My first day at the clinic, a man commits suicide by jumping off a building across the street.
It’s a bright but deceptively cold March morning, the sky an unbroken cornflower blue dome. I don’t see him; I’m trying, futilely, to find a sun-warmed patch of sidewalk for my critically under-socked feet, and my back is turned. Soon, the street fills with first responders, and police officers erect a barrier around the sidewalk where the man’s body lies. I stand awkwardly with a few other escorts in my white lab coat, issued by the clinic to help women differentiate us from the protesters. It’s tight over my winter puffer and makes my arms stick out like the Michelin man. While we watch, silent and grim, two protesters sidle up to me, a man and a woman, just close enough for me to hear them but far enough away that it wouldn’t appear to an observer that they’re having a conversation for my benefit. Which, I discover, they are.
“Isn’t it a shame?” the woman says loudly, looking in the direction of the sirens. “Everyone rushes to help this person who’s already dead, but no one comes to help the babies.”
“That’s all they care about, death,” the man answers. “Culture of Death! They love death!” He finally turns to me. “They are escorts of death! Escorts of death!”
“What do you think happened to them,” the woman wonders, “to make them love death so much?”
Across the street, someone covers the body with a white sheet, like in the movies.
One of the more experienced volunteers comes over to rescue me, and gives me a smile-grimace.
“Welcome to escorting,” she says.
***
We see the same protesters week after week. They drive in from a church almost twenty miles away, but always beat us there, until we begin to speculate that they just sleep outside the clinic the night before. The group is led by Pastor Creep (not pictured), a sixty-ish man with wire-rimmed glasses and, in the winter, a graying beard. He loves to riff on the Holocaust: “Just like the Nazis!” he bellows at Ruby, a fellow escort, and I as we walk a woman and her incredulous friend to the door. “Leading the Jews to the gas chamber. ‘Oh, you’re just going to take a shower!’ But they never came out!”
Miriam, another volunteer and the descendent of Holocaust survivors, checks her watch. “Seven thirty-five,” she says, “and we’re already on the Nazis.”
There’s also the Preacher, a bellower of sermons and Bible arcana who brings his two young sons to hold gruesome, digitally manipulated signs no matter what the weather. He positions himself directly in front of the clinic entrance on the sidewalk so he can shout into the reception area every time the door opens: “Can you hear the babies crying? Crying! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
Once, on a raw, wind-licked January morning, a homeless man without a coat appears across the street from the clinic. He clutches his stomach, bent double in obvious agony. When Beth, a pugnacious older volunteer who comes out every week despite severe back pain and difficulty walking, suggests that the Preacher go assist the man, as a Christian, he answers: “He’s made his choices! At least he got to be born! He’s had his chance.”
The Preacher shares turf with Are You Ready?, a man in his late twenties who carries a collapsible cross on his shoulder with the words are you ready? written in white paint. Are You Ready? has informed us many times that he’s a reformed sinner, a former fornicator and drunkard and thinker of lascivious thoughts. He takes this as a license to lean especially hard on the men who accompany their wives and girlfriends to the clinic, with “Be a man!” or “Man up!”, or, in June, “Happy Father’s Day!”, which backfired on him in a big way as stricken young men practically threw themselves through the clinic doors. Ruby and Ken, one of our few male escorts, and I can’t stop laughing about it for the rest of the morning.
Nothing makes the protesters angrier than seeing us laugh.
Killing with a smile, they roar. Laughter is our only power. When we greet patients with a smile and calmly walk them to the clinic door, unruffled by the screaming and pamphlets thrust into their hands and graphic signs lining the sidewalk, we win a small victory. When a patient smiles back at me, or tries to make a little joke, I feel like throwing a parade. Smiling in the face of unmitigated hostility is both a method of self-preservation and an act of defiance.
