The clinic is between a jewelry store and a furniture stripping business. Normally one has to drive slowly through the crowd to get to the front doors, and a nurse waits there to escort patients inside.
Today there are no picketers in sight, and there is no nurse at the door.
The clinic's waiting room is filled with patients, friends of patients and relatives of patients. Each woman who has come to the clinic for the procedure is handed a folder. Inside the folder is a five-page form that includes a questionnaire, a waiver of liability, a confidentiality statement and information about what to expect after the procedure has been performed. She ignores the survey portion of the form, leaving blank the lines that question her feelings about the procedure. A woman wearing green pants and a white blouse under a flower-patterned sweater rises to go.