8/15/09
This last Saturday is going to be a particularly difficult day to talk about for me. We arrived at the abortion clinic around 10 and left around 12:30 which is typical, but what happened in between was not very typical. Overall the day was relatively quiet. There was a point where a couple who was on their way into the clinic stopped to talk to us. They spoke to us for a long time. The couple already had one child and felt that the second would be too much of a burden. However they seemed very hesitant with their decision and they seemed to agree with everything we said. I was very happy that they stopped to talk to us for a while. I was also happy to hear that the father was willing to take care of his child, even if that meant he would go hungry. Nonetheless, I was utterly crushed when they completely ignored everything they knew and claimed to believe and went in for the abortion anyway. It didn’t make any logical sense to me.
Throughout the 30 minutes or so that we talked to them, other women came in and out of the abortion clinic. Not very many, but there was still some traffic. As we were talking to the couple, many couples came out where the women looked horrible. One women came out crying to herself and clinging on to the man that was with her. One women came out with a very confused and dizzy look on her face. She looked like she would not have been able to walk, had she not been leaning on the guy who she had came with. And one woman, was particularly angry when she came out. She kicked our sign and cursed at us. We didn’t pay much attention to her because at the time we were still talking to the couple who was considering life. This was one of the things that confused me as well. Almost every time one of these women came out, the woman that we were talking to had a horrified look on her face. She didn’t want to look like those women. I was practically sure she didn’t want to have an abortion. But in the end, she pushed all that aside and did anyway. After that, we didn’t have much left in us to stay any longer. I know it drained me out. I didn’t know what to say or do anymore. It was just a very difficult day, and is still difficult to write about.
