When I hung up the phone after scheduling my abortion, I felt relieved. I knew I had set in motion the necessary steps that would allow me to make the right decision for myself, my future, my body and my (at the time) partner. I knew I was going to have access to an abortion in a relatively safe environment, administered by trained medical healthcare professionals and in a clean, sterile room. My hand was still holding my phone when I let out a large sigh, confident in my decision and thankful for my ability to make it.

But as my hand slid my phone onto the counter so I could continue to go about my day, I felt the very real chill of panic. While I knew where I was going to have my abortion and how my abortion would be administered, I had no idea what an abortion clinic actually looked like. I had never been inside one before, so my only frame of reference was Hollywood representations and manipulated pro-life paraphernalia. Before I knew it, my mind was bombarded with terrifying images of cold operating rooms and intimidating instruments. I felt like I was going into surgery, that I’d be entering a room that was medical and impersonal and nothing short of terrifying.

If only I had known then what I know now. The moments I spent nervous and uneasy, pacing in my living room with a sense of unnecessary anxiety should have been moments of relaxed confidence. An abortion clinic is not a terrifying place of death, like many pro-life advocates would want women to believe. Shouldn’t an abortion clinic be, not an operating room or even a doctor’s office, but a safe, comfortable and welcoming place that makes women feel at ease with their medical decisions and medical procedures?

Carafem, a clinic that provides abortions in Washington, D.C., believes so, and is taking a new approach to abortion services by offering women a calm, soothing and safe abortion experience. Like most other medical procedures, the patient’s comfort level is taken into consideration on every level — from the moment the patient enters the clinic until well after she leaves. This makes Carafem a clinic of a different color; that doesn’t shy away from advertising not only the services it provides women, but the extra steps they take to endure that women feel comfortable and at ease.

These efforts, made by clinics across the country, are stifled by pro-life advocates. In an attempt to shame women for their decisions and the choices they make with their bodies, pro-life advocates insist that having an abortion shouldn’t be a comfortable experience. No, instead a woman should be afraid and in pain and, essentially, punished (physically, emotionally and mentally) for her decision. Not only is this cruel and unusual, it is vindictive and everything abortion clinics and women’s healthcare clinics work tirelessly to combat and avoid.

Fear and a lack of knowledge are the two unbelievably powerful tools that the anti-choice movement has learned to use almost impeccably. Shielding women from factual information or creating false information to further a particular agenda has continued to perpetuate shame, fear and the kind of anxiety that had me pacing back and forth in my living room after scheduling my appointment.

In fact, even the term “abortion clinic” is an attempt to scare and manipulate women. If you go to a physician to have your gall bladder removed, do you call it a “gall bladder clinic”? For a pap smear, do we go to “pap smear clinics”? Anti-choice advocates have used the description “abortion clinic” as a pejorative, deliberately attempting to use language to subtly tarnish or stigmatize the completely legal medical service, and the providers who offer it.

So, in the spirit of factual transparency and open discourse, I took an inside look at a Carafem clinic and documented what it really is like inside this clinic, that provides not only abortions but contraception information and numerous forms of affordable birth control. With permission of the clinic and while there were no visiting patients, I went through the same steps a woman would go through when visiting the clinic, experiencing everything she would experience (except the at-home medication abortion).