From the bottom of my heart I thank all abortion providers for all that they do. You endure harassment, even death threats, new laws restricting your job, news articles denouncing you and what you do, and even more. Through all of this you continue to go to the clinic, day after day, to help women access choice.
You spend hours calling funds, discussing her finances, and looking for ways where you can discount the cost. You do all of this to help low income women access choice.
You volunteer your time to answer phone calls, before, work, after work, on your lunch break, on the weekends. You listen to her story and try to give her as much money as you can to help her. You participate in activities to fund raise more money. You do this to help women piece together they money they need, so they can access choice.
You get up early to wait outside the clinic and are yelled at by protesters, pushed around, harassed. You do this to help women get into the clinic.
All of those that work in abortion care - doctors, nurses, counselors, receptionists, clinic escorts, local funds, and all of those that I missed. You are amazing. You are the reason women have access to safe, legal abortion care. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
Hi! Your friendly neighborhood clinic defender is here with some news for those of you who want to get involved but don't know how or in what capacity.
In case you don't know, the anti movement has established "40 Days for Life", a periodic 40-day campaign during which clinic protesting and patient harassment is at least doubled, and, in many cases, quintupled. Apparently 40 days is what it takes to make believers out of us all. It actually only takes one hour max for me to become insane with anger and reaffirm my pro-choice stance for all eternity. So, thanks antis, for helping solidify my commitment to killing babies. I owe it all to you!
Any-old-who, the point is that during the "40 Days" clinics need help. While most antis are harmless, i.e. they sing or pray on their own, others can get pretty raucous and obnoxious. Think of the patients who have to get through all that nonsense just to get to the clinic door. A crying shame! So, End Clinic Harassment, a blog dedicated to news about escorting and clinic defense, has begun its own counter-campaign: 50 Days, 50 Escorts. The goal is to get 50 folks from now until the next "40 Days" campaign to pledge to escort at a local clinic. Think about it! It will be a bit warmer by then, and you can meet some new friends and help a bunch of people in need.
The next "40 Days" will be March 9 - April 17. Can we count on your support?
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.
At the clinic where I escort, there is just the sweetest little anti you ever did see. Curly hair, freckles, a tender voice. She might be picking posies with a basket on her arm, save for the literature in her left hand and the rosary in her right. She greets all sidewalkers, anti and escort alike, with a honey hello, and bows her head in prayer.
She makes me crazy.
Harmless though she and all the other well-wishing antis may seem, I rarely if ever return their pleasantries. The nod of recognition is more than sufficient. It manages to say "Oh, there you are" and "Back the shit off" with a modicum of effort. Two birds, one stone.
I've been noticing some of the veteran escorts getting mighty friendly with the antis, in a slap-on-the-back, aren't-we-the-odd-couple kind of way. The only explanation I can find is that immersion therapy has rendered them indifferent, if not receptive, to the conversation that occurs on the sidelines. I'll admit that dull moments arise in that four-hour span, and it might be a larf to reminisce over the past 15 years of enmity ("Remember that time you published my picture in your Christian magazine as the 'Gatekeeper to Hell'? Classic!"). I, however, could never go down that road. I will never forget Strawberry Shortcake's true purpose.
One Autumn morning, she was manning her post on the sidewalk, having made the trip across town bright and early and eager to save lives. She approached the biggest man I'd ever seen to offer him a rosary and some "information" about how he can be a hero. Either he had woken up on the wrong side of the bed, or he was annoyed by her failure to realize that he wasn't having an abortion that day, but he was not amused.
"GO FUCK YOURSELF!"
Ouch.
Still, my initial shock was soon replaced by concealed giggles. Now, I would not have screamed that at that girl, mostly because I would never talk to her in the first place. But boy, am I glad he did. Isn't it what we're all feeling, but we just won't say? Isn't it something they need to hear now and then, if not every minute of every day? So I say to all antis, kind and mean-spirited alike:
Sparky's had an unexpected travel-related contretemps these past couple of days, but that doesn't mean the pro-choice summer reading stops! I urge you to visit Every Saturday Morning, the blog of a team of clinic escorts in Kentucky, where today Dan has written on the intersection of fatherhood and escorting, and about a confrontation with
disapproving men willing to abandon their daughters during their moment of deepest emotional distress, embarrassment, and fear, and leave them to walk through this gauntlet of hatred with a complete stranger, a man who will be in her life for only a few minutes, but is willing and able to be her surrogate father.
The post is both heartfelt and heart-rending. Dan, thank you for writing about your struggle that day, and thank you for being a pro-choice dad and a compassionate escort. And happy Fathers' Day to you!
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!
So I'm grappling with some homework on a chilly Saturday evening, but I always have a minute for something thoughtful and abortiony. Look what I just read: the "Five Stages of Grief" as applied to clinic escorting. This was a really thoughtful way to look at how clinic escorts experience the stress and disillusionment of angry confrontation. Also, sidenote, it made me like the Golden Girls even more! No, really. I Remember Exactly Where I Was...when I heard Bea Arthur had died.
