Jonathan Goldstein and Jennifer Schiller were nervous, but they handed their 8-day-old son to Sara Imershein anyway.

Imershein, a kippah affixed to her brown hair with a pearl-studded bobby pin, pulled on white surgical gloves and — as family and friends watched in the couple’s District of Columbia apartment — circumcised Noah Goldstein in less than 60 seconds with a steel scalpel.

Imershein, 65, noted the parents’ pale faces. “He’s doing so well,” she said.

Two days later, she doled out a very different kind of comfort.

Approaching a patient in a Falls Church, Va., abortion clinic, Imershein saw a tear slipping down the woman’s cheek. As a nurse administered anesthetic, Imershein rested her hand — now purple-gloved — on the patient’s knee. She left it there until the woman’s eyes closed.

In less than five minutes, with movements equally confident, Imershein performed an abortion on the woman, who was seven weeks pregnant. (The Washington Post is not naming the patient at her request.)

Since retiring from her District-based obstetrics-gynecology practice in 2015, Imershein has spent her time this way: performing first-trimester abortions and ritual circumcisions, known in Hebrew as brit milahs. She believes both practices achieve the same goal: allowing women to create the families they want. Given that, she said, her Jewish faith compels her to offer the two services to Washington-area residents.