On one of these occasions, I greet a patient with what can only be described as the Hugh Grant two-handed wave from Love Actually. As Ruby and I laugh about it afterward, an older protester, a woman I don’t recognize, corners me against the wall, her finger in my face, to tell me that all the babies I have helped kill will dance around me on Judgment Day. I let her talk. This is another strategy: we engage the protesters, encourage them to shame and bully and taunt us, to distract them from the patients.
“And all of those babies will be black!” she adds. Black genocide is a favorite topic among the protesters. Their leaflets on the genocidal elimination of babies of color drive Ruby, the mixed-race daughter of a black woman, cross-eyed with rage. It’s an easy way to demonize everyone involved: to the protesters, the white escorts like me invade minority neighborhoods to kill black babies, and the escorts of color like Ruby are traitors to their race. So are the patients of color seeking abortion. And the green grass grows all around all around and we’re all murderers and racists.
Another protester joins us, a woman I call Message of Love, for her penchant for diatribes like this: “This could be your last hour on earth. You could get hit by that bus. And then you will absolutely burn in hell for eternity! But this is a message of love.” She especially likes me, perhaps because she mistakes my long-suffering silence for contemplation, even tacit approval.
“I know this bothers you, deep down inside,” she says, while the other woman nods. I consider explaining to her that worries about my personal judgment day don’t keep me up at night; that if I die, and discover that the creator of the universe believes that the proper way to worship him is to chase a woman across the street and down the sidewalk waving a pamphlet full of false science at her and calling her a murderer two inches from her face, I will be glad I opted out of such a corrupt system during life. I’ll dance all the way to hell. But I catch myself. I repeat in my head what we always tell our patients: you don’t owe them anything.
Many women feel compelled to explain themselves: I’m just here for a pap smear, or, I’m just here supporting a friend.
“You don’t need to answer them,” I say to the patients over and over again. “Under no circumstances do they deserve to hear intimate details of your medical life. Just ignore them.”
I learn quickly that the most valuable thing I can do as an escort is talk. About anything. Once I identify myself as a volunteer for the clinic and begin walking beside a patient, I talk and talk and talk. If only so when the women reach reception and begin the long wait, they remember my voice, low and encouraging and babbling about the weather, instead of the screams of the protesters, beckoning them to hell.
***
Sometimes women come in with their families—husbands, young children in strollers and baby carriers. The protesters go after them hard. They see them as depthless wells of guilt ready to be exploited, but this is often wrong: these women, who have already known pregnancy and birth and motherhood in all its bitterness and wonder, are making the decision to abort with no illusions.
If the mothers can’t be swayed, the protesters go after the children.
“How would you feel if Mommy and Daddy had aborted you?” one of the protesters, a man, asks, crouching down to the child’s height. The little boy shies and turns away; his mother, her eyes straight ahead, wraps her arm around him and says nothing.
Another time, it’s an attractive Indian woman and her husband, pushing their sleeping daughter in a stroller. The pastor’s daughter, a pretty blonde woman who we were surprised to discover is also an ADA, is the first one to her; Ruby and I, standing at the corner, aren’t fast enough.
“Please don’t kill your baby,” the pastor’s daughter says as the Preacher and Are You Ready? yell in the background. “God loves that baby as much as the one you already have. There are better options.”
When Ruby and I finally catch up, we can see the woman is crying. She stops in her tracks and faces the pastor’s daughter.
“My baby is dead,” she says. Her voice doesn’t shake. “There is no helping it.”
At that moment, our little section of the street is frozen in time, crystallized, as if by a spell in a fairy tale. Something flashes in the pastor’s daughter’s eyes, a recognition: what I’m doing hurts people. She backs off. By this time, the woman’s husband and the stroller have reached the door, and the woman hurries to catch up.
“Don’t murder your baby!” Are You Ready? shouts as the door swings shut.
The pastor’s daughter walks past us, back to her earlier position.
“Happy?” Ruby asks.
