Shawna Murphy & Toya Interview

Shawna:
All right. I’m interviewing Toya here this afternoon, and we’re doing our interview on the phone because we are not in the same city. Toya, are you a parent yourself?

Toya:
Yes, I have a twelve year old daughter.

Shawna:
Yeah. Do you call yourself, mom? Does she call you mom?

Toya:
She calls me mom.

Shawna:
Yeah. Were you pregnant to get her?

Toya:
Say that again, I didn’t hear you.

Shawna:
Oh, were you pregnant to get your daughter? Or is she someone that you–

Toya:
I was pregnant with her, yes. She was a planned pregnancy.

Shawna:
Yeah. Did you have any miscarriages or abortions before you had her?

Toya:

I had had an abortion before her, when I was 18 years old.

Shawna:
How did that go?

Toya:
It went okay, I guess, for the most part. I was young. My mom was with me. I went to Planned Parenthood, and that was at 11th and Locust. It was something that I had to do. I was in school. I was in my first year of college. I was home on a summer break, and I wasn’t ready so I had a procedure, and I was okay after that.

Shawna:
Your mom was pretty supportive? Your family?

Toya:
Yeah, she was with me in the actual procedure room. She was with me through the whole thing.

Shawna:
Oh, that’s wonderful.

Toya:
Yep. She got to be in the procedure room with me. [crosstalk 00:01:26] I was going to do it without her, and then I was, “No, I’m going to tell her,” because I just didn’t want to be alone. She was, “Okay.”

Shawna:
18 years old, it’s young. That’s scary. Any other pregnancies? Just that one and then your daughter?

Toya:
Then I had my daughter, and then I had a procedure. I did a medical abortion last year. Yes, January of last year.

Shawna:
I had one of those too. It hurt. How was yours?

Toya:
It went really great, but afterwards I got really sick. The procedure itself went well. I didn’t have that much pain. I knew exactly when it happened. I was on top of everything and I was fine. Then about four or five days later, I wasn’t feeling well. Every day I would feel worse and worse and worse.

Shawna:
Did you go end up going to the doctor and did they find anything?

Toya:
Well, luckily I work at Philadelphia Women’s Center. I called the doctor because I had that access. I called the doctor and I met her at the clinic. I didn’t go to the hospital because she also was a doctor at Jefferson. She was, “You can come to the hospital or I’ll just meet you at the clinic.” I just felt more comfortable going to the clinic. I met her at the clinic and I had to have a D & C.

Shawna:
Oh, it didn’t get all out by itself, basically?

Toya:
It did come out, but I was bleeding internally. I was bleeding inside and that didn’t come out. When she did the D & C, there wasn’t tissue or anything, it was just collapsing. I had to get on antibiotics, I had a fever, and she only did the D & C because I had a fever. If I wouldn’t have had a fever, she wouldn’t have done the suction. But because I had a fever, she was, “Let me just go in.”

Shawna:
That’s so great that you had that access and you had someone you trust.

Toya:
Yes.

Shawna:
Yeah. So your daughter was just little when this happened?

Toya:
No, she was actually about to turn 10 and next month, she was nine years old.

Shawna:
Oh, wow. So she knew what was going on, right? I mean, you were talking to her about this?

Toya:
She knew that I got sick. She didn’t know exactly what was going on. That morning when I was really, really sick and I couldn’t walk, and this was after the procedure, I had to wake her up. I had to get her to get up for school and I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t yell for her because I was in so much pain that I couldn’t raise my voice. But when she came in to get ready for school, I’m, “Call my mom, tell her I don’t feel well.”

Toya:
My mom came to the house and she put her on the school bus. She helped me get to the bathroom before my mom put her on the bus, and she just knew that I was really sick. So yes, she knew, because one time she wasn’t feeling well, she was, “Mom, remember that time you were really pretty sick and you couldn’t walk? That’s how I feel.”

Shawna:
Oh, no.

Toya:
Yeah, she pays attention. I don’t know if she knew exactly what I was going through, but she knows where I work, she knows what I do. I don’t know if she was able to put two and two together at the age of nine, or ten.

