5. Abortion Clinic Harassment Intensifies During the Pandemic

Written By Garnet Henderson

Protesters outside of abortion clinics are a common sight. But they have become emboldened during the Trump era, employing aggressive tactics, turning out in record-breaking numbers, and flouting pandemic safety measures.

Guests:

Music by Lily Sloane, logo by Kate Ryan. Special thanks to Charlotte for Choice and We Engage for audio from the field. Photos from the 2017 Love Life march in Charlotte by Robin Marty. Transcript below.

Garnet Henderson [00:00:01] Hey, just a reminder before we get started today that ACCESS is an independent production. We rely on your support, and it's really easy to make a one time, monthly or yearly contribution to the show. So many options! You can do that by visiting glow.fm/apodcastaboutabortion, and that's linked in the show notes as well. All right. Here's the show. 

Garnet Henderson [00:00:58] Welcome to ACCESS, a podcast about abortion, I'm your host, Garnet Henderson. 

protest audio [00:01:07] And let me tell you that Satan hates it, that you're here this morning, you know that, but God loves it, that you're here and Satan hates that there's a multiplication happening this morning. It's not just stay here in our city. It's be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth and that this is the call of Christians. 

Garnet Henderson [00:01:28] What you're hearing is a video taken this summer outside a preferred women's health center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Near the clinic, there's a grassy lot surrounded by trees. On one end of the property, you can see a big stage with lots of sound equipment and dozens of people milling around in front. It looks like a concert. Remember, this is a video from this summer, 2020, during the pandemic. And there's hardly a mask in sight. Last Saturday, the crowd outside the clinic numbered 174 people. Here's a clip from that day. 

protest audio [00:02:07] 50 percent and 60 percent of women that are obtaining an abortion have already had. They've already had children. Already mothers. And the abortion experience is horrific, it's dehumanizing. You walk in there, they give you a number, you don't even have a name, they call a number, and you get up and you go into the room. There is no compassion, which is clear. 

Garnet Henderson [00:02:36] Protesters outside abortion clinics are a pretty common sight. But over the last few years, A Preferred Women's Health Center has been mobbed. On any given Saturday, crowds there routinely number in the hundreds, and sometimes the thousands. This is mostly because of an anti-abortion group called Love Life, which got its start in Charlotte but now has chapters in Raleigh and in New York City. They have taken abortion clinic protest and turned it into a massive outdoor church service. 

Calla Hales [00:03:09] Back in December, probably the first week in December 2015 out of nowhere. There was no parade permit. There was no warning. There was about 5,000 people mobbing Latrobe Drive. They ended up closing off the streets because there was just too many bodies in the street. That was the first day that we really didn't have any real sense of being able to get people in the clinic. We didn't really also have police help on that one either, because there were just so many people and they were gathering on an empty property, though it wasn't theirs. There's 5,000 people and maybe 20 cops. They're not going to be able to enforce anything. Since then it's just systematically gotten bigger. It's a 40 week campaign that starts usually sometime in mid-February, and it's usually the weekend right before Thanksgiving. 

Garnet Henderson [00:04:01] That's Calla Hales. She's the executive director of A Preferred Women's Health Center, which has locations in Charlotte and in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her parents founded these clinics which she now runs. Love Life is able to set up this huge stage near the clinic on Saturdays because the owner of a nearby property donated it to them. But they're a regular presence at the clinic on weekdays, too. And on those days, they hang out right on the sidewalk, harassing patients as they come in and out of the clinic. And while most of these protesters live in the area and are affiliated with Love Life, there are a number of national anti-abortion groups that travel throughout the country protesting at different clinics. And sometimes they add to the numbers as well. Calla keeps track of these numbers, and she told me that conservatively, over the last five years, at least 61,698 people have protested at the Charlotte clinic. And if you're listening to this episode on the day it comes out, November 19th, Love Life's big end of the 40 week event is this weekend, Saturday, November 21st. The group's leaders have said that they expect, and I quote, thousands of Christians to come out this weekend as the coronavirus pandemic rages toward a dangerous peak. 

