Personally Opposed on Sept. 29

Just don't think and you can entertain a proposition and its opposite at almost the same time.

I was in the "women's clinic" for a rotation the other morning. I met one of my Catholic collegue medical students, who's working in the clinic for a month. "You know they do terminations here?" she mentions. I know. I've dreaded coming into this dungeon-like basement unit for months. But today is the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, and with Mass and communion minutes behind me, I waltz into the valley of darkness. "I spent an afternoon watching them," she continues. The terminations, that is. Putting together the little pieces in a cold steel bowl to make sure nothing is left behind in ... mom.

What did she think? "Pretty disturbing" was quickly followed with, "but I'm glad it's an option for women who aren't ready to have babies yet." Good girl. You know what you're supposed to say. "I wouldn't do something like that myself," she assures me. Very interesting. OK, Catholic girl, let's have it out right here in the office of the women's clinic, across the hall from the (thankfully) empty abortion suite.

If these little hands and feet you've had to "fit together" are just tissue, abortion is a great choice, really. But if it's a baby who's being dismembered, whose pieces you're fitting together, and whose limbs you're counting in that bowl, then abortion can't be a choice. You can't be allowed to choose to murder. And you know, because you feel pretty disturbed, that it's a baby. End of story.