TWELVE HOURS AT AN ABORTION PROVIDER

by Olivia deMontmorency

Abortion is normal. It’s life-saving, life-starting, and safe. It’s not a bad word. The health centers and physicians who provide this care are respected, intelligent, and thoughtful. So why is it all so taboo to discuss? Because anti-abortion extremists thrive on misinformation, silence, and fearmongering. This article follows my experience volunteering at a health center that provides medicated abortion, procedural abortion, and birth control consultations, among other gynecology services.

For the purpose of security and privacy, experiences have been condensed to fit one day, and any patient details have been left out.

It’s Saturday morning, and my alarm wakes me at 5:50 a.m. I’m not normally such a morning person, especially on the weekend. I get up, brush my teeth, throw on some athletic wear, and grab my purse. I arrive at the health center around 6:40 a.m., and drive by the first wave of protesters setting up their signs. It is still dark outside, and I have to veer around them standing in the road.

One car parks as close to the property as it can get, with its back hatch open facing me. A television sits in the back depicting a video of what I presume to be a dead fetus in a womb — the actual content is unclear — and a bunch of physical posters surround the TV. A group of anti-abortion women stand at the main entrance of the building in what seems to be their ‘Sunday Best’ church clothes. They chat with one another, waiting for the rest of the congregation who are scheduled to protest to arrive this morning. A man carrying loads of pamphlets flags me down aggressively as I pull into the parking lot. While anger toward these people is the automatic first reaction, I have found through one too many flipped birds that giving no reaction is more effective.

I head inside and pass the brave escorts who arrive early to assist patients with getting from their cars into the building, keeping them out of harm’s reach from anti’s false information or constant berating. As soon as I enter the health center’s doors, the energy is much calmer and more secure. This morning, Twilight is playing on the waiting room television.

I grab all of the things I need to begin my greeter shift. The greeter sits outside the front door as a security checkpoint to make sure everyone entering is a patient and has an appointment. For the next few hours, I check people in, including staff, doulas, and volunteers.

Ages often range in regard to patients, however, to defy many misconceptions on abortion demographics, these patients seem to be predominately in their 30s and 40s. Oftentimes, they already have at least one child of their own. Antiabortion groups portray all patients to be young teenage women or twenty-somethings who are making “rash decisions”. Young people do get abortions, but this is not the sole demographic at this provider.

As patients arrive, they can be quiet or somber. This decision is often a complicated and emotional one. The clients are allowed to bring one other person with them, whether that’s a parent, partner, friend, etc.

One time, a patient walked up with her partner to my check-in desk. I handed her the paperwork after taking down both of their temperatures, a post-covid precaution. Her partner was looking over a pamphlet in his hand. “Do you want to keep that?” she asked him. He looked at me. “Do you need me to throw that out?” I said. He nodded. After granting them access, I pulled the pamphlet out of the trash and realized it was from the protesters outside. The cover is plastered with a photo of a newborn baby sleeping, but the inside shows a photo of an alleged dead fetus. The content was mostly Christian bible verses and completely falsified side effects of having an abortion. The pamphlet packs a lot of false information into a trifold. It is a scare tactic.

I was horrified reading this information and thinking about a patient showing up to this clinic, possibly nervous or stressed about having to take time out of their day, being away from work, school, finding childcare, some of them also going under anesthesia which can be nerve-wracking; to then arrive and have a disgusting pamphlet stuffed in their face as protesters shame them for making a decision that has nothing to do with them.

This is a common experience as a greeter; patients often walk up baffled or overwhelmed by the protesters who forced their way into their personal space. While I wait for the last patients to arrive that morning, the nurses and medical school student volunteers assist in giving patients their pre-procedure pregnancy test, medication, and ultrasound.

It’s time to move to the recovery shift. I now enter the second portion of my Saturday morning at the health center: taking the vitals of patients and getting them clothed immediately after the procedure. For this, I put on a set of scrubs (provided by the center) then another volunteer and I enter the small recovery room – a hospitallike room with two beds on wheels, gowns, sheets, blood pressure cuffs, and other supplies for this station. While a smaller space than a hospital room, it is equipped as such. We prepare the station while we wait for the first procedure to finish.

