Why we defend the clinics

FIRST, BEFORE going into a detailed response, I want to emphasize that the work we do with Seattle Clinic Defense is to support the clinics, the patients who utilize their services, and the staff who work there.

Patients who go to Planned Parenthood and other clinics that provide abortions often go through a stressful experience of anti-choice protesters intimidating and bullying them in order to get the health care that they need. Our goal is to make their lives easier, both in the short and long terms, so we do a lot of thinking about how our presence and actions might affect the people going to the clinics, especially since they may already be in stressful situations.

Some of our organizers have talked with the action arm of Planned Parenthood (please note: this group of people is different than the staff who work at the actual clinics) on various occasions, and the responses that we have gotten have generally been a desire to encourage us to focus our actions on some of the ways in which they are already working--i.e., through phone-banking, contacting elected officials, and other related methods.

While these are absolutely important efforts, more needs to be done. We have been contacting our elected officials and fundraising for years, and yet the war on women's health and reproductive rights has never loomed so large. A record number of anti-choice pieces of legislation have been proposed and enacted across the U.S. this year. It is terrifying to think that women's control over their own bodies is closer and closer to being rolled back to pre-1973 levels. This is 2011. Reproductive rights are eroding as we speak, and without greater action, it will only get worse.

The anti-choice side of the abortion debate has for too long been the dominant public presence. They go out to the clinics. They hold up disgusting, falsified signs. They tell people going into clinics that they are going to hell, that they are murderers. They stalk and murder abortion providers.

The pro-choice side of the debate has too easily been sent into a false sense of complacency, since abortion is still technically a legal procedure, no matter how many obstacles are being put in the way of those trying to obtain one. Without greater action from those who support reproductive rights, more and more restrictions will be put on obtaining an abortion. Women who are low-income, who may live hundreds of miles from the nearest abortion provider, and who may be required to make multiple, legislature-mandated visits to a provider before being able to obtain the abortion that is her right, no longer have the means to jump through all the hoops to terminate an unwanted pregnancy in a safe manner.

Winning the right to a safe and legal abortion in the first place was the product of women speaking out and stepping up and not being satisfied with the status quo. If abortion is not legal, it will not stop pregnancies from being terminated--it will just stop the procedure from happening in a safe manner. Women will start to die like they did before Roe v. Wade. In a Mother Jones article about abortion before 1973 came this telling quote:

In the same book, a man who assisted in autopsies in a big urban hospital, starting in the mid-1950s, describes the many deaths from botched abortions that he saw. "The deaths stopped overnight in 1973." He never saw another in the 18 years before he retired. "That," he says, "ought to tell people something about keeping abortion legal."

THOSE ARE some of the broader reasons why we do what we do. As for the specifics, there are a wide variety of reasons and evidence for why we continue our work:

-- We are present to counter the anti-choice protesters who bully, intimidate and harass clinic patients and staff. The anti-choice protesters are already an exceedingly disruptive presence to anyone in the clinic, and are trying to shame patients who receive any services from the clinic. We are a peaceful presence to show the clinic patients and staff, the community and the protesters that the clinic is important and appreciated, and that the majority opinion is not what the anti-choice side shows. Does it seem like a better idea to have hateful people bullying patients entering the clinic standing alone, or would it be better to have some people there who actually support the clinic and women's rights?

We have had many positive responses from the staff who work in the clinics that we have been defending. They have been appreciative of and supportive of our presence. They work day in and day out with nasty people outside their door, and seem to be glad for someone who supports the work of the clinics.

We have had community members donate to Planned Parenthood directly because of our presence at the clinics.

We receive overwhelming support from the people who live in the neighborhoods of the clinics. Some had expressed that they have never seen anyone at the clinics in support of them until now, and are so glad to see someone countering the bullying that goes on.

Our presence has caused some of the anti-choice groups to protest at the clinics at an earlier hour in the day, when fewer patients are likely going into the clinic. We schedule our defenses based on when the protesters are going to be there. One group, in an attempt to avoid us, moved their protest time earlier in the morning. This means that they are around when fewer patients might be forced to encounter them.

Our presence may also deter the protesters from verbally harassing patients going into the clinic. While some members of our group, when arriving before the defenses have begun, have been verbally abused by the protesters when they were mistaken for people going to receive services from the clinic, we have yet to see any incidences of verbal harassment against people entering the clinic while we are present. While we do not have a large sample size of time from which to analyze this, what we have seen so far suggests that the protesters are less likely to directly verbally attack patients while we are there.

Finally, the "Summer of Mercy 2.0," a large anti-choice protest of Dr. Leroy Carhart, an abortion provider in Maryland, was countered by the equally large, national "Summer of Trust" campaign, a positive pro-choice defense of the clinic, supported by, among other groups, the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority Foundation. People across the country are realizing that it is important to stand up to the anti-choice protesters who harass and threaten people at clinics.

As I said, we are always trying to think about how our actions affect the patients of the clinics, and we are always open to modifying our actions to be more supportive towards them and the clinics and staff. We refuse to let the anti-choice bullies stand unchecked and unchallenged. It is important both for individual clinics, and for the fight for reproductive rights as a whole.