When I tell people that I want to become an abortion provider, one question I get asked often is if I am concerned about the violence against providers. Of course, this is always a concern and something that you must think about when entering the field of family planning. I have already thought of ways to protect my family from harassment and live a relatively normal life. I know many providers that live peaceful lives while still providing comprehensive health care for their patients.
One provider who I greatly admire once told me how she puts the threat of violence into perspective. The day Dr. Tiller was murdered, a small plane went down in South America killing everyone on board. Later that afternoon, her co-worker was riding his bike and was hit by a car, instantly becoming a paraplegic. Bottom line-life happens and things can change in an instant.
I am certainly not diminishing how tragic violence against providers is…and how unacceptable it is, but my point is that the threat of violence is not deterring me. Providing comprehensive women’s health care for women is extremely important to me and something I am determined to provide in my lifetime. Life is unpredictable, but I can choose to make a difference in other women’s lives. And I will.
Sparky wrote a post about the Rachel Maddow documentary "The Assassination of Dr. Tiller."
I watched it, and thought it was very good. I was expecting to get extremely emotional watching it, but I did not. Seeing Dr. Sella get choked up was very moving, the patient stories, obviously -- but for the most part, I kept it together way better than I was anticipating.
For me, the best point the documentary made was expressed by one of Dr. Tiller's staffers. Essentially, she was saying that anti leaders, like Troy Newman or Randall Terry, are culpable to some degree for the behavior of people like Scott Roeder. She said, and I am paraphrasing here, that they use language of violence, murder, and hatred to incite people. Then, when the least balanced among them acts out as a result of that, they stand back as if they are not accountable and had nothing to do with it. Not unlike how when a football player does something wrong to a player on the opposite team, and then afterwards, when a flag is thrown and he gets caught, he stands there with his hands up as if that somehow proves he didn't do it.
Did I do that?
It is very important for the mainstream media and population in this country to understand this concept. Not just for abortion rights, but a variety of extremely important topics. For example, Fox News saying Obama is a Muslim over and over and over and over and over and over and then acting like it is an interesting news piece / revelation when most of the viewers of Fox News think Obama is Muslim. Similarly, when Bill O'Reilly calls Dr. Tiller "Tiller the Killer" on Fox News 30+ times, it's no wonder then viewers of the program start to view Tiller as not a person but a mass murderer.
The problem lies in where exactly the line of culpability starts and ends. Obviously, it's very complicated and difficult to ascertain. It is mostly shades of gray, and that is why they can get away with it.
I think, generally, the rhetoric of hatred that is so pervasive in this country seriously needs to subside. Hate breeds hate. I have no problem engaging with anti-choicers about the issue and talking about it. Note the word "talking." Talking implies two or more people are participating in a dialogue. I am more than happy to do that. If nothing else, it will help me understand where he or she is coming from better. I have a really hard time doing this, though, when the person is incredibly fired up, saying things that are blatant lies, and seem totally okay with the murder of my colleague. The least balanced among them - those who harass, shame, stalk, humiliate, murder - they are ruining it for everyone.
It would be nice if anti-choice folks were more willing to regulate the behavior of the extreme among them. Their leaders, Randall Terrycoughcough, seem more than happy to embrace their behavior.
If you haven't already heard of or watched it, last night Rachel Maddow's show did a special episode on Dr. Tiller's murder. I was unable to watch it because of my lack of cable, but I definitely plan to locate it on the wonderful interwebs.
Here is a brief clip of Maddow interviewing Dr. Elizabeth Newhall. Maddow and Newhall discuss the "WANTED" ads created by anti-choice radicals that target abortion doctors and threaten their lives. I would like to thank Rachel Maddow for broaching a subject that most mainstream media just won't. Abortion providers are endangered. When I am in the clinic, particuarly if I'm alone, I am always very vigilant about making sure doors are locked and I check security cameras countless times a day. It's mad what we, abortion providers, have to do just to do our jobs and help others carry out their choices as they see fit.
Please share if you were able to watch Rachel Maddow's show last night -- what did you think of it? -- or if you know a good way to watch the whole thing online...
Thanks to our com mentors the link above will bring you to the whole episode or you can read commentary for multiple ways of viewing the episode!
"Can I ask you a question? With all that you have to deal with, why do you still do this?"
"Because I remember when it was illegal for women to make this decision. I don't want to see those days come again. And also when a woman comes to me and says that she doesn't know what she would've done without my help...I know I'm doing the right job."