Heather Mobley [00:05:26] A lot of the protesters seem like they don't think there's a pandemic going on. We don't see a lot of masks. We don't see any social distancing. I think their leadership really has stopped even playing like they're doing that. 

Garnet Henderson [00:05:40] That's Heather Mobley. She's a volunteer with Charlotte for Choice, a nonprofit organization that supports the clinic in a few ways. First, they train and organize clinic escorts. Most abortion clinics that have any kind of protester presence have escorts, and these escorts are mainly there to be a friendly face. They're not security guards, though many clinics have those, too. They usually wear brightly colored vests, sometimes hot pink, or rainbow. They might try to drown protesters out by playing music or ringing bells. And sometimes they'll even shield patients with big umbrellas, because protesters will take pictures of their faces or their license plates. Mainly, they help patients get where they need to go, because it's really disorienting, not to mention upsetting to arrive at a clinic and hear this. 

protest audio [00:06:35] Sit down to hear what's brought you here today. Ma'am, we'd love to bring you a baby shower, to give you a mentor, to offer you help finding a job. Come with child care. Ma'am, we're here to help your family up, up or down. 

Garnet Henderson [00:06:49] Or this. 

protest audio [00:06:57] Come first. And the name of Jesus. What time no longer will they be able to call evil? Good Lord God, you will find you will pray them. You will shake them. You're shaking them now. Yes. You're shaking them now. Yes. 

Garnet Henderson [00:07:13] Now, traditionally, most clinic escorts have a non-engagement policy. This means that they try not to talk back to the protesters whenever possible. I spoke with escorts from all over the country for this episode, and some of them told me that this policy works for them. But in places like Charlotte, where the protest activity has gotten especially loud and aggressive, some advocates are starting to take a more direct approach and engage with the protesters intentionally. Charlotte for Choice still has clinic escorts who do not engage with protesters, but they now also have clinic defenders who basically turn the protesters tactics right back around on them. Here's a video of Heather talking with one of the clinic's regular protesters. 

protest audio [00:08:02] Going to be real thrilled with you, right? And Jesus was going to say that you really thought that you were helping people out by coming out here and calling women whores that are. Yeah, OK. It's like that's how that's how you are going to get people to Jesus by calling them whores to tell them the truth. Is that really effective? How many people you got converted by, people you converted with your horse out of here to witness? Oh, OK. All right. You got to convict anything with you. You start off in a Church? 

Heather Mobley [00:08:34] As Love Life has decided to expand their mission, because they like to term the abortion clinic the mission field, they were existing in a space that they were allowed to feel comfortable in. And so it gave them what they thought of as more authority to expand, to make this environment more uncomfortable for patients really across the country. And I honestly think they're trying to expand internationally, which is frightening. So when they're not allowed to exist in that space comfortably, it does impact the numbers of protesters we have coming out. Because if people see their live stream and see that it's not just this pleasant prayer walk and where they can get their Jesus points for the weekend and feel good about themselves, our clinic defenders, where you can hear them audibly in the live stream, it also helps them take their camera away from facing the clinic. 

Jessica Thomas [00:09:33] There's far less young children coming out, I think, since the defenders have taken a more aggressive approach. Which used to be a very common occurrence, they would bring their littles and preteens out in little homeschool pods. 

Garnet Henderson [00:09:49] The second voice you heard there was that of Jessica Thomas. She's also a volunteer with Charlotte for Choice, and she's one of the escort leaders. A lot of the clinic defenders are young activists in their teens or early 20s, and they've gone viral this year on TikTok. Their videos are really funny, and they're making people more aware of this problem of abortion clinic harassment. Here's one of the defenders talking to a group of male protesters. 

protest audio [00:10:18] That would end abortion. If you all got vasectomies, OK? Yeah, yeah. Oh, you just only want to tell women what to do. 