We’re hopeful that this might be a turning point. That things might be different, gentler, for the rest of the day. But of course, we’re wrong. Five minutes later, another woman comes; the pastor’s daughter is at her elbow, calling into her ear: don’t kill your baby.
***
On Saturdays at the clinic, the whole of the world narrows down to this one block: to the bodega on the corner where we buy tea as a buffer against the cold, to the boxing gym across the street that helps us out in the summer by playing upbeat workout music loudly from its open windows. Every month, I think about quitting and never returning to these places again. I imagine sinking back into the comfortable ignorance of my life before, letting the frustration and anger and helplessness slough off me and disappear. It takes days to get over clinic hangover; I’ve been volunteering for eleven months now and it still hasn’t gotten easier.
I strive for a less martial language to describe my feelings about escorting. I try to discover within me an alphabet of understanding, so I can form words and sentences of, if not optimism, at least patience: this is America. The Constitution protects freedom of speech. But instead I see bowed heads, frightened or tearful eyes, women with their hoods up and headphones in, trying to sneak into the clinic like they’re criminals. The stink of shame hangs over the place like smog, and I am powerless to dissipate it. This is what it is like for women to access medical care in one of the most liberal cities in the country; when I think of this, rage rises up inside me and I choke on it.
One in three women will get an abortion. One in three women will walk by Are You Ready? and the pastor’s daughter outside a clinic. One in three women will be followed across the street, have a flyer shoved into her open car windows, see her children turn away in fear from angry strangers. But hopefully, one in three women will also see someone like me, in an ill-fitting coat, with socks that aren’t warm enough, smiling at her, standing beside her, saying: don’t worry. You’re safe here.
You don’t owe them anything.
***
Names of volunteers have been changed because, as my mother said when I told her I was going to volunteer at an abortion clinic: “Cait. Those crazy religious people will shoot you.” We don’t even address each other by name when escorting, just to be safe.
(Images via Flickr: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Tags: abortion, caitlin keefe moran, heroes, politics, reproductive choice
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I wanted to come restate this down here, forever and ever:
I consider explaining to her that worries about my personal judgment day don’t keep me up at night; that if I die, and discover that the creator of the universe believes that the proper way to worship him is to chase a woman across the street and down the sidewalk waving a pamphlet full of false science at her and calling her a murderer two inches from her face, I will be glad I opted out of such a corrupt system during life.
THIS FOREVER.
Back to reading. Caitlin, this is amazing.
Okay, I finished and it made me tear up at work. You are awesome, awesome, awesome.
YES. “I’ll dance all the way to hell.” This is so perfect i want to print it up and hand it out to anyone who thinks that this is actually something their god would or should have an issue with.
Thank you.
This made my heart hurt. Thank you for doing this–and thank you for writing about it for those of us who aren’t brave enough to be out there with you.
Caitlin, how did you get involved as a clinic escort? Did you volunteer with the clinic directly, or via PP or NARAL? The more I read about this, the more I think more of us should step up and do it (and my current work schedule actually might make it possible).
Yes I’d love more info on this, too. It’s about time I stepped up and did something to help.
In DC there’s a group that runs trainings and escorting for local clinics. Don’t know what it’s like elsewhere.
In DC, the group is called Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force, and they actually have a training coming up on March 22. Info here: http://www.wacdtf.org/trainings.html
So I’m about 110% sure that Caitlin and I escort at the same clinic (I was there the morning with the suicide and recognize all the regulars by their description) so I’m popping in here! NOW-NYC coordinates the escorting at this clinic, and one other clinic in the NYC area. We’re running a training on Tuesday, March 11, at the NOW-NYC office in midtown Manhattan. More info here: http://nownyc.org/events/activist-night-clinic-es…
Thanks! I am also NYC-based, so this is perfect.
Glad to help! I’ll be assisting the facilitators at this training, so I hope I’ll see you there.
