Newsweek reporter surprised by her response to seeing an abortion

WOW...

A poignant and provocative piece-- on the politics vs. the reality of abortion and on the physical vs. the metaphysical with respect to abortion (for those willing to think about it)-- from Sarah Kliff at Newsweek (hat tip: Citizen Link via So. IN Right to Life)...

Reading the whole thing, I teared up-- at least when the reporter's "journey" was combined with the anecdotes she shared. But if you just want excerpts, here's a distillation:

I've covered abortion for NEWSWEEK for two years....I'd never actually seen an abortion; I'd never watched the procedure that activists vehemently defend or deplore. And, when I flew to Omaha to spend four days at LeRoy Carhart's abortion clinic for a profile in this week's magazine, I wasn't sure I would....

Why was I reluctant to watch? To be fair, I'd never observed a surgery and knew myself to frequently flinch at Grey's Anatomy. But abortion isn't like the complex, bloody operations you see on television: medically speaking, it's a simple and common procedure....I was nervous, I think, to watch something so controversial...I was uneasy about coming in such close contact with such substantial decisions.

...I began my day by interviewing patients....When their names were called, and I'd spent all morning with these women, it felt unnatural to stop short of the operating room...

A first-trimester abortion, from my vantage point behind the glass window, looked like an extended, more invasive version of a standard ob-gyn exam....Carhart used a suction tube to empty the contents of the uterus; it took no longer than three minutes. The suction machine made a slight rumbling sound, a pinkish fluid flowed through the tube, and, faster than I'd expected, it was over. Women spent less than a half hour in the operating room. I'd anticipated some kind of difficulty watching an abortion; it wasn't there.

At least not physically. But there was a discomfort I hadn't expected, my emotional reaction to watching abortions....

I met a few patients who saw nothing complicated about that decision, who never second-guessed their choice. But they were not the majority. In Carhart's clinic, most women were doing their best to balance competing emotions about their abortions, simultaneously sad and relieved, conflicted but confident. No one expected to spend a Sunday morning in Carhart's clinic—but all were absolutely grateful to be there.

When I returned from Omaha, friends and colleagues wanted to know if I had "done it." When I said I had, their reactions surprised me. Friends who supported legal abortion bristled slightly when I told them where I'd been and what I'd watched....

Americans may support abortion rights, but even 40 years after Roe, we don't talk about it like other medical procedures. And maybe that's appropriate. Abortion may be a simple procedure medically, but it is not cancer surgery. It's an elective procedure that no one—neither its defenders nor its detractors—expects to elect for themselves.

I had (and still have) difficulty understanding my own reaction, both relieved to have watched a minimally invasive surgery and distressed by the emotionality of the process. Abortion involves weighty choices that, depending on how you view it, involve a life, or the potential for life. And my reaction, complicated and conflicted as it was, may have been a reflection of our national ambivalence about a private medical procedure at the center of a very public debate.