Garnet Henderson [00:10:31] And here's another defender reading the lyrics of Cardi B's song WAP to Flip Benham, the national leader of an extremist anti-abortion group called Operation Save America. Several clinic escorts told me that Flip is known for making nasty personal comments to patients and to escorts. 

protest audio [00:10:50] Everything you've got for this wet ass pussy beaten it catch a charge extra large and extra hard, put this pussy right in your face, swipe your nose like a credit card. I want to ride. I do a kegel while it's inside. Spit in my mouth, look in my eyes. 

Heather Mobley [00:11:08] It's been really nice to have their energy, their enthusiasm, know their willingness to get up at like Dark Thirty on Saturdays. I mean, they've just they've really impressed me. They're I think that a lot of generations wanted to write them off. And that was a dumb move. 

Jessica Thomas [00:11:29] They all have such moxie. They really do. 

Calla Hales [00:11:33] I can tell you that it's a radical change of pace for us. You know, we've always been told whether it be from like outside professional organizations or from our predecessors that, stick your head down and let them go past you and don't engage, don't talk about it. Maybe they won't bother you. And like Heather and Jess said, they really gained a lot of ground. They felt comfortable doing this and bringing this, for lack of a better term, violence to our doorstep. And I can tell you that this decision to be more actively forward with counterprotesting has gotten some very mixed feedback from my colleagues. We've for five years, whatever iteration of Charlotte for Choice and the clinic and working together, we have tried our damndest to work with the city. We've been above reproach. Every time the clinic is, the clinic has been asked or the volunteers have been asked to do something by the city or police. We were never given the same respect that they are giving to the protesters. And it's always you guys can act better than this. Don't be cordial. 

Jessica Thomas [00:12:47] It didn't work. It didn't make the equation better. It didn't make patient access easier. It didn't make patients less traumatized when they got into the parking lot. It didn't make them less anxious about walking from their vehicles to the clinic doors.

Calla Hales [00:13:02] I mean, arguably us putting our heads down made this situation one of the worst in the country. They have the entire property next door. 

Jessica Thomas [00:13:13] The actual level of noise is outrageous. It is a cacophony of noise, of screeching voices, of prayer, of music. I'm going to say the counterprotest approach has definitely added noise. It has definitely added to noise, but it hasn't added to hate. 

Garnet Henderson [00:13:36] Another clinic escort group taking a similar approach is the Pinkhouse Defenders. They're escorts at Mississippi's last remaining abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization, a.k.a. the Pinkhouse. I spoke with Derenda Hancock, who's been volunteering at the Pink House since 2013, and Kim Gibson, who joined her in 2017. Together, they also run a nonprofit called We Engage. The name pretty much tells you what you need to know. Kim speaks first here. 

Kim Gibson [00:14:07] We're full on. 

Derenda Hancock [00:14:07] Always have been.

Kim Gibson [00:14:11] That's the we engage part of it. We full on do. You know each each person's different, everybody... that's the one thing we're unique. And there are other escort teams that do as well. But we engage with the protesters, generally speaking. 

Derenda Hancock [00:14:29] And it was from the second week that the Pinkhouse Defenders were formed that we've engaged. All of, almost all, I'm going to say, actually, all of the clinic escort teams across the country are taught nonengagement. That was what the norm was. And our clinic owner, Diane Derzis came, and I didn't organize the defenders at that time, that was a woman named Laurie Bertram Roberts. And Laurie talked to her and said, you know this not talking to back to them and just letting them stand there and scream at you. That's getting really old, Diane. And Diane said, why are you doing that? Laurie said, that's how they trained us. And she said, no. She said, it's my property and my rules. She said, you do anything you need to do short of physical contact, to get them out of here. So from that moment on, we've engaged. And for years it was only us and Huntsville, Alabama. Everyone else did not. And the last two or three years that's started to change. 