I think I might sign up for that, but can you give me any info on when they need people, and how long they like you to stay for shifts? I work during regular business hours, so I don’t want to take up a spot in the training if it turns out I could never actually volunteer.
When I did it, I think I just (it’s been a few years, memory fuzzy) signed up for the volunteer information e-mail list from my local PP so I could get news of any opportunities. Eventually they put out a call for clinic escorts and hosted some training sessions, which I went to and then I was part of the team. The work was both SUPER frustrating/angry-making and really, really satisfying.
Planned Parenthood often needs escorts, and they run their own trainings – check out the volunteer opportunities section for your local PP.
But there are a lot of clinics around the country that don’t have the resources of PP and really need escorts. The National Abortion Federation has info on clinics, which you can contact to find out their needs and how to get training.
There’s also a lot of info on this page. http://abortionfairy.com/get-your-wings/clinic-es…
I was just wondering this–going to check out if and how I can get involved locally. I don’t even know if there are protesters in our area or what it’s like, but I want to help.
I am a clinic escort in Minneapolis, and signed up through NARAL. There is an information form here: https://www.prochoiceminnesota.org/get-involved/v…
And this article is so so so so spot on, it’s a wonderful read and I’m glad to see it’s getting people interested!
This is so wonderful and perfect. When I was an escort our biggest thing was just to talk. Just as soon as they get out of the car, talk. Greet them, how is the weather, can you believe how cold it is, did you see the Oscars, can’t wait for spring, they’re opening a new Tim Horton’s at the corner, etc. Just nothing. Just nonsense. Just talking. The end.
question from a non-american: can abortions only be done in specific abortion-clinics in the US? here they are done in the hospital as any other procedure, which means no-one knows what you’re there for when you enter.
This is one of the big issues that gets exploited by anti-choice activists–it’s a state-by-state issue. So there are lots of states where abortion is “legal” in that it’s a constitutional right, but outrageously strict rules about who can perform which procedures in what kind of clinic mean that abortion is effectively illegal, because so few women can access it. We’re talking laws about how wide hallways and doors are, that kind of thing–all designed to shut down whatever existing clinics are available. There are also many rural places in the US where the nearest hospital is still pretty far away.
“We’re talking laws about how wide hallways and doors are…”. Oh my God. OH MY GOD.
And more fun facts!
“In Texas, the following restrictions on abortion were in effect as of January 1, 2014:
A woman must receive state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion and then wait 24 hours before the procedure is provided.
The use of telemedicine for the performance of medication abortion is prohibited.
The parent of a minor must consent and be notified before an abortion is provided.
Public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest.
A woman must undergo an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion; the provider must show and describe the image to the woman. If the woman lives within 100 miles of an abortion provider she must obtain the ultrasound at least 24 hours before the abortion.”
Source: The Guttmacher Institute
And more!
“Dr. Theodore Herring has been practicing legal abortion in the state since 1974, but on November 1, 2013, the safe abortions Herring has provided for 40 years became illegal—in the TMB’s terms, Herring’s practice became a “threat to public welfare”—when the state began enforcing the admitting privileges provision of HB 2 following a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that put the law into place and shuttered one-third of Texas abortion providers.”
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/02/18/firs…
Pretty much. Most horrifyingly of all, these regulations are ostensibly done in the name of “protecting women’s health” when they’re obviously meant to shut down as many clinics as possible, which, of course, will lead women to pursue unsafe abortion measures.
Thanks for this explanation, and oh my god. this is all the different shades of fucked up.
Ugh, don’t even get us started. There are so few doctors even willing to do abortions that it’s hard to generalize, but yes, you can have them done in hospitals or at clinics. So many hospitals are Catholic-affiliated that that is a problem in itself.
That recent New Yorker article raised an issue I hadn’t been aware of re abortions in hospitals. A lot of hospitals stopped providing abortion services when a donor made a major gift contingent on the hospital no longer providing abortion.
