He was in Mississippi four times a month to provide abortion services, as were three other colleagues who rotated coverage, flying in from Chicago and Washington, D.C. Louie had known that working in the Deep South as an abortion provider was more challenging, say, than working on the East Coast. The biggest difference between the North and the South was not the weather or the food or even the people—it was religion. Here, religion was as much of the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. You had to offer folks a chance to be pro-choice not in spite of their faith, but because of it.

Louie liked routine, and he adhered to it whenever possible. He knew the flight attendants by name, and always reserved his favorite seat (6B). He drank coffee, black, and he ate a Kind bar and a yogurt that he packed from home. He used the time on the plane to catch up on medical journal articles.

Today he was reading the research of a team from Northwestern University, who had recorded a zinc flash at the precise instant a sperm fertilized an egg. A rush of calcium at that moment caused zinc to be released from the egg. As the zinc burst out, it attached itself to small, fluorescent molecules: the spark that was picked up by camera microscopes.

Although this had been seen before in mice, it was the first time in humans. More important, certain eggs glowed a little brighter than others at the moment of conception—the same ones that went on to become healthy embryos. Given that 50 percent of eggs fertilized in vitro weren’t viable, and that often it came down to a clinician guessing which one looked the healthiest—the implications of the study were significant. The correct embryo to transfer was the one that had burned the brightest at the moment of fertilization.

“Then God said, Let there be light,” Louie murmured to himself. He shook his head in wonder. Those infinitesimal bits of zinc determined whether an egg would become a completely new genetic entity. Science never failed to humble him, just as much as his faith, and he unequivocally believed that the two could exist side by side.

As a resident, he’d sat with his share of terminal patients, and what you heard was true: people who were dying talked of a tunnel, with a warm glow at the end.

It stood to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light.

Louie was so absorbed in the article that the jolt of the plane hitting the runway startled him. He gathered up his reading material and waited for the seat belt sign to go off. Then he stood up and pulled his suitcase down from the overhead bin. He traveled only with a carry-on, preferring to keep extra clothes in Vonita’s office just in case.

He said goodbye to Courtney, the flight attendant, and turned left when he entered the terminal. He knew this airport by rote: when TSA PreCheck got busy, at which gate he could find Starbucks, where the men’s rooms were. He knew exactly how long it would take for him to get his rental car and drive to the Center.

And as always, because he was on such a predictable schedule, his welcome committee was waiting for him when he arrived.

One of the regular protesters at the clinic met Louie at the airport without fail, waiting at the base of the stairs near baggage claim, which was the only route to the rental car agencies. Louie liked to think of the dude as Allen the Anti. He held a hand-lettered sign that said LOUIS WARD MURDERS BABIES. Louie didn’t know what pissed him off more: that the man was as regular as clockwork, or that he misspelled Louie’s name.

Allen was standing, as usual, with his sign. Louie never engaged. He knew better. But this time, the sign was spelled right. It was enough to cause Louie to slow his gait. “Dr. Ward,” Allen said, smiling. “Good flight?”

He stopped. “It’s Allen, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said.

Louie glanced at his watch. “What do you say we grab a bite to eat?”

He had fifteen minutes of slush time because his flight had come in a touch early. And he felt safe in the airport, surrounded by people. Maybe it was possible to walk in another person’s shoes, without trampling his steps.

Allen tucked his sign beneath his arm and they walked back up the stairs to McDonald’s, where Louie treated the protester to a Big Breakfast and coffee and then sat down across from him at a table in full view of anyone passing by to get to the ticket counter. “Can I ask you why you meet me here?” he asked.

Allen swallowed and smiled. “I want to shut down that murder factory you work in,” he said, as easily as he might say, It’s been a really warm fall so far.

“Murder factory,” Louie repeated, turning the phrase over in his mouth. “How long should the women in my care go to jail for their offense?”

“Hate the sin, not the sinner,” he said.

“Unless the sinner is me, right?” Louie clarified. “So if you could, you’d ban all abortions?”

“Ideally.”

“Even in cases of rape and incest?”

Allen shrugged. “Really, how big a percentage is that?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Louie pressed.

“You didn’t answer mine,” Allen countered. “And even if it’s one of those rare circumstances, that doesn’t mean you’re not committing homicide.”

Louie thought of the sac he removed during an early abortion. It was tissue that didn’t feel pain or have thought or sensation. To him it was potential. To Allen, it was a person. And yet who would argue that there was no difference in the moral implication of chopping down a hundred-year-old oak tree versus stepping on an acorn?

Allen took a mouthful of eggs. Yet another life potential squandered, Louie thought. “You know, I consider myself pro-life. I just happen to be pro-the-life-of-the-woman. I’d call you pro-birth.”

“I could call you pro-abortion,” Allen said.

“No one is forcing women to have abortions if they don’t ask for them. It’s the difference between supporting free will and negating free will.”

Allen leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think you and I are ever going to be on the same page on that.”

“Probably not. But maybe we can agree to neutralize the public space around policy making. We’re all entitled to our religious beliefs, right?”

Warily, Allen nodded.

“But we can’t make policies based on religion when religion means different things to different people. Which leaves science. The science of reproduction is what it is. Conception is conception. You can decide the ethical value that has for you, based on your own relationship with God … but the policies around basic human rights with regard to reproduction shouldn’t be up for interpretation.”

Louie watched Allen’s eyes glaze with confusion. “Do you have a daughter, Allen?”

“I do.”

“How old?”

“Twelve.”

“What would you do if she got pregnant now?”

Allen’s face flushed. “Your side always tries to do that—”

“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m asking you to apply your dogma personally.”

“I would counsel her. I would take her to our pastor. And I would be confident,” Allen said, “that she would make the right choice.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Louie said.

Allen blinked. “You don’t?”

“No. Your religion should help you make the decision if you find yourself in that situation. But the policy should exist for you to have the right to make it in the first place. When you say you can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a good thing. When you say I can’t don’t something because your religion forbids it, that’s a problem.” Louie glanced at his watch. “Duty calls.”

“You know, it’s always funny to me how pro-choice folks were all actually born,” Allen said.

Louie grinned, gathering their trash. “Thank you for the company. And the dialogue.”

Allen picked up his sign. “You make it very hard to hate you, Dr. Ward.”

“That’s the point, brother,” Louie said. “That’s the point.”

—

BETH HAD TRIED TO DO it the right way. She had gone to the Center, which might as well have been Mars given the distance and the cost of the bus ticket. She had filled out the parental consent waiver and had it filed back in her own county. It wasn’t her fault that the judge whiffed out on her to go on a vacation with his wife. Judges shouldn’t be allowed to take them, not when other people’s lives were hanging on their verdicts.

In the end, she had run out of time. The pills had come from overseas, and the instructions were in Chinese, but she still had the paperwork from the counseling session she had attended at the Center, including the instructions for those getting a medication abortion. She remembered the lady at the clinic who’d talked to the group, saying that there was a cutoff for the people who took the abortion pill. She couldn’t remember what that magic number of weeks was, but Beth was sure she was beyond it now.