Garnet Henderson [00:15:36] Crowds at the Pinkhouse range in size from five or six people to 40 or more, depending on what's going on. Like I said, there are a lot of anti-abortion groups that travel to protest at different clinics. And given its status as the last clinic in Mississippi, the Pinkhouse does see a lot of activity from these groups in addition to its own regular locals. Here's a video from last year. Coleman Boyd, a physician and a leader with Operation Save America, who lives in Mississippi, has one of his kids on the mic. 

protest audio [00:16:13] Jesus loves you, Mommy, Mommy, please don't kill me. I'm telling you, mommy, mommy, Jesus loves you. 

Garnet Henderson [00:16:28] Protesters at the Pinkouse are loud and aggressive, and the pandemic has only made things worse. 

Kim Gibson [00:16:35] Being out there during Covid is you know, it's taken on a whole different thing. The antis, especially in the beginning, were a lot more aggressive. 

Garnet Henderson [00:16:44] Here's a video Kim took in April. She's sitting on clinic property behind a tall fence. You can hear loud music playing in an attempt to drown the protesters out. But one of them has a bullhorn that he's holding up over the fence, pointed at the building. 

protest audio [00:17:03] unintelligible

Garnet Henderson [00:17:18] Here's another video from May. In it, a protester is screaming about the killing of George Floyd. I'm not going to play the whole thing, because it's graphic, but here's the end. 

protest audio [00:17:31] Promise you, they didn't want to hear it. Police didn't want to hear those poeple screaming out. But when you're here today killing a baby you don't want to hear us, I understand.

Garnet Henderson [00:17:48] Everyone I spoke with for this episode told me that few to none of the protesters at their clinics are wearing masks or physically distancing. As a result, a lot of clinic escort teams actually suspended operations for their own safety early in the pandemic. Most have restarted now, but covid safety remains a concern. Plus, partners and other companions who would normally be able to accompany patients into the clinic can't do that right now. So more of them are waiting outside or in their cars while protesters harass them. 

Lara Chelian [00:18:24] Aggressiveness actually has gotten worse since the pandemic started, since this whole Covid crisis has been made so political, the anti-abortion picketers and protesters have made it a political issue also. So they will purposely not wear masks and be very egregious in their actions and try and step in other people's faces. So I actually have seen that getting worse. 

Garnet Henderson [00:18:55] That's Laura Chelian of Northland Family Planning, which has three clinics in the Detroit metro area. Much like Calla, this is Laura's family business. Her mom, Renee, started the clinics. And over the last few years, protests there have intensified.
Lara Chelian [00:19:11] Our one of our clinics is a very big hotspot for protester activity. So we will have on a Saturday, 40 to 50 people on a normal basis for the past few years, violating ordinance noise ordinances and violating the law, with the police really not doing much. I think would be they felt emboldened by Trump. And so since his election, we have seen an uptick in protester activity, period. 

Garnet Henderson [00:19:43] Laura's claim that protest activity has increased since Donald Trump was elected president is borne out in statistics. Every year, the National Abortion Federation releases a report on disruption and violence at abortion clinics. Starting in 2016, there was a noticeable uptick in picketing, as well as incidents like trespassing, vandalism and hate mail. In 2019 alone, there were over 123,000 incidents of picketing at abortion clinics, up from about 99,000 in 2018. 

Lara Chelian [00:20:20] I never thought that we would see someone standing outside of our clinic with an assault rifle on their back, strapped to them and and also a handgun in their pocket. And the police said they can't do anything because it's an open carry state. Now, obviously we have some issues with that because we have a clear history of attacks and bombings and killings at abortion clinics, so it felt much more intimidating. Also, this picketer was bringing a ladder to get to the level above our fence that we have around our property, and so we were very concerned because I mean, somebody with an assault rifle at a vantage point up in the over the fence on a ladder had such an angle to just start shooting people. I mean, it was a very valid fear. And to not have the police support was it has been extremely disturbing. 

