While the author uses language which displays his bias in favor of legal abortion, the story still notes the kindness the sidewalk counselors and abortion protesters have shown to individuals who work at the clinic.
Years back, one of those young men jumped the doctor to get his wallet, and the protesters intervened to pull off his attacker and send him running away.
"There's kind of a good coexistence between us," Kalo said. "They're very polite and friendly."
The doctor visits his elderly parents in Israel every few months, a routine the protesters know, and once when there was yet another military conflict in the region, they told him they worried for his safety.
"When I went over there and came back, they said they were praying for my return and praying for my health," he said.....
After all those years separated by just a few feet of space but miles in their beliefs, both grew to see the other not as the embodiment of a cause they disagree with, but instead as someone trying to make a statement or trying to make a living.
Familiarity wound up breeding not contempt, but kindness.
"I wish they weren't out there," Amanda said. "But I couldn't ask for a nicer group of people."
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