This Is What It Was Like to Be an Abortion Escort Before Roe Ended

A volunteer and a legal scholar take you into a job that is about to become much more dangerous.

a. l. Dawson and J. Shoshanna Ehrlich
June 30, 2022

All across the country, with its wildly uneven distribution of reproductive health services, anti-abortion protesters continue to wage a war of attrition against abortion access—often transforming the public spaces in front of clinics into hostile zones that clients must navigate in order to access essential care.

It will only get harder now that the Supreme Court has gutted Roe with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While abortion access has become increasingly difficult in recent years, particularly for marginalized communities in abortion-hostile regions, we will soon face the grim reality that abortion most likely will be banned in at least 25 states. (Oklahoma didn’t even bother to wait for the Supreme Court to institute such a ban, which the governor signed at the end of May.) At the same time, abortion clinics that still remain are anticipating more protests by emboldened and potentially more aggressive anti-abortion activists who are seeking to transform the nation into a unified abortion wasteland.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/this-is-what-it-was-like-to-be-an-abortion-escort-before-roe-ended/

The Stories Only Women Are Told

In the wake of S.B. 8, I’ve been thinking about the way I was raised to think about my body, and the way I will raise my son to think about his.

BY SUSAN REBECCA WHITE
NOV 04, 2021

When I was in college, I signed up to volunteer at a women’s center—to walk women from car to clinic door, in the hopes that my presence might mitigate the impact of the ever-present protesters, who zeroed in on each arriving patient with cries of, “Mom! Mom! Please don’t kill your baby!” The night before my first shift, the friend who had originally invited me to volunteer asked what had motivated me to sign up. There was a big difference, she said, between saying you were “pro-choice” and showing up at an abortion clinic at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning to prove it.

I had recently read Zora Neale Hurston’s
Their Eyes Were Watching God and was struck by the line, “You’ve got to go
there to know there.” I repeated this line to my friend, adding that while I
had always intuitively supported abortion rights, my support had been abstract.
Now, I knew that not 20 miles from my college, real women, during a time of
personal crisis, were being singled out and screamed at by strangers as they
made their way inside a medical facility for a procedure that often proved to
be both physically and psychologically painful.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/11/abortion-stories-men-raising-boys.html

04.11.2021

Commentary

Featured

anti-choice protesters

Black activist wards off protesters so women can access Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic

Bracey Harris
Thu, June 10, 2021

JACKSON, Miss. — Asia Brown doesn't expect subtlety from the protesters who congregate outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization, always with the same goal in mind — to stop those heading inside from having abortions.

She watched this year as a woman with a license plate for one of the state's public universities pulled up to the pink-hued facility, the sole abortion clinic in the state.

Continued: https://www.yahoo.com/news/outside-mississippis-only-abortion-clinic-083019166.html

Standing Between Care and Violence

Abortion-clinic escorts and defenders serve as human shields protecting patients from angry, aggressive protestors. Now, with emboldened extremists and the COVID crisis, they face more danger than ever before.

By Garnet Henderson
Jun 2, 2021

Shelley, an abortion-clinic defender at Clinics for Abortion and Reproductive Excellence (CARE) in Bellevue, Nebraska, had a bad feeling on the morning of September 25, 2020. One of those gut bad feelings. It had been a volatile summer. Warmer months typically bring more anti-abortion-rights protesters to clinics, and the groups had been even larger than usual in 2020, likely due to high unemployment rates. By September, the crowds had begun to thin back down to the clinic’s 12 to 14 “regulars.” That morning, one of the regulars was camped out in his usual spot at the base of the clinic’s driveway.

Continued: https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a36061740/abortion-clinic-escorts-defenders-face-violence/

USA – A Movement Grows Outside of East Charlotte Abortion Clinic

The 'New Feminist' defenders

Ryan Pitkin
September 24, 2020

The video begins with a 19-year-old woman relaxing in a lawn chair outside of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic on Latrobe Drive in east Charlotte where tensions between anti-abortion activists and pro-choice clinic defenders have risen in recent years.