Sounds totally cheesy, right? Like, 100% fresh-squeezed saintly shit, not from concentrate. (Ack, I'm already mixing my metaphors.) No one ever says stuff like that outside of movies. Probably anyone watching "If These Walls Could Talk" at this point rolled their eyes at the pro-abortioneer bias of the movie, because doctors don't talk like that.
And the part right before that, where Dr. Cher finally gets through the crowd of protesters and into her office, and takes off her coat and then her bulletproof vest: another eyeroll. Who actually uses those? Get over yourselves, filmmakers -- amirite?
"There are all sorts of dangers [for] postal workers, firemen, police officers -- everything has a risk to it. I would prefer, personally, to have a challenging, stimulating and emotionally and spiritually rewarding career that is short rather than having a long one that is filled with ho-hum, mundane mediocrity -- feeling as if you don't make any difference to people."
Dr. Tiller said that. I often have these moments of sharply realizing, all over again, how much we lost when the antis murdered him last year. Many of my friends say that brilliant blue-sky days always remind them of hearing the news that day; isn't that shitty? And I feel that way about Memorial Day weekend in general: from now on it's a time to remember one veteran in particular.
After Barnett Slepian ― an abortion provider in suburban Buffalo, New York ― was murdered in 1998, police brought the Carharts bulletproof vests. They wore them until, as Carhart drily noted, "we realized that the antis usually shoot providers in the head."
And then they killed Dr. Tiller, who wore a vest to work but was shot in the face at church. So his friend Leroy Carhart was right. But that doesn't mean Dr. Carhart has stopped providing abortions. Even if sometimes he carpools to work with U.S. Marshals.
Dr. Hern hasn't stopped either, but his blinds are always drawn and he never sits with his back to a window in a public place and every morning he checks the clinic roof for snipers. And at my clinic the (far less famous) doctors call ahead to let us know they'll be standing outside the back door in two minutes, the nurses are circumspect when registering their home addresses with the state, we get rides to work in others' cars during high protest times.
A lot of older doctors and nurses started learning to provide abortions when they were either mostly or entirely illegal. I think they got murdered less then, because antis tend to get violent when they start losing their legal domination. But they sure had to deal with the police. Why would those providers have risked prison, and today's providers risk death, to offer a relatively low-paying service that universally lacked in prestige among their colleagues?
Gerri Santoro, dead in a hotel room at 29, leaving behind two daughters; she never made it to the emergency room, but doctors saw countless others like her, particularly in septic wards.
We talk and write a lot about how it isn't right or normal or reasonable or legitimate that we work behind bulletproof glass and incorporate security routines into our daily life in order to do something that is both legal and very much needed by a great number of people. It isn't normal. Take a minute to think about how not-normal it is! A lot of people seem to assume it naturally comes with the territory -- "occupational hazard," as one editorialist wrote about Dr. Tiller's death, right before comparing him to a mafioso -- and then on the other hand, others somehow seem so surprised to hear that it does.
Last night I told someone that I'd probably have assumed the Dr. Cher character was an absurd caricature of an impossible saint, if only I didn't know people who actually talk just like her and indeed wear bulletproof vests to work. And at the vest thing he said "Wait, really?" People say that a lot!
But they don't then say "that's ridiculous." They often say (always in the same voice), "Oh, wow..." and trail off meaningfully (I guess). And I don't need that. Like, thank you acquaintances, but: making it socially unacceptable for my life to be in danger would be SO much more helpful than voicing your admiration for my doing something that "must be so hard" as you put it. It isn't hard! It just is what I need to do. And it's wonderful, actually. I can be profoundly useful to others, learn a lot about medicine, learn a lot about people's hearts, spend time with great colleagues who share my values and, similarly, are just doing what they need to do.
As Sparky wrote yesterday, some providers are surly, some are sexist, some are looking out for the bottom line. But by and large, those are the people who probably find this work the hardest. To most of us -- whether doctors or counselors or administrators or whatever -- it's worth it, because and because and because. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't appreciate going to work free of firebombs and shotguns. Thanks for taking note.
Recently I organized a local screening of If These Walls Could Talk. If you've ever seen it or remember its HBO premiere in 1996, you know it's maybe a little hokey but also pretty powerful. Like, in the third vignette, the (married, distant) "man involved" is Coach of Coach, and Dr. Cher tells Anne Heche all about her commitment to providing abortions and sounds just like a hero.* But, you know, what Dr. Cher says is also surprisingly true to life. I wondered if the movie's writers might have had a modern-day abortioneer consultant, and who it was.
"I won't be leaving my wife after all. Here's two hundred bucks; take care of it."
