USA – Amid Rise in Anti-Abortion Activism, Clinic Protections Are More Needed Than Ever

How abortion clinic staff and volunteers are working to protect patients as the anti-abortion movement mobilizes against providers.

by Eleanor J. Bader
July 23, 2025

Fifteen years ago, when Eileen learned that anti-abortion protesters were jeering at people entering Equality Health Center in Concord, New Hampshire, she decided to take action to ensure patients’ security in her city.

Eileen, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her privacy, has been a clinic escort ever since, walking patients into the building, listening to their stories, and doing what she can to distract them from anti-choice taunts. “I can’t abide injustice or inequality,” she tells The Progressive. “Escorting is highly emotional work, but I feel privileged to be able to help. As escorts, we put our bodies on the line and make a real difference.”

Continued: https://progressive.org/latest/anti-abortion-activism-clinic-protections/

23.07.2025

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Alliance Defending Freedom

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice harassment

anti-choice hatred

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice misogyny

anti-choice protesters

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

Center for Medical Progress

Choices Women’s Medical Center

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crisis pregnancy centers

duVergne Gaines

Eleanor Bader

FACE Act

Feminist Majority Foundation

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

National Abortion Federation

National Clinic Access Project

Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising

What It’s Like to Be an Abortion Clinic Escort In the Post-Roe Era

By Jasmine Knox
August 14, 2024

“A Whole New World” from Aladdin was blasting in the background while a stocky, middle-aged man in a tight t-shirt and cargo shorts yelled “C’mon baby girl! You know you don’t want to do this!” and warned me that I would face divine judgment for my decision. A volunteer grabbed a rainbow umbrella and shielded us from the man’s gaze.

I was there to interview Betty of Stand With Abortion Now, or SWAN, outside of Orlando’s Women’s Center, an independent clinic providing abortion services as well as crucial OBGYN care, including mammograms and cancer screenings. I wanted to speak with her about the work that abortion clinic escorts do amid constant fluctuation in abortion access laws and in the face of sometimes violent harassment from anti-abortion activists.

Continued: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-its-like-to-be-an-abortion-clinic-escort-in-the-post-roe-era

14.08.2024

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Abortion Access Missouri

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National Abortion Federation

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Stand With Abortion Now

USA – Inside the abortion clinic where women fear Donald Trump’s return to the presidency

Four Corners / By Mark Willacy and Amy Donaldson
July 20, 2024

Cindy Hans pops up her rainbow umbrella and shields a young woman's face as she steps out of her car.

"Morning. We're here to walk you in," Cindy tells her. "I like your shirt; very nice."

Cindy is part of a team of volunteers — or what's called an "escort" — at the Camelback abortion clinic in suburban Phoenix, Arizona.

Continued: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-21/abortion-clinic-arizona-fear-trump-us-election/104117622

A crucial abortion access lifeline is hanging by a thread

Independent clinics across the US exist precariously in a post-Roe world. Bronx Abortion's sudden closure left a borough of 1.4 million in the lurch.

Trisha Mukherjee
Mar 3, 2024

Around dawn on any given Saturday morning in 2022, the sidewalk in front of the squat building that housed Bronx Abortion transformed into a tense ecosystem of people with signs, masks, rosaries, and colorful vests.

Anti-abortion protestors gathered outside the small, independent clinic in Morris Park to disrupt the women who sought its services. Chelsea, the clinic escort coordinator, would wake up at 4:15 to get to the clinic before it opened. By the time she arrived, the protestors usually had, too.

Continued: https://www.businessinsider.com/independent-abortion-clinic-crucial-endangered-bronx-abortion-2024-3

USA – Meet the group protecting patients from protesters outside abortion clinics

Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Wed January 11, 2023

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, Planned Parenthood made a vow. “It is a dark day for our country, but this is far from over. We will not compromise on our bodies, our dignity or our freedom,” the organization said in a statement.

But with more than a dozen states enacting complete or partial bans on abortion following the Supreme Court decision, abortion clinics, like those operated by Planned Parenthood, and the protests they attract have become an even more potent symbol of the country’s deep divisions over reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/politics/planned-parenthood-volunteer-escorts-abortion-what-matters/index.html

11.01.2023

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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/

Democrats Must Become As Brave and Righteous as Abortion-Clinic Escorts

To win back abortion rights, Democrats need to learn how to fight the moral battle being waged by anti-abortion theocrats—something clinic escorts do every day.

By Elie Mystal, The Nation
May 16, 2022

We now live in a country where the government cannot force you to wear a mask on a plane during a pandemic but can force you to carry a pregnancy to term against your will. It is a country where the government won’t ban certain kinds of assault rifles but will ban certain kinds of medical care. We live in this country because five justices in thrall to a fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy have taken control of the Supreme Court—and because the majority of Americans who reject that orthodoxy have too often ceded the moral ground to the monsters who claim to have legitimate, enforceable interests over women’s bodies.

Women’s rights organizations and advocates have been in the trenches, fighting this fundamentalist sect, at literal physical risk to their lives, for decades. They’ve been fighting in the streets and fighting in the courtroom, but their alleged allies in Congress, in the media, and in the boardroom have rarely had their back.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-moral-fight/

16.05.2022

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Opinion

14th Amendment

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USA – Standing their ground outside the abortion clinic

April 6, 2022
Story by Rachel Crumpler

GREENSBORO — On this Saturday, two groups of people stand watch in the 20-space parking lot of a Japanese steakhouse, each staking out their own territory.

When a car pulls in, often with a woman driving, each group springs to action.

Those wearing rainbow-colored vests motion in the direction of the abortion clinic, guiding drivers to the proper place to park. Others, dressed in navy Sidewalk for Life hoodies, wave, smile and put their hands in a praying position. Some wield signs, such as one reading “God loves you and your baby. We can help.”

Continued: http://mediahub.unc.edu/standing-their-ground-outside-the-abortion-clinic/

’Keep Listening to My Voice.’ What It’s Like to Be an Abortion Clinic Escort

BY LAUREN RANKIN
APRIL 5, 2022

“You cannot block the car,” I told the bodies amassed in front of the cab. “That is against the law!”

“We don’t have to listen to you!” a man yelled back as he elbowed past me. “You’re not better than us!”

By that bright August morning in 2015, it had been more than a year and a half since I began volunteering as a clinic escort at Metropolitan Medical Associates clinic in northern New Jersey.

Continued: https://time.com/6163613/abortion-clinic-escorts/

Abortion Is Revolutionary: A Conversation with Lauren Rankin

April 5, 2022
By Eleanor J. Bader

“ABORTION IS ABOUT someone’s future, their dreams, their lives,” Lauren Rankin writes in Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines to Protect Abortion in America (Counterpoint Press). “When abortion is reduced to a mere political fight, we miss this, and we miss the very real stakes when access is denied.”

Those stakes, of course, have been enormous, with access to abortion limited by legal restrictions such as parental consent and notification requirements for minors; mandates that separate counseling from the actual procedure; and by the denial of insurance coverage by Medicaid and other plans. In addition, protests outside clinic doors have been ubiquitous for nearly five decades. In fact, picketers typically accost patients — often screaming at them as they thrust photos of bloody fetal parts in their faces — in an effort to dissuade them from ending their pregnancies. What’s more, anti-abortion violence, including the murder of 11 doctors and escorts since 1993, has had a chilling impact on the number of available providers.

Continued: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/abortion-is-revolutionary-a-conversation-with-lauren-rankin/