Shawna:
Do you talk to her about your work now? Does she know?

Toya:
Yeah.

Shawna:
And so are you a patient advocate? Is that what you do?

Toya:
I’m a medical coordinator at the clinic. I’m a medical coordinator so I’m a patient advocate. I run the clinic, I do a lot there. I work under Jen.

Shawna:
Yeah.

Toya:
Yeah, I run the clinic a little bit.

Shawna:
That’s amazing. Doing that work, how many women do you think you meet every day who are about to have an abortion?

Toya:
Every day? At least 40 women a day.

Shawna:
That just blows my mind. It’s amazing.

Toya:
It’s amazing. I’ve been there for 16 years last week.

Shawna:
Wow. So, what do you tell your daughter about your work? Because I’m really curious about how women talk to their children about abortion. What do you tell her?

Toya:
I help women. I help them not be pregnant any more. So when women get pregnant and they choose not to be pregnant, I help them not be pregnant any more. [crosstalk 00:05:49]

Shawna:
Does she ask you reasons? Does she say, “Well, how come people wouldn’t want to be pregnant?” Isn’t she curious about it?

Toya:
She just said, “She knows what an abortion is.” And I said, “Did she want to talk about it, or just need clarification?” She said, “No,” but if she did she will come to me. She knows what I do. She knows that I help women, and she knows that I like what I do, so she’s fine with it.

Shawna:
I talked to your coworker this morning and I was asking her about it, and she was saying that you have protesters outside the clinic. Is that something that your daughter ever talks to you about, that she knows there’s people outside?

Toya:
She doesn’t talk about it but she knows that they’re out there and they don’t agree with what I do. There have been times where I had to take her to work with me, so I’ve said, “The people out here, just ignore them. They’re not allowed to touch us, but they can say things and they try to give us paper but we’re not going to take anything.” We just walk in, I let her headphones in her ears, and then we walk in the building. I’m just, “They don’t agree with what we do,” and she was, “Okay…” After I had my procedure that year, we had her 10th birthday party at the clinic.

Shawna:

You did? Oh, I love that. That’s amazing. I’ve seen the people out protesting, but I’ve never had to walk through, and I just wonder, when you’re getting out of your car in the morning to walk into work, what do you have to say to yourself? Do you kind of have to put on a mask? How do you do that?

Toya:
So now it doesn’t bother me at all because I’ve been doing it for so long. I think that I just ignore them. But in the beginning, when I first started working for Philadelphia Women’s Center, we were at 225 Locust Street. It was structured different from how it is now. We don’t have as many borders to protect us. I was nervous. I was scared because from the train station to the job was a little distance and I just was nervous that somebody will find me on a train, I wear scrubs to work, but after a while I got used to it. It doesn’t bother me. I just ignore them. I just walk in because now where we are located, they know their boundaries. They know they can’t come into this place here. They can’t do this and they can’t do that. It’s the same ones who’ve been constantly coming so we know their names.

Shawna:
Oh wow. How do they have so much free time? Don’t they have jobs, or this is just what they do?

Toya:
I guess they don’t, that’s what I feel like. One of them is named Jerry, I’m, “Oh, you’re here again, you want to stand here and do this Jerry? Go get a job. Leave me alone, this is early for you to be out here.” But they don’t bother me. I guess because I’m used to it and now that I don’t bring [inaudible 00:08:41] to work so early, she doesn’t see them. She will come here after school hours, so they’re gone by then.

Toya:
I just don’t pay them any mind because I’m used to it. I don’t trust that they won’t hurt me because people will do anything, but I feel comfortable that I can walk in and just ignore him. It feels safe, but I keep my eye on him because you just never know what kind of day he’s having. I’m just be prepared for all times, but I’m not worried about them. And do we have a security guard who’s always out there and we have escorts and they’re always there, so I feel comfortable going to work.

Shawna:
Do any of the women that come to see you? Is it hard for them to go through that walking in? Do they talk about them?