If These Walls Could Talk centers on the reproductive crisis moments of three different women living in the same house in different decades: a desperate widow in the 1950s, a harried married mother in the 1970s, and an embittered college student in the 1990s. After the movie there was a lot of conversation -- about the time before abortion was made legal, about "what it's like in an abortion clinic," about violence against providers and so forth. I was surprised to learn that about half our little discussion group hadn't heard of Dr. Tiller's murder -- they had gasped when they saw Dr. Cher take off a bulletproof vest to change into scrubs. (For me, that scene was actually a reminder of the doctor -- it might have been Dr. Carhart -- who was quoted saying there was no point wearing a bulletproof vest because the antis aim for the head. How Dr. Tiller was killed.) In any case, it was a good occasion to have a conversation about abortion issues with people who aren't part of the field and don't know a lot of the details.
Here's part of a scene that we discussed a good deal:
Some things I particularly liked (mostly remembering from the final vignette):
-Dr. Cher, as mentioned above. Her words are simple and true and familiar.
-Anne Heche's best friend (Jada Pinkett!), who at first is really shitty to her for even considering an abortion, eventually decides to support her friend and accompanies her to the clinic. It does happen! About A Girl's post about this is still my favorite.
-There's a wide range of protester behaviors in the real world, and the movie did portray a couple of different ones. The protesters in the previous day's scene were less numerous and less rowdy. This giant crowd is more typical of big clinics in the Midwest, say, or of staged "Summer of Mercy" type events, back in the 90s before the FACE Act was passed. Unfortunately, it took a lot of clinic violence to convince Congress to take action, not soon enough.
-It was nice that they showed the role of clinic escorts, who as you know are awesome. This clip doesn't show much of the clinic's single escort, though.
-In an earlier vignette, well, "liked" is a bad word for this scene, but I appreciated how well the interaction between Demi Moore and the pre-Roe illegal abortionist (from whom she requested a kitchen abortion) depicted women's lack of choices in finding safe and dignified care. It was a truly tense scene:
-The women are in different situations and have different decision-making processes, and not all the vignettes end with an abortion decision. (Imagine that!)
Some things that were a little ridiculous:
-Sissy Spacey (the 1970s mom) has a teenage daughter who's the perfect caricature of a feminist activist -- righteous, but a nosy pest; automatically believes that the best option is abortion; acts as though an individual woman's every personal choice is a political statement. She even practices yoga, which I think in the 70s was pretty far-out.
-Anne Heche's best friend, who goes to the clinic with her but is still an anti, ends up having an argument over abortion, with a clinic staff person, at the front desk. I guess you've got to lay out the conflict narrative in a movie, but no way would any of that happen in the environments where I've worked.
-The protester crowd outside Dr. Cher's clinic grew by the hundreds from one day to the next, without much explanation about why that would happen, which might have made it seem implausible. I wish they'd explained that events like "Summer of Mercy" really did overwhelm clinics suddenly and dangerously.
...And then I went home and watched Juno. I promise I don't normally do this! And, although I have always really liked Juno for its silly dialogue and sweet friendships and Kimya Dawson soundtrack (of course), this time I was again thinking about the things that first struck me when I saw it in the theater. The things that would've stuck in my craw had the soundtrack not washed them down.
Unfortunately, this clip is the closest one (chronologically) to the damn clinic scene that I could find!
Most particularly:
The clinic counselor. Of course. What the fuck is up with her?? She seems unqualified, untrained, uninterested, and unnerving. Just plain unprofessional. Over the hamburgerphone, she supposedly asked Juno how long she's been "sexually active" (mostly a device to allow Juno to rant about that phrase), which no one would need to ask just to make an appointment. In the clinic, she's playing a handheld videogame and doesn't make eye contact, has a "withering" expression if I ever saw one, and tells Juno that her "boyfriend's junk smells like pie" when he wears the clinic's boysenberry condoms.
I know it's only supposed to be funny, and she's not even the reason that Juno leaves the clinic (that was because of all the fingernails she noticed, which is also silly but funny), but wow! The friends I went with teased "Hey, that's you!" and I felt sort of sad because yeah, that's probably what some people think. Whereas it couldn't be further from my experiences with abortion work. Sure, you're tired some days or have periods of feeling un-challenged by your work, but even coworkers who are suffering burnout try not to take it out on patients.
Of course, aside from that and how un-scary the single (shy, teenaged) protester is, that's practically the only ridiculous abortion-related thing in that movie...because there's no other discussion of abortion in the movie. Well, except the stepmom asking, "Honey, have you considered..y'know, the alternative?" Man, I love Kimya Dawson, but give me another Obvious Child any day!