In the video, the 19-year-old clinic defender nonchalantly reads the lyrics to the song “WAP,” which stands for Wet Ass Pussy. She’s talking calmly, but just loud enough to drown out Philip “Flip” Benham, a known religious extremist who has spent nearly 20 years protesting and harassing patients at the east Charlotte clinic. While Benham is usually the loudest man on Latrobe Drive, he looks bewildered by the woman’s confident reading of Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion’s gospel. He continues to read a Bible passage aloud just feet away from her. Continued: https://qcnerve.com/new-defenders-charlotte-abortion-clinic/

USA – How a group of clinic volunteers use TikTok to battle anti-abortion protesters

BY MORGAN SUNG
Sep 11, 2020

Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire — or fire with "WAP" lyrics.

A group of abortion clinic escorts and defenders have developed a devoted fanbase on TikTok after going viral for their unconventional methods of opposing religious protesters. The clinic, which is based in North Carolina, is often swamped with protesters who read Bible passages and chant about sin in an effort to intimidate patients seeking reproductive care. The army of primarily teenage girls defending the clinic's patients are fighting back in the most quintessential Gen Z way possible: bullying them on the internet.

Continued: https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-abortion-clinic-defenders-pro-choice/

USA – Abortion Clinics Don’t Want Demonstrators Around, Even If They’re Pro-Choice

Abortion Clinics Don't Want Demonstrators Around, Even If They're Pro-Choice
Inside the fight taking place at U.S. clinics.

by Rebecca Grant
Jul 9 2019

As an abortion rights advocate in a state trying to ban abortion, Helmi Henkin isn't usually in the position of turning away support.

Henkin chairs of the clinic escort program for West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa, one of the three abortion clinics left in Alabama, and formerly lead communications for The Yellowhammer Fund, the only statewide abortion fund. In May, an anti-abortion protester tried to run over a WAWC escort in the parking lot with an SUV. One week later, Governor Kay Ivey signed an extreme abortion ban into law and, since then, Alabama has been in the national spotlight as a harbinger of what’s to come. Henkin has found that since the law’s signing, pro-choice advocates across the country feel an urgency to do something about it. Some send money, while others want to protect abortion clinics in a more physical way.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzjjk/what-is-abortion-clinic-defense

09.07.2019

A Preferred Women's Health Center

Adrienne Verrilli

Anne Rumberger

anti-choice protesters

Feminist Majority Foundation

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

Movement for Abortion Defense

National Abortion Federation

National Clinic Access Project

New York City For Abortion Rights

NYC4AR

Planned Parenthood

pro-choice counter protesters

ProtestPP

ReproAction

Reproductive Health Services of Montgomery

Seattle Clinic Defense

sidewalk harassment

West Alabama Women's Center

USA – Abortion Clinics Are Annoyed by Protesters. Pro-Choice Protesters.

Abortion Clinics Are Annoyed by Protesters. Pro-Choice Protesters.
By defying the clinics’ wishes, the protesters have formed their own radical wing of the pro-choice movement.

Emily Shugerman
03.17.19

On a recent Wednesday, protesters gathered outside the Planned Parenthood in Madison, Wisconsin, for more than an hour, chanting, giving speeches, and occasionally raising their fists in the air. In their hands, they held a hot-pink and white banner reading, “We ❤️Abortion.”

They were members of Madison Abortion Defense, a group whose mission includes countering anti-abortion demonstrators outside clinics. The group is one of at least five similar organizations that have united to form the Movement for Abortion Defense coalition, dedicated to “opposing right-wing, anti-choice protests in the streets” and “reclaiming space and confronting antis at our clinics.”

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/abortion-defenders-keep-showing-up-at-planned-parenthood-clinics-that-want-them-to-stay-away