The procedures do not take long, and only having two surgical rooms creates a fast turnaround. The doctor is almost finished with the first abortion, so we roll the gurney over to the door. I enter the room as the doctor walks out to complete postoperative forms. The CRNA assists the other volunteer and I as we transfer the patient (often groggy or asleep depending on if they have a local anesthetic procedure) to the mobile gurney. This is when we take charge.

We are responsible for waking up the patient while placing the blood pressure cuff on her arm and the oxygen cuff on her finger. As the other volunteer writes these numbers down, I let the patient know we are going to check her bleeding and place a new pad in her underwear. While the patient is normally very out of it, it’s important to let them know what is going on. After this, we move to dressing the patient back in their clothes and assist them in walking to the next recovery room. The first part of recovery is completed.

A common misconception about these procedures is recovery time. These are not invasive lifethreatening procedures, and other than moderate cramping and a bit of blood spotting, the side effects are not long-listed.

In the second part of recovery, patients sit in recliner chairs, much like the ones you sit in while giving blood. Volunteers provide them with a choice of pretzels or animal crackers, and water, ginger ale, or juice. This can keep nausea at bay. The next fifteen minutes are often spent talking to them, keeping them from falling asleep or assisting them in any way to make them more comfortable. Each chair has a heating pad, helpful for the cramps that can ensue immediately afterward. If they haven’t taken Ibuprofen before the procedure, we can provide it to them now. We retake their blood pressure to make sure the numbers are regulating to their normal range. It is during this point where I often had my most interesting conversations. Many of these women already had at least one other child, and so we talked about their kids’ interests, TV shows like Love is Blind, or what they were doing that weekend.

However, to be expected, some patients do find this experience to be emotionally overwhelming. The doula, who is trained in this sort of patient recovery, will assist them with processing what has taken place. It is a very comforting environment, the walls are painted a pastel blue, there is art on the walls, gifted by different abortion funds around the area. A radio sitting in the corner can be turned on to have background music playing. At the end of this checklist for recovery, volunteers check the bleeding of the patient one last time, and depending on the outcome (often little to no bleeding occurs), the patient is ready to go home. Whoever is driving them home will sit in the waiting room or downstairs in their car, and one of our nurses or assistants walks them down.

It may seem a bit repetitive, but checking things like blood pressure and bleeding allows us to make sure everything is healing correctly before the patient leaves the center. At this point, I normally leave for the day, but I stick around to set up some of the medication packets for those waiting for medicated abortions (Mifepristone and Misoprostol).

The health center I volunteered at is in the state of Virginia, where as of January 2025, abortion is legal up to 26 weeks. However, Virginia is surrounded by states where the laws are far harsher. In South Carolina, abortion is banned after six weeks, and North Carolina after 12 weeks. Abortion is completely banned in West Virginia. Bans are more common than not in other surrounding states. For this reason, I witnessed multiple patients who traveled from other states. They had to book childcare if they already had kids, purchase a plane ticket, and fly hundreds of miles away from the comfort of their homes to access care.

When I leave the clinic, most of the anti-abortion protesters have scurried away as the sun rises, and the day is even more beautiful than when it began. While a few stragglers stay behind to promote false information, it is easy to find joy in the work that I participated in. It is through this first-hand account of volunteering at an abortion provider that I aim to destigmatize what happens on the inside. It’s not just an abortion health center, it provides the ability for a woman to choose. Patients are cared for and heard. No one is forced to be there, and the staff is there because they genuinely care about a person’s right to make decisions about their future and what they do with their body. Abortion providers are a safe haven for women. The real pain and fear exist outside of the clinic doors, from the anti-abortion protesters.

Resources:

Abortion Finder: https://www.abortionfinder.org/

Miscarriage & Abortion Hotline: https://mahotline.org/

Access Plan C Pills from Home: https://www.plancpills.org/

Need Funds for your Abortion? https://abortionfunds.org/needan-abortion

Other resources: https://reproductivefreedomforall.org/resources/resources-foraccessing-abortion-care