In her shoes

Ahhh. A lovely Autumn day. The kind that starts off kind of chilly but nice, because you finally get to wear that cute jacket that's been collecting dust in a bin under your bed. And you bring a pair of gloves just in case but end up not needing them, but aren't you clever for having been prepared?

All the Target-brand gloves in the world could not have prepared me for my first day back on the job as an escort.

I had taken some personal time since Spring and hadn't been escorting since. I felt like crap each time I got that email requesting volunteers and deleted it. So I was pretty excited to get back on the pony and set myself up for ridicule and harassment. I was the first escort to arrive and was met by a regular that we have dubbed "Sign Guy". He must have forgotten my face, because as soon as I headed up the sidewalk to the door he accosted me with his nonsense. Now, I usually do not engage the protesters or even talk to them except to request that they not block the sidewalk or the clinic door. But apparently I had eaten Honey Bunches of Bitch for breakfast because my rebuttal was "Go fuck yourself" followed by "fuck off". It actually worried me that I wasn't more quick-witted than to drop the F bomb twice in five seconds. It was bound to be "one of those days."

And it was!

As more protesters and escorts arrived things felt a little more normal. I was out of the swing of things and managed to miss a couple people on their way in, but I was otherwise OK. At one point we spotted a woman sporting a T-shirt that revealed her support for an aggressively Anti candidate in the upcoming election. Yuck. We kept an eye on her, but she kept her distance for a while, planning her attack. I had planned to ignore her (promise!), but she came to me the exact wrong way that morning:

"You should write a letter to your mother and thank her for not aborting you!"

Nope.

I don't even remember how it happened, but all of a sudden we were nose-to-nose and I was yelling in her face that my mother was dead and how dare she tell me shit about my mother and to go fuck herself, too. Had I been coherent and articulate I might have mentioned that my mother had had something like three abortions, some before me and some after me, and that I thanked her for that. For knowing when enough is enough (four, to be exact) and that she really wanted more kids and loved being pregnant but simply couldn't balance being the breadwinner, a workaholic, and having seven kids. But I didn't say all that because a) why bother, and b) I was sobbing after the last "fuck".

I went into the clinic to cool off, but couldn't really. I couldn't believe what had just happened. I had never before been on the receiving end of protester banter, and I finally learned what it felt like. I felt VIOLATED. I felt ABUSED. And good thing I did, because it was that that reminded me why I was standing out there to begin with. I had to protect women from feeling the way I just did. And I know I can't guarantee that it will work, but damn it all, I have to try. So I went back out there, and the crazy lady was long gone. It hadn't been 90 seconds since her near-death experience and she had already run off. Did I scare her? I dunno. Did the other escorts strongly suggest that she take a hike? Maybe. In any case, I like to think that it was our collective awesomeness that sent her packing.

You know what cheered me up a billion percent? A mother walking down the sidewalk with her ~12-year-old daughter slowed down just enough to thank me for what I did. Then the girl, who had Down's Syndrome, waved and thanked me too. I'm not sure if she was just mimicking her mother or if she understood what was going on, but DAMN that felt great.

Nobody thanks the protesters.

The Least Balanced Among Them

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.

Thanks, Rachel Maddow

you are the shit

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!

Surely I don't need to be writing this post at all. Right?

"It's time to stop treating us as two equal sides in a reasonable debate. Let's get it clear -- they are the perpetrators and we are the victims. Any discussion of how to de-escalate the situation should take place within the anti- abortion community. "We do not have anything to bring to the table," said Convisser. "We are not willing to say it's O.K. to shoot every sixth doctor or woman."

Recently I attended a conference all about abortion. It was pretty awesome. I met providers of abortion care, advocates for abortion access, researchers of abortion medical protocols -- and even some fellow abortion bloggers!

Speakers included lawyers who prepare court cases defending the right to abortion from encroachment by state legislators; counselors whose experience assisting abortion patients stretches back to before Roe v. Wade; and the women of the Chicago Abortion Fund representing their efforts at grassroots advocacy for patients by patients, which was incredibly cool.

You know who else was there? Security guards, lots of them, and police officers with explosives-sniffing dogs. Not because they were called in to investigate something, just, you know, every day of the conference as a routine precaution. There was a panel staffed by First-Amendment lawyers, criminal prosecutors, and law enforcement experts. It was all about how to respond to violence and harassment against abortion clinic staff and patients, and what threats are and aren't actionable. You could tell some of the abortioneers in attendance were relieved by the rare chance to talk about what they were enduring and to be around others who understood.

Curious what sorts of activities have been documented? Or what threats aren't actionable (or whether it depends on a particular judge's mood on a particular day)? You might be surprised. You'd definitely be disgusted. No matter what your political stripe, I'm pretty sure you think of yourself as a decent person who wouldn't stalk people, threaten harm to their families, kill their pets and destroy their homes and workplaces in order to get what you wanted. You might even go so far as to say, "Hey, that sounds like, um...terrorism?"

Or would you?

Does your movement accept someone who firebombs women's clinics? How about someone who bursts into them with a shotgun and murders whoever he sees first? Someone who conceals explosives underneath an overturned flower pot, maiming a nurse and killing the security guard who stops to straighten it?
Someone who burns down a doctor's house and barn, killing horses and a dog and a cat? Someone who shoots a hero in the fucking face in his fucking church?

How about the people who visit clinic builders' neighbors with photoshopped fetus posters or greet nurses by name at the door of their own homes? The people who park outside my friend's apartment building night after night, or the ones who followed my patient as she drove home from her appointment? The ones who line the sidewalks outside of clinics and jeer, insult, shove, and elbow pregnant women and their partners and their mothers and the people helping them get inside the clinic? Who say creepy but just-vague-enough shit to clinic counselors as they walk in to work, on the phone at work, in the mail at work?

Not the same, you say? They're only expressing their concern and compassion for the innocent? Protected free speech? I wonder what you'll say when yet another one of those "sidewalk counselors" is added to the list of those arrested for harming born, life-living women and men.

I hate that I have to choose between talking about this so that everyone will know, or reassuring my parents and siblings and partner and best friend that I'm fine, my clinic is fine, we have police-caliber security staff and bulletproof glass and a relatively quiet neighborhood populated with relatively friendly businesses. But those ARE the options, because quitting this work is not an option.

I'm fine, my clinic is fine. I just need to: take a different route to work each day, live in a walk-up, never be a homeowner, not shop online, marry a police officer, not have kids or pets, never be famous, not write about my school or my neighborhood or anything about my family, not tell people I meet about this wonderful blog for fear they might connect the dots. You want to talk about common ground? I'm doing lots to meet you there. What are you doing to prevent my murder?