Garnet Henderson [00:21:36] Anti-abortion extremists have killed at least 11 people since the 1990s. There have been many more attempted murders, shootings, bombings, arsons and other attacks, as well as countless threats online, via phone, in person, you name it. There's also been a disturbing rise in clinic invasions and blockades, especially within the last year. Blockades, where anti-abortion extremists physically prevent people from entering or exiting clinics, were a common tactic in the 90s. But then President Bill Clinton signed a law called the FACE Act. That stands for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. It makes these blockades a federal crime, and it worked pretty well for a while. But invasions and blockades are back. A few years ago, one of the Northland family planning clinics was the target of an invasion strategy known as a Red Rose Rescue. 

Lara Chelian [00:22:38] We refer to them as red rose invasions, but they call them red rose rescues. It is when anti-abortion protesters actually enter, so they trespass onto private property of the clinic and enter the facilities. In our case, they enter the waiting room. They are all carrying red roses and they are trying to pass them out to patients in the waiting room and trying to convince them to, quote, save their baby and keep their baby. They refused to leave. In fact, at our clinic, they had to be they went limp and they had to be physically carried out by multiple officers. 

Garnet Henderson [00:23:25] In August, that same location experienced a blockade. 

Lara Chelian [00:23:29] There is potential for a FACE case, but also with the way it was handled by the local police was extremely disturbing. That morning we had a lot of protester activity outside as the staff was arriving, normal protester activity. When they're on the sidewalk and they're not breaking any laws, it's not anything unusual. So our clinic opens at nine a.m. that day and. At about ten to nine, a group of about that's how many were arrested, where 10 protesters came off, not from the front of the property, the side. So they were congregated over on the side in these bushes and trees that we have. And.Marched over and started blocking the entrance to the clinic, I mean, completely blocked it, sat down. We called the police and the police failed us and in many, many ways. So the first three officers that showed up on the scene didn't check on our staff, didn't check on their well-being, and five came arrived and started pretty much for lack of a better word, shooting the shit with the people who were blocking the clinic entrances. And long story short, they allowed them to block the clinic entrances for an hour and a half. They blocked not only the patient entrance, but the employee entrance. And then when somebody tried to bring a patient around the building to another entrance, that is an emergency exit only to bring them in the clinic, they ran around and blocked that entrance while the police were there. And the police let this all happen. It was a freaking circus, our parking lot. They didn't start arresting them until I wsnt to say, hour to an hour and 15 minutes after they started blocking the clinic entrances. While they let them also run around the parking lot knocking on patients' windows, harassing them, causing them, I mean, horrible trauma unnecessarily, and while they were trespassing on private property that they were not allowed to be on. And the bigger problem was, is that when the police came and they pulled into the parking lot, when they arrived on the scene, they where they pulled in and park their cars, they ended up blocking the entrance to the clinic so people couldn't patients in their cars couldn't even leave. They were stuck there. It felt like a hostage situation and a lot of ways and it was emotionally unbearable. People were calling on social media for the firing of these officers because one of the protesters with live streaming this whole event. And so you can hear the conversations with the police officers and the police officers are stating that they're with them and they understand. 

Garnet Henderson [00:26:50] A few times now I've mentioned a group called Operation Save America, and they were involved in this blockade, too. This is a fundamentalist Christian group that grew out of a previous organization called Operation Rescue. They still sometimes use that name. In 1991, Operation Rescue blockaded a clinic in Wichita, Kansas, for nearly seven weeks. The doctor at that clinic, George Tiller, was later murdered in 2009. And while Operation Save America claims to be nonviolent, it has long standing ties to other organizations that have employed violent methods. 

