A Hard Choice

Steinauer is focused on finding ways to support young abortion providers once they are working. But at Lesley's stage of career development, Steinauer said, "the first step is looking into your heart and asking if this is really what you want to do."

The second of five children in a close family, Lesley grew up in Sparrows Point, just outside Baltimore. Her father, an entrepreneur, owns a business that helps industries handle their bulk materials. Her mother, Linda Wojcik, a pharmacist, describes the family as pretty liberal. Not the marching kind, but the kind that is open to discussion. Lesley's parents support abortions rights, but they taught their children to use protection if they had sex or "be willing to give up your freedom for 18 years," Linda says.

Lesley already knew by middle school that she wanted to be a doctor. She breezed through her math and science classes, and also was gifted in the arts; she played five instruments, including piano at the Peabody Institute.

But when she hit puberty, Lesley became a rebel. Drinking at age 12, smoking pot, dating an older boy, failing French class when she was an A student. "I put my parents through the wringer," she acknowledged. It all came to a head one day when a spurned boyfriend broke into her house. Afterward, Lesley's parents whisked her away from a bad crowd and enrolled her at the private Friends School of Baltimore. She was 15, a sophomore.

Separated from her old friends, Lesley quickly rebounded and remains grateful for her parents' intervention. "In the thick of it, you don't realize you are engaging in risky behavior," she said. Kids whom she'd known from middle school were having sex and getting pregnant. Lesley grew interested in working with teenagers, becoming an advocate for birth control and, in summers, teaching at-risk teenagers to sail at Living Classrooms in Baltimore.

She grew more militant about reproductive rights when she went to college at Barnard. She arrived in New York City as a happy-go-lucky kid, as she put it, and left fully politicized about women controlling their own bodies. Some of that was attributable to one of her roommates, an ardent feminist and strong advocate of abortion who was outspoken about violence against women. Lesley found herself participating in "Take Back the Night" events on campus.

In April 2004, she and her friends boarded a Greyhound bus to Washington for the March for Women's Lives, an abortion rights demonstration that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the Mall. Inspired, she began contemplating a career in women's health.

Later, she learned that a dear friend had had an abortion without any support from her boyfriend. Lesley cried when she found out, especially at the thought of her friend going through the experience alone.

There isn't anything nice about abortion, Lesley said, but she does not equate it with murder. "I think it's a necessary evil, no, unpleasant service, we have to provide for the sake of" women's lives and health. But she wouldn't call herself passionate or driven to provide abortions. "I don't have a gut drive. It's more like an intellectual drive {lcub}hellip{rcub} A woman's control over her body is representative of her freedom. I feel the obligation to make sure that service is available and not stigmatized."

In college, she considered herself more of a foot soldier than a leader. But when Lesley got to Maryland and saw how few students were members of Medical Students for Choice, she knew she had to get involved. "There was a need for me to be an activist," she said.

She and two other students, chapter president Christina Bokat and Regina Bray, set out to reinvigorate the group. The first thing they did was to volunteer to host the regional Students for Choice conference on the Maryland campus. Their plans were derailed when the new dean of the medical school, E. Albert Reece, refused to allow the conference on campus.

Lesley met with Reece to try to change his mind, arguing that the group's mission was to educate future doctors about a vital medical procedure. But, according to Lesley, Reece said he considered the group's goal advocacy rather than education.