Toya:
Yeah. Some of them have a hard time with that. Some of them leave because of that. It’s different for everybody, especially for the ones who really don’t want to have a termination and are doing it for whatever reason they have to. I think having that person out there is just another way to get them to change their mind. Most of the time it doesn’t work, or sometimes it upset them that they’re out there doing it. “It’s my decision. Why’re you out here?” So it goes all different ways, depending on what that person is emotionally going through or how that person is feeling. I have seen both sides. We have patients that have left because of them and patients that have stayed because of them.

Shawna:
So just curious, are they religious? Is that why they’re doing it? Something about their religion that they don’t-

Toya:
Yeah, because they do a lot of praying and out here. They bow their heads and just start praying, they have rosary beads. I believe it’s more religious, but I don’t really know because we don’t talk to them and ask the question. It’s just, “You don’t have anything better to do, let these women do what’s best for them. It’s their body, let them choose.”

Shawna:
Did you grow up in a faith based tradition? A religion that was supported abortion? Did you grow up with a religion?

Toya:
Well, I grew up Baptist. Me and my family went to church. We never really talked about abortion. Yeah. We never really talked about it. I don’t know, it just never came up. I had my girlfriends who had older sisters who have had abortions, but it still never came up. I was, “Oh, she had an abortion today.” And it’s just, “She’s okay. Just let her lay on the chair, we’ll just play around them,” like it wasn’t anything. We never really talked about it as a family kind of thing.

Shawna:
But you knew girls that had, so when you were 18 and you were in college and you found out you were pregnant, it wasn’t something outside of your scope. You just knew, “This is what I need to do.” Yeah.

Toya:
Yes. I knew it was, “Okay, this is what I’m going to do.” The only thing is, I didn’t know about all abortion clinics. I only really knew of Planned Parenthood. I didn’t even know that Philadelphia Women’s Center was out there. I didn’t know there was a Planned Parenthood at a different location. I didn’t know there was a Northeast Women’s Center at the time. I didn’t know there was a Cherryhill Women’s Center, the only thing they got was Planned Parenthood, so I didn’t know that. I remember going to the Health Center Three, and they gave you a list and Women’s Medical phone was on there. So it was Women’s Medical phone, Planned Parenthood, and then it was three other clinics on there. I think it was [inaudible 00:12:23] Benjamin at the time [inaudible 00:12:24] was on there. So it was, “Oh, there’s other places that do this,” but I was familiar with Planned Parenthood.

Shawna:
So you just went with it? Yeah. You were in college. Did you have health care coverage that the covered the abortion or did you have to come up with money?

Toya:
I had health insurance and I called them, and they said that they didn’t cover it. It was under my mom’s plan and they said they didn’t cover it. That’s when I was trying to do it alone, so when I did talk to my mom and let her know what was going on, she just decided to pay for it, and after she thought we will just use insurance. I said, “Well, I called and they said they didn’t cover it,” but I never gave my insurance information to the clinic to have them call. So my mom, she just said, “I’ll just take care of it.” They offered us Woman’s Medical Fund, and so we just want that route.

Shawna:
About the women that you see at the clinic? Do most of them have a way to pay for the abortion or do some people have a really hard time?

Toya:
They don’t. They don’t have a way to pay. We do a lot of funding. We do a lot of funding and we give them that funding and we also give them Woman’s Medical Fund. Some people use their insurance. We have a lot of patients who are using their insurance, they’re stating they have to come in for either there was rape, there was incest, or it was a threat to life to use their insurance.

Shawna:
So that’s like Medicaid. They have to have a note that it was one of those three things.

Toya:
Yes.

Shawna:
Oh, that’s just ridiculous. That’s awful.

Toya:
Yeah. So it holds the procedure up, because then you have to send it to the insurance company, get pre-authorization, and then have them come back for their procedure.

Shawna:
And who writes the note to say that, the doctor or something?

Toya:
The doctor signs a major reform that stating this patient was either raped, it was a pregnancy through incest, or pregnancy through threats of life.

Shawna:
And for any anyone who’s under the age of consent, does that count just as rape because they’re teenagers?