Lara Chelian [00:27:30] Yeah, we actually we're pretty sure that all the live recording and everything that they were doing was so that they could se,e record how all this went down from every angle, the interactions with the police so that they can take this and, you know, start doing some trainings around the country. And this was actually the clinic that had the red rose rescue. And because the city did not react and really prosecute in a strong manner, in fact, they let the trial become about abortion rather than about trespass. I believe it was purposeful that they chose this city and the police department to do this test. 

Garnet Henderson [00:28:15] I want you to hear from people who volunteer and work at clinics in as many parts of the country as possible. So next, we're going to hear from Elena Salisbury. She lives in Nebraska and is an escort at two clinics. One is a Planned Parenthood and the other is the clinic of Dr. Leroy Carhart. Like Dr. Warren Hern, who you met in episode four, Dr. Carhart is one of the few physicians in the country who will provide abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy. As a result, his clinic is a target. And just a note here that the 40 Days for Life campaign that Elena mentions is different from the 40 week campaign that love life runs in North Carolina and New York. 40 Days for Life is a Catholic anti-abortion campaign that has been around since the late 90s. And it happens all over the country.

Elena Salisbury [00:29:10] Just the difference between Planned Parenthood, anti-choice protesters and the people who come to the clinic and Bellevue is extreme. It's the difference of crossing property lines of physical assault sometimes of the escorts from the anti-choice protesters, the just level of boldness and how empowered they anti-choice protesters feel. Dr. Carhart's clinic protesters will stand in the driveway and block cars turning into the parking lot of the clinic. And so just trying to protect patient safety and also just the safety of everybody else driving by because it's off of a busy road. The staff kind of park cars as sort of a barrier or an attempt at a barrier between the some of the protesters on the sidewalk and the parking lot. There's a handful of people who have been consistently coming the entire time that I've been escorting there and definitely predate me. So there's definitely the like, I don't know, six or so core people that have been coming for years. And then every year during 40 Days for Life, the numbers just explode. And I don't know, sometimes there are 20 or 30 protesters there. The escorts wear masks. The protesters do not. I think that one of the things that feels more extreme to me is that unmasked protesters are sticking their heads into the cars of patients. It is 40 Days for Life right now. And so there are still a lot of protesters. The Covid hasn't affected their numbers on their end at all. So my friend is one of the escorts at the clinic was actually physically assaulted by one of the protesters a couple of weeks ago, and she was able to get a restraining order against him. And so he hasn't been there the past few weeks. But he did physically assault her by basically kind of punching her in the face with his sign. And I had had experiences with him and his group before. They're called The Life Runners, they're really extreme and really aggressive physically. And they use rhetoric that's all about battle and war. At Carhart's clinic, I think that engagement happens out of necessity because if we didn't, they would physically I don't know, they would probably lie down in the driveway. I don't know what they would, probably surround a patient's car and push them out of the way. They have their own crisis pregnancy center right next door. And so they're always trying to redirect people there. They have ordered vests that mimic our vests. So they have vests that look exactly the same. They stand out there, they have clipboards. They say, I'm with the clinic. There's nothing to prevent them from doing that short of physical assault, apparently nothing that they're doing is illegal. One thing that's they have co-opted lately, and a specific protester in particular who's been coming for years longer than I've been there, and she has kind of co-opted Black Lives Matter language. And so she wears a shirt that says unborn lives matter and she will specifically target patients of color and yell at them. Black lives matter. And why don't you think your baby's life matters? And she's a white woman in her 50s, probably. I can think of one specific instance where a couple pulled into the parking lot. We were able to get her inside and her partner had to go find an ATM. And so there is a gas station, kind of catty corner from the clinic that they have an ATM. And I told him and he got in his car to drive over there and one of the protesters followed him across the street into the gas station. So I followed her. As he was at the ATM, she was literally right next to him saying, don't kill your baby. What are you doing? Go save her from in there like it's not too late. We'll take care of your baby. Like you're doing a horrible thing. She's killing your child. They will call the police on us and get the police there. Oh, they're they're violating my rights or whatever. And so then the parking lot is full of police cars. And what does that say to patients? So then people maybe drive by for their appointment and see a parking lot full of cops and they're not going to come because that's scary and they don't know what's going on. And so that's another tactic that they use to intimidate people. 

