion, violations of consent, violence, and a system that treated a laboring woman as a specimen rather than a person deserving of compassion, autonomy, and respect.
“(1983) Developing a seriously high fever and infection caused by the doctor inserting his bare hands and partial arm into my vagina after birth to scrape the uterus. I saw my blood covering way past his wrists. With a toxic tone and attitude he dismissed my high fever and swollen hands and feet as normal and refused to help me. My husband had to carry me to the car and take me to the Emergency Room. I later learned that this doctor falsely claimed an intern was assisting him at my birth on my medical records.
• (1985) A son born asleep because medications were administered just minutes before pushing.
*(1988)An OBGYN administered Pitocin. The doctor didn’t want to be up all night waiting for natural childbirth to progress. I asked if it was safe, and was told that it was completely safe for me and my baby. That was a giant lie. It is my experience that doctors and maternity ward nurses lie as a matter of routine to women in labor.
*(1990) A great birth experience with a female certified nurse midwife at Mercer Medical Center in Trenton, NJ. Thank you Marilyn, I will will love you forever.
* (1992) The loss of a daughter to stillbirth, caused by a placenta issue, but I was with the same group of three certified nurse midwives in practice with three male OBGYNS, whom I never saw. I received the best medical care as well as compassionate, dignified care by my female midwives.
• (1993) Being abandoned by the supposedly natural childbirth family practitioner who assured me at every prenatal visit that he would deliver my baby at Olathe Medical Center, Olathe. KS. In the end, he had plane tickets to go away with his wife on my due date. He had been in practice less than three years. He lied to me and I felt exploited for the sake of building up his practice and financial gain. I had shared in detail the horrible experiences of my past. Including being a sexual assault survivor and that my last baby was stillborn.
I only went to him because I couldn’t find a female doctor. I called the maturity ward of the hospital and literally begged the nurse to give me the name of a female doctor, but she couldn’t wrap her head around why I wanted a female doctor and refused to even tell me IF there were any female doctors in the area.
What kind of a depraved person would abandon a woman with my history during labor after repeatedly promising to be there for her- without even saying goodbye (the nurse informed me)!?—A mysoginous male doctor!
I was grossly dehumanized and tortured for nearly an hour by a stranger—a man I never met before that day—whom I was forced to have as my birth attendant, whose only concern was to get back to his office ASAP. He endangered my life and my child’s life, but my medical records were a fictitious tale of what actually transpired.
The very first thing the female psychologist said after hearing my full story is, “You need to get an attorney and sue.” But I was informed by an attorney that I could not win a lawsuit because my baby and I lived through the ordeal!!! The bar is really that low!
*(1996) A beautiful homebirth with a lay midwife.
This is not only my story. There is nothing “unique” about my experiences except that, because I had more pregnancies and births than the average woman, I had more exposure to the male-dominated OB-GYN system. My story is a small window into the immense, often hidden suffering inflicted on women since male physicians seized control of women’s healthcare and dictated to women how they should think and feel about their own bodies.
To believe that men are sexually rewired and issued a halo along with their medical diploma or certificate, is to believe in a fairytale of epic proportion. It is long past time that women rise up and refuse to be exploited and violated by the medical profession.