Dr. Willie Parker on Why He Provides Abortions

New York Times (Nov. 18, 2015): Why I Provide Abortions, by Willie Parker:

Recognizing that "women face harsh life circumstances and incessant hostility, merely for wanting to exercise their right" to terminate their pregnancies, Dr. Willie Parker describes the lack of access to abortion in the American South, where the majority of pregnancies are unintended, as nothing short of a public health crisis.  He was moved away, he writes, from holding moral views against abortion by a sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King: 

I was moved by his discussion of the quality of the good Samaritan and of what made the Samaritan “good.” The Samaritan reversed the question of concern, to care more about the well-being of the person needing help than about what might happen to him for stopping to give help. I realized that if I were to show compassion, I would have to act on behalf of those women. My concern about women who lacked access to abortion became more important to me than worrying about what might happen to me for providing the services.

Dr. Parker gave up his obstetrics practice in 2009 to provide abortion full time.