Choice

Don't miss yesterday's piece in the Washington Post entitled, "A Hard Choice," which centers on the experiences of Lesley Wojick, a 24-year-old, second-year medical student.

Excerpts:

Audrey Lance, a medical student at George Washington University who wanted to be an obstetrician, said her summer observing abortions at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and a clinic in Annapolis was life-changing.

"Patients were so grateful," said Lance, who had only vague interest in abortion until she learned about the shortage of providers. "It just became very clear to me that this was where I was needed."

[snip]

A third patient, a 23-year-old college student wearing red high heels, had become pregnant because the patch she used as birth control kept falling off. She didn't realize she was pregnant at first. Now she needed a second-term abortion. Lesley was struck by how resolute the young woman was. She was earning a degree, and said she couldn't care for a child if she wanted to achieve her goal. She was scheduled for the procedure for the following morning.

Lesley was free early the next morning and phoned the doctor performing the abortion to ask if she could attend. The doctor hesitated, according to Lesley.

Are you sure? the doctor asked. It's really hard to watch.

Yes, Lesley answered, she was sure.

The next morning, Lesley arrived at 7:30. The woman with the red heels asked for a printout of her ultrasound and wanted to know the sex of the 14-week-old fetus. It couldn't be determined.

This time, the procedure took 10 minutes instead of five. The dilator was bigger; there was more tissue to remove; and the patient, although sedated, was awake and moving with discomfort. Lesley watched as the doctor counted the parts of the fetus, and, to her surprise, she didn't find it jarring. To her, the parts appeared doll-like.

"It was definitely gruesome," she said. "You could make out what a fetus could look like, tiny feet, lungs, but it didn't look like a person." She knew this abortion was an act that her friend Litty considered tantamount to murder. She herself expected to be very upset. She'd felt that way at her first autopsy, that of a teenage boy who'd shot himself in the head. For weeks, she could not shake the image of the boy. But this was different. She didn't regard the fetus as a person yet. She said she was happy to help the woman: "I feel like I was giving [her] a new lease" on life.