'People keep searching until they have found a place where they can be helped,' Thea Schipper, director of Bloemenhove says. That address must be safe and easily traceable, because it concerns an abortion clinic. In this field, Bloemenhove is the oldest institution in the Netherlands. Although abortion has already been legal for a generation here, not everybody can as easily accept 'the most frequently performed medical operation in the world'. Still, people regularly demonstrate in front of the building. Sometimes a former protester brings her daughter to the clinic years later, while a former patient comes here to light a candle for the baby that was not to be. The staff members at Bloemenhove do not consider their work the most joyful, but are convinced they prevent greater misery. Meanwhile, a girl is followed whose abortion had surprising consequences. Her mother tells how hard the operation is: 'I cried like a small child. But we had no choice. I thought: Christ, child, you've got your whole life ahead of you.'