Garnet Henderson [00:34:13] Next, we'll meet Steph Black. Steph is a clinic escort in the D.C. area.
Steph Black [00:34:18] You still see the same number of antis and none of them wear masks or socially distance, just like the before times. On Passover, I so I'm also a practical support volunteer and I drive patients to and from abortion clinics and the DMV area. It was the first time I basically had left my apartment was agreeing to drive a patient home from an abortion clinic where I escort. And I was absolutely flabbergasted, like speechless to see anti-choiceers. This was like in April, to see anti-choicers, like out and about, no masks, no gloves not socially distancing outside of my clinic, you know. And one woman had the audacity to carry a sign that said protect women. The cognitive dissonance is like, so surreal to me and so astounding that these people who claim to care about protecting women and claim to care about the best interests of the people walking into that clinic are the same ones who are actively putting their lives in danger by standing too close to each other, by not wearing masks, by making pedestrians walk into a highway to avoid them on the sidewalk. I will say it's one of the two times in my whole life that I've ever broken my vow to never engage with antis. And I love and support orgs like We Engage who do on principle engage with antis. It's not my philosophy, it's not my escort collective philosophy. And I drove back from driving that patient home, drove back to the clinic, rolled down my windows and lost my mind. I could not believe that there are people there and told them to go home and told them that they were breaking the law for being there, which they were. And a woman with her Protect Women sign looked at me smugly and said, no, not no, I'm not. No, I'm not. To my saying, you are not supposed to be here. You're breaking the law. You know, we still have kids who come. Parents that bring their children to the clinic. In a pandemic. We still have very elderly anti-choicers and clinic harassers who will show up and talk to each other like nothing's wrong. But what we've been doing is taking like three week rotations and we're only doing half of the amount of escorts. So we've actually been very, very successful in keeping escorts safe because that is our number one concern. But for other clinics where there isn't private property we had we basically said we're not going to escort. We're we just cannot ask people and endanger our escorts. We can't ask people to to escort during the pandemic when antis have every right to be right up in your face. It's not safe for us. Unfortunately, what that means is that it's also not safe for patients. It's really hard. It's really heartbreaking to know that we've it feels almost like we've abandoned the patients who who have to go into that clinic and wade through protesters, especially knowing that most people who get abortions aren't political about abortion access. So to be screamead at by strangers that they're horrible people, they're murderers are X, Y, Z, lies, it's hard to think about.

Garnet Henderson [00:37:45] Last we'll hear from L and S, two escorts at the same clinic in New Jersey who chose not to use their names. L speaks first. 

L [00:37:54] When we would train, we would tell folks that our protesters would vary from like a stoplight, red, yellow and green. And so our red were ones we called the screamers and they were generally male. They would come from a local evangelical church and they would be the ones who would wear body mics, stand as close to the door as they could and hold very large signs, most of them grotesque, I would say, and they would be the loud ones. And then it was yellow. We would have ones we called the runner. She very much how it sounds, would run after people really before and after the procedure, try to hand the pamphlets, try to hand them rosaries, sometimes occasionally tiny fetuses you can buy in bulk on Amazon. I've looked it up. And so and then there were a couple more and then you'd have the Catholics who would either stand on the same side of the street, they'd have sandwich board signs, but they were mainly quiet, generally respectful. And you'd have Catholics also across the street who would just sort of pray to themselves. And what happens when folks come is that it's a it's a fairly short street and people would either come from across the street. There's no parking really in the area. So they'd be coming from across the street or down the street. You would try to spot them before the runner or her similar protesters spotted them. It gets very loud these days. There's a lot of folks out. It gets very tight. You know, occasionally you have companions who want to talk to the protesters. They have every right to do that. We, generally speaking, don't interfere. Sometimes they just have conversations about religion or what have you. Generally, they're respectful from both sides or they can handle themselves. So we don't generally intervene. And then we just had this last time, just had a couple of companions who were just they didn't know each other, but they were feeding off of each other. They were feeding out the protesters. There was a lot of protesters this this time, and you just you get that clash of people and, you know, sometimes you just don't know exactly what it is. You'll have days that are easy and you're like, OK, that's great. And you have days where even at the beginning, you think something seems off today. Some of them read straight from the Bible. And and then you get ones who talk about how sometimes women want to get abortions because they want to fit into their wedding dress or a bikini. Sometimes there's stuff about evolution and how we didn't come from puddles of slime. Our runner, I can hear her voice in my head. And it's a lot of like they it's it's this assembly line in there, you know, they don't care about you and your baby. We have resources. We can provide you help. 

