Hello goodbye

This is an entry where my writing seems inadequate, and I don't feel I'm doing anything close to justice to the topic. I wish I could work on this a lot before posting it. But I'll capture the immediate thoughts from my time at the Women's Options Clinic today.

I was moved to see fetal parts in the tissue from a 12-week-gestation abortion. I touched the spinal cord with my gloved finger. The leg looked like one of those milagro arms, if anyone knows what I'm talking about, but even smaller, shrinkydinked. I wanted to cry for a second, but I wasn't sad. I felt that Shiva energy, the shadow power, and it shook me like a rattle. Seeing the fetus completely dismembered put me in touch with the violent therapeutic force applied. But then seeing something so small, miniature, invokes a wanting to protect, that affinity for cute -- in a context of blood and gore. Since I obviously don't do the procedure, I held the woman's hand, and from now on I will also do an internal memorial for the spirit that slips out of this world before it enters it. If I worked in an abortion clinic, I would want to do some type of service for the fetuses, the way Jette's hospice group did for their patients who passed away, even though the idea somehow starts sounding like something anti-choicers would do, a theatrical mass funeral.

I also got in touch with the awe of embryos and fetuses in general, how one cell contains the knowledge to divide and organize itself into this perfect structure, create complex, perfect form from almost nothing. The depth of that wonder is one of those automatic mind blower, degrees of magnitude larger than our capacity to comprehend.

I deeply respect abortion providers in so many ways, one of which is their openness about feelings that are non-peachy. It inspires me that they acknowledge the grotesque aspect of the work, and that their belief in the necessity of providing the service is so strong it can outweigh the very real personal difficulty. Because right, seeing a miniscule thorax is disturbing, but the woman did not want to be a mother. I have asked Julia if I can be a psychiatrist and also be trained to do abortions, and though she thinks I might be the first to do so, it could maybe be arranged. And then we can take our biodiesel abortionmobile to all of the unserved NorCal counties.

It surprised me how hot it was when I walked out of the ER tonight. Heat wave!