A Spark of Light(99)

“Which one do you recommend?”

“Only you can decide,” Vonita said. “If you ten weeks along or less and are eligible for the pills, you get to avoid surgery. But surgery is over and done more quickly than the pill procedure. So really it is up to you.”

Janine found herself thinking of her brother, Ben. He lived in a group home now, and he bagged groceries for a living. He had a Down syndrome girlfriend he took out to dinner and a movie every Friday night. He was obsessed with Stranger Things. He had the same Sara Lee pound cake every night for his dessert. He was happy. On the other hand, was she? She had devoted her livelihood to saving innocent babies, but was that out of faith or guilt? She glanced around the room and wondered how many of these women would have their abortions and feel like a burden had been lifted; and how many, like her, would let it govern the rest of their lives. But she said none of this.

She forced her attention to Vonita again. “Now, after I finish up talking, the doctor is going to come out here and talk to you as a group. He’s going to explain exactly what he does in the surgery and exactly how he administers the pill. If you have any questions, you can ask him at that time. If you have any private questions, you can ask him after that, during the individual session he has with you. During that time, he will say what the law requires him to say to you. He’ll review your ultrasound and your medical history and he’ll sign off on your paperwork. Then you’ll go to the reception desk, and schedule when you’re coming back. I’ll tell you how much you owe and who your doctor is going to be the day you return.” She tidied the stack of paperwork on her lap. “Questions?”

How do you do it? Janine thought. How do you counsel this, when you know they will leave here completely different women than they arrived?

She looked around at the other women. How can I save all their babies?

How can I tell them that the decision they make today might not feel right tomorrow?

But she said none of this.

“Can I work the next day?” someone asked.

“Yes,” Vonita assured her. “Do you need a doctor’s note for an absence today?”

“No, ma’am.”

Vonita nodded. She looked around the room. “We hope you are not here because anyone has forced you to come. We are required to tell you that you do not have to go through with this procedure if you don’t want to.”

From beneath lowered lashes, Janine held her breath.

What if she stood up now, and said she was making a mistake? What if she blew her cover and told these women that they needed to think of their unborn children? What if she became their voice?

But she did not, and no woman wavered.

—


IZZY WAS STUCK IN TRAFFIC at a construction zone, so by the time she got to the Center, the trip had taken a half hour longer than it should have. She parked lopsided and grabbed her purse and locked the doors to the car as she was running up the path that led to the Center’s front door. She didn’t even hear the protesters, that’s how frazzled she was.

When she was buzzed inside, a man in scrubs was just settling down in a cluster of women, starting to speak. The woman at the front desk took one look at Izzy and started to laugh. “Sugar,” she said, “take a deep breath. What can I do for you?”

Izzy did. “I am so sorry I’m late,” she began, and she realized that could be interpreted in so many different ways, and that they would all be right.

—


LOUIE CALLED IT THE LAW of Three. Most of what he told these ladies had also been said by Miss Vonita, and he would repeat it to them yet again in the individual doctor-patient sessions that followed. But he also knew that these women were too shell-shocked to be absorbing even a fraction of the information, which is why, by the third time, he hoped that it had sunk in.

There were eleven women in front of him: seven black, two white, two brown. He paid attention to the race of those who came to the Center because for him, the politics of abortion had so much in common with the politics of racism. As an African American male, he could imagine quite easily what was like to not have jurisdiction over your body. White men had once owned black men’s bodies. Now, white men wanted to own women’s bodies.

“I am obligated by the state to tell you some things that are not medically true,” Louie said. “I am obligated to tell you that having an abortion increases your risk for breast cancer, even though there is no evidence to support that.” He thought back, as he always did, to the patient he had treated once who had breast cancer, and who had terminated her pregnancy so that she could pursue treatment. My risk of getting breast cancer is zero, she had said flatly, since I already have it.

“I am obligated by the state,” he continued, “to tell you that with abortion, there are risks of injury to your bowel, bladder, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries; and that if you have injury to your uterus that’s severe enough, we might have to remove your uterus, which is called a hysterectomy. But guess what? Those are the exact same risks that you’ll have if you give birth to a baby. In fact, you’re more likely to have those risks giving birth to a child than having an abortion. Now. Y’all got questions for me?”

A woman’s hand crept up tentatively. “I heard you use knives and scissors to cut up the babies.”

Louie heard this at least every other counseling session. One of the things he wished he could tell women who wanted abortions was to never, ever Google the word. He shook his head. “There are no knives, no scissors, no scalpels.” He made sure to correct her use of the term babies as gently as possible. “If patients wish to see the tissue after it’s removed, they can. And it is disposed of in with respect, in an appropriate legal way.”