AMSTERDAM — It was nearly three decades ago, as a young medical trainee in West Africa, that Rebecca Gomperts witnessed scenes that would set in motion her life's work. Gruesome hemorrhages, perforated wombs, bloodied young women gasping out their lives: all the aftermath of botched illegal abortions.
"The methods — oh, how invasive they were," the 57-year-old Dutch activist-physician said, shaking her head at the memory of stricken women staggering or being carried into the hospital. "Sticks. Bleach."
In the intervening decades, Gomperts — founder of a trio of organizations that work to broaden abortion access worldwide — has sailed on shipboard clinics, delivered abortion pills by drone and seen the inside of countless courtrooms. She's received international accolades for her work, but has also been shouted down, pelted with eggs, even confronted by warships off the Portuguese coast.