(..At an abortion providers' conference, actually, where an afternoon speaker on "abortion in the media" recalled Arthur's great portrayal of deciding to have an abortion in the 1970s TV show Maude, and how different it was from what you see today. RIP, you clever deadpan sarcastic hulking lady!)
Allied blog plug: If you aren't reading Every Saturday Morning, you should be! Last month, this post brought me close to tears, tears of anger at the way patients and escorts were subjected to not only simmering tension, creepy or violent threats, and verbal aggression, but also stalking and actual physical violence. Really, I just sat there afterward and felt like my bones were shaking from indignation.
But today I read this post that brought me to tears of gratitude, about a moment when strangers came together to help a woman in need -- not just the band of escorts and certainly not the band of "sidewalk counselors" (anti-abortion protesters and harrassers), but people inside the clinic, friends and drivers of other patients.
Now, I'm not saying I cry at the drop of a hat or anything, but another thing that always does it to me is seeing two patients' respective support people bonding in the waiting room, during the several hours the patient may need to be in the clinic offices -- for example moms sharing the experience of being a parent to a patient, or one offering to run out for some food for both of them or helping to entertain the other's grandchild who had to come along to the clinic.
We hear a lot about the isolation of needing a stigmatized procedure, and I certainly do see lots of women who don't want anyone to know, don't want to sit with "the others," come without a support person even if that means no Vicodin and no sedation, or cross their arms and avoid any eye contact with other patients. But when patients can reach out to each other, and when they have warm and committed support people who reach out to one another or even to other patients -- well, it does happen, and I still get wet eyes every time.
Question for readers! How many of you have been a woman's support-person during her clinic visit? What was it like for you -- were you uncomfortable? Did you make friends? Was the wait really long? Was it easy or hard to be supportive that day?
Or, if you've had an abortion and are comfortable talking about it in comments, did you have a support person, and if so how were they?
I'll post a poll on the right of the home page, if you want to tell us more anonymously, but consider ALSO telling us in your own words, which is always so great to read!
I was fortunate enough to go to an excellent college. I transplanted myself from my co-ed high school in the southwest to an all women’s college in the northeast.
Now this grand education I had opened my eyes to the idea of women’s equality, women’s power, and women’s control over their bodies. Admittedly, I did not become interested in reproductive rights until this school or until that women’s studies course. And thank heavens for these introductions, for who would I be without them?
After college, I moved into the city before graduate school and volunteered at the local Planned Parenthood as a clinic escort. I essentially helped women and their partners get into the clinic safely and successfully amidst the sometimes hostile crowd. To me, reproductive choice was a right protected by the law and protected by me. The protestors would say horrific things to women to get them to change their minds, to get them to turn around and leave the clinic. They took a women’s personal, difficult choice and turned it into a street mockery and shouting match. Those women’s faces I escorted into the building are burned in my mind. I could see the fear and I could feel it. But they had a choice-a choice for their bodies and their future. A choice. What did these protestors want of these women? An unwanted child? An unsafe, back alley abortion? Not the right to make decisions over their own body.
One morning of escorting, a new protestor emerged. She was known to the staff at Planned Parenthood, but not to me. She was slightly older than me, brown hair that touched the back of her thighs, and a loud, intimidating voice. She would bring anti-choice literature with her every Saturday and stand less than a foot away from escorts, reading her rhetoric. Mind you, we were trained not to engage with the protestors, but damn it was difficult. Our objective was getting the patients into the clinic. However, this particular protestor was hard to ignore. She would follow you around, reading into your ear with her booming voice.
It was one day that she announced she went to a well known all women’s college, the same college I had attended just under a year ago. I, of course, never told her I was also a graduate of said institution-that would only bring unwanted attention to our battle ground. It was such a disappointing moment, though. I credit this institution for my reproductive health awakening, my fierce advocacy and activism, and my desire to always protect a women’s reproductive freedom. And this woman, my “sister,” credited the same institution for her anti-choice motives. How could we have come from the same place and have such different views?
I think about that woman from time to time. Not all women view choice as an absolute right-even her with such a liberal, mind-awakening education. The realization I came too is that regardless of what she thinks or what she protests against, I fight for her reproductive rights as well. I cannot pick and choose which women I stand with and which I stand against. All women have a beautiful, divine choice over their bodies and their reproduction, all women. And I will fight for that choice as long as it takes, even if some women will fight against me.
I had a hard day at work and realized throughout this day that I hadn't really thought about how it's National Abortion Provider Day. I want everyone reading this to think about and remember all those who put themselves on the line for women trying to access safe abortion care. Doctors, nurses, administrators, receptionists, counselors - these people walk through picket lines every day. They get death threats, bomb threats. They are harassed and threatened, but they persevere.
I want to say thank you to all abortion providers, to all involved in any way in providing abortion care. Thank you to the people who post on this blog. Thank you for risking yourselves for others' health and safety.
I also want to post a shout out to clinics escorts and encourage anyone so moved to look into local escort groups in their area. You could contact your local abortion provider perhaps, or if anyone knows a website where people people can look this up, please comment.
