women's writes: clinic escorting

When the Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments bill passed in Utah at the beginning of March, both Shine and Marie reached the end of their rope when it came to women's rights and issues consistently being pushed backwards rather than moving forwards. They decided to have a day in which any blogger could write about women's rights and issues and bring them to the forefront so that we could speak up and make all of our voices heard. Here is my story. Know it. Write it. Say it.

you may remember that my february charity was planned parenthood, and that one of the catalysts for picking them was suburban sweetheart bringing to my attention that one could volunteer to be an escort at a women's clinic, which is not something i had previously considered or known about. but the moment i heard about it, i was certain: this was something i wanted to do.

i feel awfully strongly about a woman's right to choose. i really don't care what your personal opinion is on the matter: you are entirely free to believe that abortion is a sin, that it's murder, that it's an abomination. you can believe that, and i won't argue that point with you. what i WILL argue with you, however, is how your opinion has any bearing whatsoever on what i or any other woman does when presented with a very complicated situation that may or may not end in a terminated pregnancy. no matter how you feel about the matter, the fact remains that abortion is not illegal. therefore, that decision is hers and her partner's. not yours. i don't care who you are; if you are not one of the two people intimately involved in the conception - or potentially the parent of an underage girl - your opinion is just that: an opinion. you are free to have it, but you have no right to force your beliefs on anyone else as a result.

this has nothing to do with personal history, or even my own position on the matter. when it comes down to it, i'm not sure i could have an abortion myself. granted, i haven't yet been presented with that choice. i didn't have sex until i was nearly 23, and that decision was solely because i was unwilling to accept the potential consequences of my actions until that point. but i'll be damned if someone else is made to feel humiliated or harassed for making that choice.

enter clinic escorting. i've only done it once so far, but i'll definitely be going back. it's fairly innocuous, in and of itself: you hang around in the clinic parking lot (at the invitation of the clinic) until a car pulls in that looks like it might contain a woman. at this juncture, the protesters - and there appear to ALWAYS be protesters - sprint toward the car, offensive signs flapping, to start yelling at the passengers as soon as they exit the car.

the most vocal man at the clinic near me runs toward the car (they're not allowed to come any closer than the sidewalk - by law, protesters cannot be on the clinic property, only the public areas surrounding it) and starts yelling questions at the passengers, asking if they're going into the clinic. if they say yes, or don't answer to his satisfaction, he starts hollering at them in a booming voice:

"your baby needs your love! ma'am! don't murder your child!"

"you don't need to do this! don't you love your child?? we can help! your baby needs you!"

"you'll regret this. i can guarantee you'll regret this! my wife had an abortion and she's regretted it the rest of her life!"

or, if there's a man with her: "sir! don't let her do this! don't let her go in there! you can make her stop, you can make her make the right choice!"

all things considered, there are more offensive things one could yell. and written out, they don't seem that bad. but being there, watching vulnerable women slip out of their cars, heads down, and then being verbally assaulted by a horde of angry crusaders - it's absolutely horrible.

there's also a driving school in the same building as the clinic. several times, a young woman would exit her car and immediately become victim to the yelling protesters. even though she wasn't headed to the clinic, you could see her shrink back, threatened by the people yelling at her. and all she was doing was going to take a driving course. can you imagine going there, emotional and vulnerable, and then being persecuted and assaulted? no one deserves that.

just like you'd think what the protesters yell wouldn't be that bad, you'd also think that some random stranger walking next to you wouldn't be that helpful. but after being in that situation first hand, i can assure you the difference is surprisingly pronounced. having someone just standing between you and the protesters makes a difference. it's obviously not an impenetrable barrier, but the symbolic obstruction is more effective than you might think. also effective is keeping up idle, low-level conversation. when you have someone else to speak to - even if it's just someone approaching you with a smile and saying "hey, are you headed into the clinic? the door is right over here; you can head in right there and not have to walk all the way around front" enables you to block out the yelling and the questions and the harassments.

it's not a lot, really. it's a few hours of my morning, mostly standing around with the other volunteers and cracking jokes. but it is more than that: it's allowing women to see their physician without being intimidated or harassed. it should be something we all take for granted, but there are people who disagree, and who spend their time intimidating and harassing and bullying. i didn't like bullies in grade school, and i find them even more distasteful now.

to learn more about escorting in the dc area, visit WACTDF. for a much better description of escorting, check out this post.