🙁
Ugh ugh ugh. This makes me so angry and frustrated that I’m not wealthy enough to make persuasive donations to hospitals contingent on them providing abortion services.
Let’s pool our resources, because it’s fucking ON.
Yes, they can be done in regular hospitals too, in some states.
Thank you, Kaiser in California!
If you’re lucky enough to have an OB who does them or who can (will) refer you to a private OB who does, you can go get one quietly in a hospital and not have to face this. The problem is that abortions aren’t regularly taught in med school and few doctors will do them — and then only the women with good insurance and access have the ability to get this kind of care. So as always in America, the most desperate get piled on.
They can be done in a hospital. Many “abortion clinics” are actually women’s health clinics – Planned Parenthood does abortions, yes, but they also do Pap smears and birth control prescriptions and other reproductive health care. Many of these clinics also charge on a sliding scale, so if you are without insurance and don’t make a lot of money, they are often the best choice.
abortions only make up 3% or so of Planned Parenthood’s total services (and PPs are usually the “abortion clinics” being targeted by these protesters); the other 97+% include contraception, well woman exams, mammograms/breast cancer screening, STI testing, etc. The protesters don’t know why any individual patient is going into the clinic, so many times at the clinic where I escort, women and their families react incredulously to the hatred being shouted at them because they’re just there for a pap smear or a breast exam.
My impression is that hospitals often don’t perform elective abortions, because the procedure is so quick and low-risk that there is often no need for inpatient management. I’m sure that within outpatient clinics that are affiliated with or physically located within a hospital building offer abortion services, although these clinics generally don’t have the reputation that PP does, and therefore don’t get the protesters. Other hospitals may refuse to do elective abortions but will perform them in high-risk patients (in other words, if the life or health of the mother is significantly threatened), who may need to be in a hospital for monitoring before and after. Of course, Catholic-affiliated healthcare providers (which now serve 1 in 6 of all people in the US) do not perform terminations at all, although they are supposed to refer these patients to someone who will. They often don’t.
Tragic, but powerful. You’re amazing. This is is amazing.
Thank you so much for what you do.
Seconded.
Seconded as well.
thirded or fourthed, or third seconded. Really good work. Thinking back to a particularly scathing entrance to PP, a clinic escort would’ve been greatly appreciated.
I think this is one of the best things ever to appear on this site, and I’m so grateful to have it. Thanks, Caitlin.
Thank you so much for writing this and doing this.
How the hell are these people allowed to do this, but protestors at the WTO and political-party conventions and the like are herded into “free-speech areas” behind fences? WTF?
Bitterly seconded.
I’m not sure if a practical answer is exactly what you’re looking for, but I suppose it’s largely that the immobile character of clinics allows time to get a court order governing protest locations. The “free-speech areas” at conventions are often unconstitutional, but by the time a court challenge is completed, the convention is over.
🙁
Yeah, my question was both rhetorical and confused, so I appreciate your response. 🙂
I *think* that some of it also depends on property ownership. Since clinics rarely own a bunch of property that surrounds their entrance, and streets/sidewalks are public, there is less they can do re: keeping people off them. Convention centers, when they’re owned by big corporations or whatever, may also own some of the surrounding areas (or, like with OWS, sometimes they own parks that seem to be public, but it turns out they’re not).
Can’t speak for everywhere, but in NYC and at this clinic, the problem is that you only need a permit for certain kinds of activity: marches, amplified sound, etc. Distributing materials on the sidewalk and yelling loudly doesn’t count, and that sucks for us as escorts.
Caitlin Keefe Moran, you are a better woman than I am, because I would last about 15 seconds before punching one of these assholes in the face. That being said, I would love to know more about how you got started doing this and how others can help out, because it’s something I’d like very much to do perhaps when I am a little older and less confrontational about things in general. (I have never seen more than 2-3 protesters outside the planned parenthood in my town, thank heavens, though I do make sure to give them a hearty double middle finger when I have the opportunity.)
