I asked the doctor about why he does what he does and he said "I have a great job–no one else can have a patient walk in the door with a huge problem and completely fix that for them in five minutes."

today I watched 10 girls younger than me have abortions at the downtown planned parenthood.

I was more nervous than I've been in a very long time taking the train down this morning and walking past the protesters and wondering what I was going to see and who I was going to talk to.

The morning was awkward–shadowing the ultrasound technician who didn't want me there and then hovering in the hallway for hours trying to get counselors to invite me into their counseling sessions. Finally I was assigned to a 66 y/o male doctor who has performed 200,000 abortions in the past almost-40 years. He had me sit behind his right shoulder and talked me through what he was doing and nothing seemed so horrible.

I went with the nurse after the first procedure to see the tissue that was evacuated and although that was the thing I was most scared to do, it was fine and just looked like blood and white fluff.

I asked the doctor about why he does what he does and he said "I have a great job–no one else can have a patient walk in the door with a huge problem and completely fix that for them in five minutes." I stayed in his operating room for most of the afternoon and was surprised by how okay things felt–he was friendly and respectful of his patients and very matter of fact about the whole thing.

The part that made me really uncomfortable came later on when I moved into the OR next door. The doctor there was a middle-aged woman with incredibly understanding, calm bedside manner. The first two cases I saw her perform were gentle and careful and not upsetting.

The third patient was a girl my little sister's age whose pregnancy was much farther along than the others I saw. Coming into the room, she was shaking and scared and the doctor took ten minutes (twice as long as the actual procedure) to make sure she was ready and sure about her decision. Once the patient calmed down and was anesthetized, the nurse hooked up ultrasound to help with the more difficult case. This time I could clearly make out a head and arms on the screen, and I sat down and had to look away during most of the procedure.

Afterwards, the nurse brought me to the back room again and I saw some things I can't get out of my head. Leaving the clinic through a waiting room full of upset pregnant teenagers, I felt respectful of and impressed by the doctors I met, both of whom have been stalked and threatened many times because of what they do. At the same time, I'm incredibly freaked out by the whole thing and don’t know how to think about it. It simultaneously seems like a small and an enormous thing.