S [00:41:04] I've never felt in imminent danger of physical attack, but the last shift that I was at, which was during the Covid-19, a protester came right up to me and started talking about like, does it make you uncomfortable that I'm not wearing a mask? And were just kind of just getting really verbally aggressive with me. And then he kind of he just continued to sort of follow me around. And at one point, him and another protester kind of got both on both sides of me. I was like backed up against the building. And we're obviously both unmasked. We're just. Talking back and forth at each other, obviously, to try to try to get to me, which I just took out my phone and started filming it, and my my partner just started playing WAP on his phone because I really hate that song to try to move away. But, yeah, like when they're when they're just so obviously intending to make you uncomfortable knowing that they're not wearing a mask. They tell you that sin is the real virus. One incident that we had recently during the pandemic, a patient had gone into the clinic and then for some reason had come out fairly soon after, so I don't believe she had gone through the procedure. And she was sitting in her car parked right next to the sidewalk with her companion in the car, and then she had two small children in the car with her and a group of protesters managed to wedge themselves, they had, her car door was open. They wedged themselves into her car. The patient wasn't wearing a mask. The protesters weren't wearing a mask. And they were just like leaning into her car, like pleading with her to not go through with this. And it was like, I'm concerned for her safety because nobody's masked. And she wasn't the patient wasn't engaging. She was just kind of sitting there silently crying very softly. And I was like, so I. I approached with my partner and we were both kind of like, you know, you can tell them to leave. You can you can close your door. If you want to call the cops, you can call the cops. And of course, the protesters didn't like that. But it's there are sometimes those instances where you're like. You can't make those decisions for the patients. One thing that I've noticed more recently is that the Protestants, which I'm assuming are mostly evangelical Protestants and then the Catholics that are there do not get along with each other. So they'll sometimes start attacking each other. There was a group of evangelical protesters that were like literally following around a Catholic protester and basically, like, chased him around the block. But then one protester who was on the loudspeaker was talking, was criticizing Catholics because they they prayed to Mary and he was saying that Mary wasn't anything special. Mary is not God. Mary was just a vessel. And and I am sorry, I get emotional every time I think about that. Like so I'm I'm currently trying to get pregnant myself. And knowing knowing that there are people out there and people in power who think that that's all that women are, I mean, a woman like Mary, she doesn't even get any special treatment. She was literally just a vessel. 

Garnet Henderson [00:45:19] That's all for today's show. ACCESS is produced by me, Garnet Henderson. Our music is by Lily Sloane and our logo is by Kate Ryan. Many thanks to all of today's guests and special thanks to Charlotte for Choice and We Engage for letting me use their audio from the field, helping us to go where we cannot physically go during the pandemic. Remember, if you want to support the show, you can do that by visiting glow.fm/apodcastaboutabortion. You can also help out by leaving a rating or review, that really helps other people find us, and best of all, please share the show with a friend. Subscribe to ACCESS wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @accesspod. A full transcript of this episode is available, as always, on our website, apodcastaboutabortion.com. See you next month. 

Garnet Henderson
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