Toya:
If they’re under the age of consent it counts as rape, but they don’t necessarily use it and make the reform. So if someone under age who had consensual sex, but the person is not in the age range, we have to report it. We don’t necessarily use a major reform, but we have to report it because he she’s not the age of consent. [crosstalk 00:14:52]

Shawna:
Do you get a lot of girls that are under 16, 15?

Toya:
Yeah. We see a fair number. We see all different ages, honestly. We see a lot of minors. We see a lot of older women that’s in their 40’s, almost 50’s. The numbers are all over the place, it’s never one set age group, it’s never one set ethnic background, it’s all over the place.

Shawna:
Well, Philadelphia is really diverse, right?

Toya:
Yes.

Shawna:
I’ve only been there once, but I really thought it was a beautiful city. I liked it. I’m trying to think of other questions I have about that. When women come to you who are mothers already, and they know that they need to terminate this pregnancy, what kinds of things do they often tell you? What are they worrying about?

Toya:
That they just can’t afford this, they can’t have this child with the children that they have. Most of them are worried about being able to support the child when they’re already struggling with the children that they do have.

Shawna:
So finances come up a lot?

Toya:
Yes.

Shawna:
Are people ever worried about what their family is going to think or what their husband is going to think or their partner? Does that come up too?

Toya:
It doesn’t come up a lot because a lot of the times the partner is with them. It doesn’t come up a lot which is great because they have that support. Yeah. I think the issue that I see more often is the being able to afford another child, or that something is wrong with the pregnancy and they have to terminate because of the means to take care of a child with special needs.

Shawna:
Your clinic goes to 23 weeks? So you see some pregnancies that they have to terminate because it’s just not going well?

Toya:
Yes.

Shawna:
One thing I’m really curious about is, for the book, we, as grownups, we differentiate between if you’re pregnant and it’s a baby, because it seems like it’s a baby if you want to have a baby. Right. Before that, it’s just cells, or sometimes we say fetus or whatever. I’m really curious, the women that come to you, how they refer to what’s going on inside of them? Do they say, “Baby?” Do they say, “Fetus?”

Toya:
They always say, “Baby,” and we just say, “Fetus.” If we’re having a conversation, we’ll say, “The pregnancy,” or, “The fetus.” The terminology we use is, “The pregnancy,” they use, “Baby,” like, “Oh my baby, my baby.” We let them, we don’t correct them. When we talk to them our terminology is either, “The pregnancy,” or, “The fetus.”

Shawna:
It’s so interesting to me because it seems like such a different way to think about it, the baby idea.

Toya:
Yeah. I just think that they don’t know any other terminology because they’ll come in and say, “Oh, if it’s a heartbeat, I’m not going to do it.” And we’re, “Well, the heart begins to beat at five weeks. I’ll test it on the ultrasound.” A lot of times you do and they were, “Oh, I didn’t know that,” and we, “Yeah.” So I just think they don’t have the information.

Shawna:
That’s so interesting. So here we are. These are grown women who don’t know these things about their body. I wonder what we need to do.

Toya:
More education.

Shawna:
Yeah, more education. [crosstalk 00:18:27].

Toya:
It’s funny because my daughter had to do a project on the digestive system. Her science teacher emailed it out, I was, “Oh, they have to do a project on the digestive system.” One is organ systems, so they can use everything besides the reproductive system. I emailed him back, “Well, why can’t she use the reproductive system?” I’m curious to know. She’s in health and science, they’re seventh graders, they’re 12 and 13 year olds. He was, “Well, I just honestly don’t think that the class is mature enough to handle that.” I said, “I work in woman’s health. That’s an issue for me because I think that they should be mature enough to handle that.”

Shawna:
Yeah. These are girls that they’re all having their period by then, so they should be understanding how it works.

Toya:
He was, “You know, I just don’t.” I thought, “It’s fine. I just needed to know why that wasn’t an option for them.”

Shawna:
That’s so interesting.

Toya:
He was, “We can do anything but the reproductive system.” And I was, “Oh no, let me email him back.”