Tearing up. The gall of these people to get in the faces of children. It’s amazing we don’t see more headlines that read “Clinic Patient Violently Strangles Anti-Abortion Protestor.”
(Not that violence is the answer … but with this level of aggression, I am surprised there are not more physical altercations.)
CLINIC ESCORTS ARE HEROES
Thanks to Caitlin for offering so much to protect women, and thanks to The Toast for publishing such excellent, excellent stories.
I would be SUCH a good clinic escort, I know so many Wodehouse quotes.
“Don’t help her kill that baby! I know this bothers you, deep down!”
“Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner.”
When I read about the preacher ignoring and shaming the homeless man, and saying “at least he got to be born,” the Acrid Scent of Hypocrisy wafted out of my computer monitor.
I mean, whatever your beliefs are about abortion, the Bible is fairly clear on helping the poor and needy. I kind of hope that homeless guy is dancing around the preacher when the latter kicks the bucket.
suggests that the Preacher go assist the man, as a Christian, he answers: “He’s made his choices! At least he got to be born! He’s had his chance.”
Oh my god. Do they even hear themselves? What would Jesus do, indeed.
Just imagine the protestors’ faces when upon their deaths they meet God and have to answer Her questions.
Caitlin, this is a wonderful article, thank you!
Thank you so much for your work! Where I live there are very few protestors (and the cold is scaring them away too, good riddance) and a minimum 30-foot law, and I have no experience with these kind of conditions. Speaking as a (hopefully!) future nurse, I am so grateful there are people like you out there to help people who need abortions (and other healthcare!) have access to the places where they receive that care, in spite of these wangs.
“IT MAKES YOU THE MOTHER A DEAD BABY”
Oh does it now? (PS Caitlin you are so rad, thanks for all you do!)
Caitlin, thank you for helping those women and their families. One in three women get abortions? Where’s that data sourced from?
Since the rise of this Domestic Terrorism by the Pseudo – Christian “churches” I’ve long had the question.
Have any of these terrorist groups ever been held financially responsible for the births resulting from their attacks on women? And if not, why not?
This is so incredible. It hurts.
Thank you for doing what you do.
Immediately googled and signed up to be a clinic escort. Thank you for this
This is amazing, I would sign up to be a clinic escort in a heartbeat except abortion is still completely illegal where I live. I shudder to think of the caliber of protesters we’ll get if and when it’s ever legalized.
Caitlin, I’m not sure whether we’ve met, but I think we must escort at the same clinic. Every single detail mentioned in this article sounds exactly like my experience, which is why I think that. This is a superb piece of writing and I couldn’t have said this better myself.
As a Christian who doesn’t support abortion as it is against my beliefs, I feel it is wholly inappropriate for us to demand our beliefs are placed, so forcefully, on others. When I faced an unexpected pregnancy I didn’t choose abortion, but it was my decision to make – one that is between me and God alone.
Our responsibility is to love others, not judge them, and this makes me so sad to see how our faith is being so badly misrepresented. It is for everyone to make up their own mind, and for us to love, as Jesus did.
thank you for actually listening to the words of Jesus instead of the words of demagogues who want to manipulate people for their own power.
I want to like this more.
Here’s the stats for the one-third of women bit: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/u…
So glad the Toast birthday prompted the re-post of this, which I hadn’t read before. It’s moving and powerful and inspiring and infuriating and lovely.
This is tremendous.
SO GOOD all of it ah
The abortion is a right for all, where I live in Spain unfortunately some politicians want to discuss this, I should not be.
This is so great. When I was an escort our greatest thing was just to talk. Right when they escape the auto, talk. Welcome them, how is the climate, would you be able to trust how frosty it is, did you see the Oscars, can hardly wait for spring, they’re opening another Tim Horton’s at the corner, and so on. Simply nothing. Simply babble. Simply talking. Thanks!!!