Beyond Limits

For 20 years Dr. Shelley Sella—an OB-GYN and the first woman to openly provide third-trimester abortion care in the United States—saw patients whose diverse backgrounds and circumstances led them to the same difficult decision: to end their pregnancies. Now, in her beautifully written and compassionate first book Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care, Dr. Sella shares deeply intimate, profoundly human stories of this widely misunderstood experience. Combining candid memoir with expert account, Sella interweaves her patients’ stories with her own personal and professional journey (including her mentorship under Dr. George Tiller) to reveal why she dedicated her life to this work.

Beyond Limits pulls back the curtain on a typical week at Dr. Sella’s clinic to demystify and destigmatize the experience of third-trimester abortion. These stories challenge preconceived notions of gestational limits and viability, and reset the narrative of abortion care later in pregnancy to one that reflects the reality of people’s lives. (Since Roe was overturned in 2022, this reality includes new barriers to accessing care that lead many patients who could have been seen earlier to face the necessity of an abortion later in pregnancy.) Among the many women one meets in the book are:

• Clarissa, a mother of two, whose third suffered a massive stroke in utero with no chance of recovery
• Mary, a devoted Catholic whose fourth round of IVF offered a late-in-life chance at motherhood, only to be dashed by anomalous test results
• Laura, a mother to four, whose bruised arms tell a painful story—one she couldn’t bring herself to write a fifth child into.

Beyond Limits is not just a testament to a standard of care grounded in competence, compassion, and sensitivity. It is also a call for a paradigm shift that moves beyond Dobbs, beyond Roe, beyond limits to provide care. And it is a tribute to the real people whose hearts, reasons, and stories are more complex than politicized conversations about abortion lead us to believe.

Dr. Shelley Sella is a board-certified ob-gyn and the first woman to openly practice third-trimester abortion care in the US, which she did for 20 years. She was prominently featured in the Emmy Award–winning documentary After Tiller. Dr. Sella served two terms on the board of the National Abortion Federation and in 2022 was awarded its highest honor, the Christopher Tietze Humanitarian Award. She is retired from clinical practice and now focuses on advocacy.

Dr. Sella will be joined in conversation by Victoria Kahn, professor emerita of English and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley and a member of Clio’s Curatorial Board.