Shawna:
Yeah. That sounds like me too. The way that you’ve raised your daughter, obviously she’s really empowered. What do you want her to know about herself? If she were to become pregnant and didn’t want to have a baby, what do you want her to know?

Toya:
I want her to know that she has options. They can either terminate the pregnancy, be a mom, or give the baby up for adoption. I want her to know all her options. I want her to have all the information on whatever one she chooses. I also tell her that if your friends have questions, if you have questions and y’all talk about it, but also ask an adult, because y’all don’t really know. Y’all just going off on hearsay, you have to ask somebody who has the knowledge.

Toya:
She comes to my job. She knows everyone. I said, “You can call one of them at the job if you’re afraid to come to me. If they have to see your friend, I need you to come to me and I’ll figure out how we tell that mom, if we need to, but y’all, can’t go around and doing things that will wind up hurting one of you. You have to go to an adult and let them figure it out. I want to be that adult because of what I do and what I work in. I have the resources for you guys.” So she knows, and she knows that she has options, and I want her to give that information to her friends. The funny thing is she goes to a Catholic school.

Shawna:
Oh, she does. Oh, that’s funny.

Toya:
Yeah, she goes to a Catholic school.

Shawna:
So what’s the climate like right now for abortion in Pennsylvania? Are they trying to pass any of the laws like in some of the other states?

Toya:
They are. They’re not as hard as the other states, but it was trying to do some [inaudible 00:21:11]. We were having an issue trying to go to 23 weeks, but it worked out for us and we’re doing it so we can see more women here. We don’t have to send them over the bridge to have a procedure. They can have the procedure in the state that they live in and they’re familiar with the area.

Shawna:
Is that because in New Jersey you can go a little bit longer, is that right?

Toya:
Yeah. They go to 24 weeks in New Jersey. They don’t have the minor laws there. They don’t have the ID laws there. New Jersey Medicaid pays for their procedures there. They don’t have to go through that big process, they can just say, “I’m pregnant. I want an abortion,” and the insurance covers it, no questions asked. And then, [crosstalk 00:21:55]

Shawna:
Can women from Philadelphia who have state Medicaid go to New Jersey and would it be paid for? [crosstalk 00:22:05]

Toya:
They have to have New Jersey Medicaid and live in Jersey.

Shawna:
That’s just so hard.

Toya:
Their minors can go there without a parent because they don’t have laws there in Jersey.

Shawna:
Wow. I’m glad that they have those laws. I’m sorry that you don’t.

Toya:
In PA you have to do a 24 hour counseling session where you listen to the doctor. They don’t have to in Jersey. Pennsylvania is always just holding something up. It’s, “Oh, I got to do this, wait 24 hours after I talk to a doctor to even have my abortion.” In Jersey, you can just have an abortion.

Shawna:
Yeah, as it should be. So your patients have to come to you twice? They come for the counseling and then they come back for the procedure?

Toya:
Some of them do, yes. We do it over the phone. We do a lot of over the phone information sessions, but the ones who need to come in for a pre-ultrasound and get their insurance approved, have to come in, so they just watch a video while they’re there for the ultrasound to get the insurance to cover it. They don’t even get to wait 24 hours. They have to wait at least three to five days because the insurance company needs to be contacted and reply back to us.

Shawna:
Oh, wow. Running the clinic, you would have to do a lot of this kind of work, getting the insurance to approve the procedure?

Toya:
Well, I don’t do that. We have a billing department that handles it. We just made sure that the patient paperwork is correctly done and add it to her chart, so they can see that it’s done and start working on getting her authorization. Sometimes it doesn’t come through and we have to fully fund this patient, so then we find the money to fully fund this patient so she can have her abortion and not be too far and have to carry [inaudible 00:23:50] when she doesn’t want to.

Shawna:
So your clinic has this commitment that anybody who walks through the door, they’re going to get an abortion, whether they are able to pay or not?

Toya:
Yes.

Shawna:
That’s really beautiful.

Toya:
That’s the sound commitment, just to give you a safe abortion. Yep. [crosstalk 00:24:08].

Shawna:
Thank you for doing that work.

Toya:
They want to do things that we don’t want them to do. We tell our patients, “Just bring whatever you can bring, but keep your appointment.” Because the holidays are coming up and people can reschedule and reschedule their appointments because they don’t have the money, and it’s, “No, just come. You’re going to have an abortion.”

Shawna:
You take such good care of all these people. That’s just so beautiful.

Toya:
Thank you.

Shawna:
It’s beautiful. I’m thinking back to the questions I’m asking you about the book. When your daughter was little, do you think that you would read a book like that to her? It seems like she had a lot of questions. She just knew your work, and she was cool with it.

Toya:
Well, I will read the book to her because I read her a book about her body parts. We talk about the female body parts. I can’t remember the author. When we were reading this book, it got to the point about the male, and then this talk about intercourse. I was, “Oh, we got to start reading this. She’s got to know about it,” and she was all good. The first time we read it, I stopped it dead. I was, “No, this is too much. You can’t read this.” And she was curious to know, she was saying, “When are we going to finish that book?” So we just did it. It had pictures and it’s a great book. I still have the book somewhere in her room, because we have to keep this book and pass it down because being a girl, they’re curious and they’re going to want to know.

Toya:
She was curious, she was about three when I started the book, and she was curious and she always will bring it up about the book that we never finished. I was, “Well, let’s finish it,” and she was, “Oh, okay. I get it now, because it’s where babies come from.” And I was, “Out of your stomach.” She’s, “No, they don’t come out of your stomach, they come out of your vagina.” You know how when you grew up it was, “Oh, if you kiss you get pregnant,” she knows that’s not true. You have to have a period to be able to get pregnant. Once a woman has a period and has sex, she can get pregnant. These are the things that she knows. I don’t know if other four year olds know this.

Shawna:
Yeah. It’s hard to say. For some people it’s hard for them to talk to their kids at that age too, it can be really awkward.

Toya:
I believe it. It was awkward for me, but I think because of the field that I’m in, it makes me a little bit comfortable because I’m going to see patients her age and I have to be comfortable to talk to them.

Shawna:
Yes. Is there anything else that you think that I should know about your work, or just in general? I’m so curious. Now of course I want to come visit after talking to you.

Toya:
Yes. You should come and visit us. We would love to see you. We have all the [inaudible 00:27:06] abortion pictures up in our clinic. You should come.

Shawna:
I would love that. Well, is there anything else you think I should know, or do you think we’re good?

Toya:
Just being a mom, working in abortion here is fantastic. I think it opened me up as a mom to be able to share these things with my daughter at the age she is, and not be afraid because my mom didn’t share with me like that. It just didn’t come up, but now it comes up and it’s coming up more and more as time goes on because the times are changing. So, just that it’s important to talk to your children.

Shawna:
It really is. It’s true, and your friends too. That’s the one thing that I always talk about. I’m a childcare provider. I have childcare in my home. Once I started talking about my abortion, I was surprised because the people that I take care of their kids, the moms started coming to me and telling me, “Oh, I had an abortion too.” It was one of the things where people just don’t talk about it, unless somebody starts a conversation.

Toya:
Because they’re ashamed and they are afraid because they don’t know how the next person’s going to react to them having an abortion.

Shawna:
It’s true. I’m glad that my daughters are growing up in this time and they’re so comfortable talking to people. In fact, we have a friend who was pregnant and my nine-year-old asked her, “Now, is that a planned pregnancy?” Well, luckily my friend was, “Yes, we tried so hard to have this baby.” It was nice. What’s wrong with being honest with people?

Toya:
Especially with children, because children are going to be honest to us.

Shawna:
It’s true. My oldest one is yelling in the background. Anyway, I really appreciate you talking to me today.

Toya:
Of course.

Shawna:
Thank you.

Toya:
I wanted to do this. Thank you for the work that you’re doing, is going to be amazing.

Shawna:
I hope so.

Toya:
And if you’re in Philadelphia, give us a call and come to see us.

Shawna:
I would like that very much.

Toya:
All right, I’ll talk to you. So thank you.

Shawna:
Thanks Toya, bye.

Toya:
Bye-bye.