In 2006, there were nearly 200,000 abortions in Britain. So if abortion is a “common secret”, as Susan Wicklund's title suggests, it is one shared by many patients, physicians and friends. But Wicklund is a US doctor, writing from a US perspective, and her book confirms that the debate there is much more rancorous and polarised than in this country.

Wicklund became a doctor because she wanted to help thousands of women who were risking their lives by having back-street abortions or too afraid to seek a legal termination. I am not sure that British women feel anything like the degree of shame that surrounds the subject in the US, where the Religious Right has had considerable success in restricting access to abortion.

In this country, there has been consistent support for the 1967 Abortion Act; most abortions (just under 90 per cent) take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy and there have been calls to make the procedure easier in the first trimester to reduce the small number of late abortions each year. For the most part, the abortion debate is conducted sensibly, with only occasional forays into the sensationalist tactics widely used in the US.

In the States, it is common for women seeking abortions to have to force their way through crowds of protesters. Between 1977 and 2005, seven doctors were murdered by anti-abortionists and there were 17 attempted murders; there were also 52 bombings, 180 arson attacks, 100 acid attacks and 655 anthrax threats.

Wicklund documents her experience of living with the ever-present threat of violence and the desperate measures she adopted to travel between five clinics in three states.

Sometimes she flew in disguise, trying to slip out of an airport without being recognised, but there were occasions when protesters blockaded her home and she needed a police escort to go to work.

This is shocking stuff, and goes a long way to explaining her extraordinary sense of being a woman on a mission. She has never wavered in her belief that women are entitled to choice, but she has paid a high price in terms of her private life. Her book is often cloyingly sentimental, but it nevertheless leaves a vivid impression of the damage inflicted on civil society when one side in an important debate resorts to terrorist tactics.

This Common Secret, by Susan Wicklund with Alan Kesselheim
Public Affairs, £14.99

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy