March 21, 2018 • 29 mins
A behind the scenes look at the escorts at the front lines of the War on Women's Health
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Pridget and you're listening the stuff Bomb
never told you. Now today I want to give a
quick trigger warning. We're talking about abortion, and today's conversation
(00:25):
includes mentions of gun violence. So if that's something that
is hard for you, just know that's what we're talking
about today. Now. Today's episode is the first in a
series called All About Abortion. You may already know some
of the basics about the abortion debate, but on this series,
we're really breaking down some different aspects of abortion that
you might not know about. And we're starting with clinic escorts.
(00:47):
When I worked at Playing Parenthood, most of my work
was done behind a computer. Occasionally it took me to
an in person rally outside Congress or the Senate, but
for the most part, my colleagues and I helped reproductive
justice from the comfort of a temperature controlled office. Clinic
escorts are different. If there's a war on women's health,
they're at the front lines. You see them in brightly
colored vests, walking people into planned parent and health centers,
(01:10):
using their bodies to create a physical barrier between throngs
of screaming, praying, anti abortion protesters and patients seeking abortions.
But what exactly does a clinic escort do and what
does it take to become one? For answers, I attended
to training for soon to be clinic escorts in Washington,
d c. UM. Our focus is the patient. We are
(01:30):
not counter protesters and UM that is something we're going
to be repeating frequently throughout this training because it's very
important and it's it's not for everybody. So if you
decide at the end it isn't for you, that's just fine.
UM there's a UM does it. We are appro choice
(01:57):
organization obviously, and some of us are very passionate about
being pro choice, but our focus when we're on site
of the clinic is to be UM non political in
that in that we do not engage with protesters who
show up. That is not our focus. Our focus is
(02:20):
a patient, So our agenda is going to be too.
UM Olivia is gonna talk a little bit about the
history of the organization. You're welcome to ask questions at
any time. So I'm just doing just a little history
and lactif UM and this will roughly correspond with whatever
(02:42):
you read on cage two. UM WATIF was and originally formed.
UM we always sort of we sort of say, we
have this kind of cumbersome name, the Washington Area Clinic
Defense Task Force because watch it was originally formed in
the late nineties when there starting to be a lot
of clinic flood. Paige and a lot of clinics were
(03:03):
experiencing her asplant patients were being blocked, and so a
bunch of different area activists were trying to help out,
and they found that they were all sort of converging
on um on the same clinic on the same days,
and other clinics were not getting any protection, and so
they formed. But they thought was sort of an ad
hoc back in the last very long a group, the
(03:24):
Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force whactive we call ourselves,
and uh in fact, WACKTIF has now been around for it.
We're probably closing about thirty years. So it wasn't as
ad hoc as we hoped, but it's it's kind of
I think it's a typical DC story and that you
have a lot of activists, you have a lot of
(03:44):
people who like organized so um so in interesting I
was told by the security director of the National Abortion
Federation in two thousands seven, I believe that whacked IF
is the only free standing, not specifically clinic affiliated clinic
defense group that she knew of in the nation, most
(04:04):
other Uh, if you've a scored it anywhere else, and
we might will probably ask you if you have. If
you have scored anywhere else, you're probably organized by the
clinic by to be a clinic volunteer. And so Wactive
is very unusual and that we are completely we are
our own five oh one C three UM, and we are,
as Megan said, all volunteer run. We also run on
a consensus um also legacies from the original founding and UM.
(04:30):
And so when you when you're volunteering with WACT, if
you are a wactic volunteer, you're not a clinic volunteer. UM.
So that's one change. I don't know if I need
to say much else about the history of WACKED. If
we're going to talk a little bit about if we
got through the goals and bedlines, we'll talk about some
stuff that you still apply more and we still talk
(04:51):
about it. UM. But we're gonna try to give you
a really good picture of what a sporting looks like,
what a typical Saturday lessite quoteille expective of you UM
certainly UM Megan and I both escort at the UM
at the the Planned Parenthood that's actually not that far
from here UM. But we've also escorted at a few
(05:12):
other sites. We can give you some things about that.
They asked me to shut off my recorder and I did.
But here's what you need to know. The trainers say
the most important goal in escorting is making sure the
experience is as calm as possible for the patient entering
planned parenthood. When a patient enters a health center, sometimes
they're confused. Sometimes they're understandably in their own head and
(05:33):
not fully aware of their surroundings. This is where escorts
come in. It's important that patients visually identify clinic escorts
as their friend right away. They can be physically overwhelmed
by anti choice protesters rushing towards them to offer pamphlets,
screaming in their face, or otherwise invading their personal space.
It seems kind of unbelievable, but in d C, protesters
(05:55):
can legally get pretty close to someone entering the Planned Parenthood.
It's considered public property, and they reached the door. And
while they can and often do and pose on their
physical space, protesters can't physically block plan parenthood doors. This
is thanks to FACE, or the Freedom of Access to
Clinic Infrances Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in
May of nineteen. It's the only law of regarding protest
(06:16):
at reproductive health centers in the US. Enacting this bill
to provide freedom of access to clinics has been a
priority because protecting the freedoms of our citizens is surely
chief among the responsibilities of the President of the United States.
This bill is designed to eliminate violence and coercion. It
is not a strike against the First Amendment. Far from it.
(06:39):
It ensures that all citizens have the opportunity to exercise
all their constitutional rights, including their privacy rights under the Constitution.
Faith was enacted after the murder of doctor David gunn In.
Guns children were in the audience during the signing. From
there were six murders of doctors who provide abortions and
(07:01):
their staff. Now FACE prohibits three things, one the use
of physical force, to threat of physical force, and three
physical obstruction to intentionally interfere with any person who was
obtaining or providing reproductive health services. Now Before FACE, anti
abortion protesters would physically block health enter doors, but this
(07:21):
law forced them to change their tactics to cite. Clinic
escorts are organized and trained on a specific set of tactics.
Anti abortion protesters who stand outside clinics, well, they're trained
and organized too. They arrive in shifts. After Face made
it illegal for them to physically block clinics, they divided
into two major camps. Prayer sayers people who stand outside
on the sidewalk and pray out loud and quote sidewalk consolers,
(07:45):
or what the trainers just called stalkers. These are people
who rush at the patients and desperately talk them out
of trying to have an abortion. The anti abortion protesters
have a whole slew tactics, but mainly it sounds like
they just want to get the clinic escorts vote and
make them lose their cool. One train or even shared
a story about one particular anti abortion protester who walks
slowly in front of clinic escorts and stops abruptly. If
(08:08):
the escort who's walking behind her bumps into her, she
causes a scene and threatens to call nine one one.
You might be thinking, why don't they call nine one one, Well,
it turns out the flashing lights and police outside of
a health center does not make for a coming experience.
Walking into a clinic and providing a comic experience for
the patient is a clinic escorts number one goal. Another
thing to know about these protesters is that they have
(08:30):
a surprising secret weapon, politeness. Many of these protesters are older,
some look like kindly grandmothers. Many of them are white
and male. Many of the people entering a health center
will be young people of color. The anti abortion protesters
know this. They know that the social moray is to
be polite, particularly if you're young and the other person
is old. Think about it. When you're hands at a
(08:52):
pamphlet on the street. Usually just take it, even if
you're planning on throwing it in the trash later. Abortion
clinic protesters know this, and they use it to their advantage.
The trainers tell me that politeness is one of the
biggest enemies to their work. Part of their role as
escorts is simply giving the patient permission to be rude.
You don't have to take that flyer. I can throw
it away from you, or those protesters might say some
(09:13):
nonsense to you as you walk in, but you don't
have to listen. They simply remind the patient that it's
okay to not engage. The escorts seemed to almost have
a working relationship with these protesters. They know most of
them by name, and if not by name, by nickname.
They know their personalities and behavior. Some are described to
me as manic pacers, others as big, loud personalities who
(09:34):
get in your face. Some are sulky and unassuming. The
thing that surprised me most about the women running the
training volunteers who've been escorting for years is how much
of a sense of humor they have. They joke about
the best insults they've heard on the job and the
most memorable things they've seen. They almost sound like military
buddies swapping war stories, and in a kind of way
that makes sense, as the fight for reproductive freedom at
(09:55):
times can seem like an actual war. I think there's
definitely a war on women's health. It's sounds like such
a catchphrase. It sounds like marketing propaganda, but it's kind
of the only way you can describe it um looking
at it from a number of angles. The first thing
is that simple access to healthcare for women, or reproductive
(10:15):
health care for anybody, becomes so politicized as soon as
legislation is introduced or an issue is being discussed in
the national dialogue about access to women's healthcare quote unquote,
the assumption is that this is a trojan horse from
a militant left wing agenda, and and and and we
(10:36):
have to stop this when really, sometimes no, it's just
about women deserve to see the doctor. People deserve to
have reproductive healthcare. But it can never be talked about
just in those terms. It's always hyper politicized. Known as
clinic escort on Twitter, Michelle has been escorting since the
murder of Dr Tiller into thousand nine. After the shooting
at a planned parenthead in Colorado killed three and injured nine,
(10:59):
Michelle began tweeting out the details of a hundred tacks
on planned parenthoods using the hashtag is a hundred enough?
You also have to look at the numbers on maternal
mortality in this country are shameful, They're egregious. It doesn't
have to be that way, but it is that way.
Directly connected, I think to politicization of health care access
(11:21):
is the fact that women in America are much more
likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than they are
in most of the other so called developed countries. UM.
And it's of course that's worse when you look at
different socioeconomic classes. Um. There's parts of the country where,
for example, black women are twelve times as likely as
(11:42):
white women in those same communities to die in childbirth.
What is that? That is? That is politicized access, That
is racism, that is economic disparity, and and yeah, that's
warfare because that's killing people. Um. Another way in which
there is a war on women's health is the atmosphere
(12:02):
outside of so many of our clinics is deeply politicized,
deeply contentious. It is a site of conflict when it
should just be a site of somebody trying to walk
through a door to see a doctor for whatever reason,
they need to see the doctor. But in order to
do that, they've got this this gauntlet they have to
(12:22):
run of people with signs or propaganda or condemnation. And
that's madness, that is absolute madness. I can't say that
that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, because American
anti choices have in fact exported clinic harassment to numerous
places around the world via the forty Days for Life campaign,
(12:43):
via any number of other other attempts to politicize healthcare.
They're the same way they have here. It's growing, it's spreading,
and it's shameful. Where all have you done clinic escorting?
So I've done clinic escorting in nine states, UM A
couple of states, Pnsylvania and New Jersey were places where
I was a regular kind of weekly escort. But I
(13:05):
also go to protests that are kind of a big
national event when anti choicers mobilized to harass the crap
out of one particular clinic. And that has been in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska,
and in North Carolina. How did you get into this
kind of work? I started volunteering as a clinic escort
(13:26):
in June of two thousand and nine, which was one
week after anti choicers killed Dr George Tiller in his
church in Kansas. Dr Tiller was a pretty well known
provider of later pregnancy abortions. He had been harassed badly
for many years. There had been in the nineties thousands
(13:47):
and thousands of arrests of protesters at his clinics. There
had been attacks. He had even been shot once before
but survived and came back to work. In two thousand
and nine, a former protester and militia A member named
Scott rhoder Uh set a trap and waited at Dr
Taylor's church where he was an usher, and and shot
(14:09):
him in the head for for having had the temerity
to give women reproductive health care that they needed. And
I knew that I needed to get involved. I remembered
the nineties. I'm on n f that I remembered the
clinic violence of the nineties. I remembered when other doctors
were being killed that hadn't happened at all in years.
The entire Bush administration went by without a single doctor
(14:31):
getting shot. But but within months of President Obama's election,
um right wingers went nuts in this country and they
began the violence again. I knew that I had to
get involved because it just it just pisces me off
the idea that that that that people in this caring
profession who helped people in a very vulnerable place, they
(14:54):
have to risk their lives to do that, and patients
have to show up afraid to go to the doctor.
I mean, if I can help that, I'm going to
help that. And so that's why I started. Do you
think that when Obama was elected. That changed the way
that anti choicers were operating. When Obama was elected, UM,
(15:14):
you saw things change in anti choice kind of engagement,
in in the culture and in politics. I think that
when w was president, the second Bush presidency, UM, I
think that they felt pretty comfortable that their kind of
ultimate aim, which is, of course, to end abortion. I
(15:36):
think that they felt that goal was being advanced in
legislative means and that they didn't have to take matters
into their own hands. When Obama was elected, that change.
They could no longer rely on the Department of Justice
to kind of turn a blind eye to to clinic harassment. UM.
And so yeah, clinic violence began to increase. The National
(15:59):
Abortion Fed Ration tracks numbers, so does the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Both of those organizations watch clinic violence over time, and
you can see in the incident reports that absolutely things
got a little wild outside of the clinics. UM, as
soon as Obama was elected. Let's take a quick break
(16:24):
and we're back. What's the most memorable thing you've seen
as an escort. I have seen some kind of crazy
things as a clinic U S Court. UM. I mean,
most of the time, it's boring. And that's good because
if it's boring, that means that the anti choicers are
choosing to use their manners that day and um, and
(16:46):
that means that patients are having an okay experience getting
in past them. But the other ten percent of the
time things can get crazy on the sidewalks I have seen.
So the first clinic where I regular really escorted in
New Jersey, we had an evangelical biker gang who showed
up um every Saturday. They would roll up on their bicycles,
(17:09):
on their on their motorcycles, excuse me, and they would
roll up real quiet, and when they were done harassing
people for the day, they tear off with a great
roar of engines. Um. These evangelical bikers at this clinic
in New Jersey war biker drag is how I think
of it. They had these like big leather jackets with
(17:29):
like God stuff written on the back, and they had
like chains and and and long hair and like they
were in drag. They were wearing a costume. They were
playing the part. And they show up on their motorcycles
to to scream things like don't go in there, it's murder.
We can help you. Well, I just gonna look at
the Jesus screaming biker gang at the end of the
clinic driveway and be like, Yes, you're the guy who's
(17:52):
going to help me. You're exactly the savior I needed
in this moment um. That was always a fun time.
I have seen I have seen anti choiceters outside of
clinics um decorate snow banks with bottles of ketchup to
make it look like blood, and like plant a sign
at the top of this snow bank that says abortion
(18:13):
kills and then they use ketchup to make blood. And
I guess that makes a very personally super argument to
somebody somewhere. I guess I don't know. Um. I have
seen anti choiceters put a closed sign at the end
of a clinic driveway to try to turn people away,
which is absolutely a violation of the Freedom of access
(18:36):
to clinic inters Is Act, but they don't care. Um
my god. I have gone chest to chest with dudes
who felt like trespassing it was a thing that could
get away with if nobody stopped them, and I felt
it was my obligation to try to stop them. And
when you are standing there with your chest pressed up
against a dude who six five and three hundred pounds
(18:58):
if he's an ounce, you realize that that you have
no control over where the situation is going to go. Um.
It ended up fine, by the way, but it was
kind of terrified for a few minutes. There. There's a
lot that happens outside of a clinic that that would
be acceptable in no other social context. In this country,
(19:21):
it is targeted harassment. You don't see people standing outside
of steakhouses screaming meat is murder and like, I don't know,
flinging propaganda at people. You don't see people standing outside
of tobacco stores vape shops shouting about lung cancer with
giant six foot tall blow ups of cancer as lung tumors.
(19:45):
That doesn't happen, But somehow this is just kind of
accepted outside of clinics. So what do you think motivates
people who feel this way? People who stand outside of
clinics in the cold and shout at strangers as they're
going in. What do you think would make someone to
do that? I cannot begin to imagine what goes through
(20:06):
somebody's head to think that, Like, who would Jesus harass today?
Jesus would probably not actually harass anybody, um, and yet
anti choicers do it. I do think that on the
anti choice side, there is a myth that is purposely
(20:27):
propagated about the efficacy of what they call sidewalk counseling.
I call sidewalk bullying. They call it sidewalk counseling. Um.
They put out these numbers like, oh, you know, we
saved X number of lives today, and and it probably
makes them feel really good. But also those numbers are crap.
And I can tell you they're crap because having been
(20:49):
inside and outside of clinics where these counts are happening,
I know that a life saved by an anti choiceters
account may very well be just a patient who walked
in and was sent out the door again because she
was at the wrong location. That happened frequently at my
New Jersey clinic, where there were two clinics very close together.
A patient would show up at the wrong clinic and
(21:10):
be sent out, and the anti choices on the sidewalk
would rejoice, hallelujah, she changed her mind. We saved a baby. Woo.
That's not a safe She's going around the corner and
she's getting that abortion, dude, so so, but so they
they have this kind of hero narrative. Sidewall caressers have
a hero narrative where they kind of feed on each
(21:32):
other like we're making a difference, We're actually doing the thing,
but you're you're not. You're just making life harder for
people whose life in that moment is actually probably already
pretty difficult. Does your work as a clinic escort ever
make you want to give up on humanity? You see
such horrible things, You see people harassed during what's probably
a tough time in their life. Does it ever make
(21:52):
you want to give up? Like? How do you say
saying when you see this kind of thing all the time.
I don't want to give up on humanity from what
I've seen as a clinic escort, but I do less
of it now at this point. I'm no longer a
regular escort at anyone clinic. I just kind of travel
to the larger, national scale events because it does kind
(22:13):
of wear on you to drag yourself out of bed
before dawn on a Saturday morning and get screamed at
for hours. Um. But I'm not going to give up
escorting completely, and I'm certainly not going to give up
talking about the need for safe, legal abortion access because
it's a fact of life. People need this service, people
(22:35):
deserve this service. And it as much as it makes
me just despair for the way humanity can treat each other,
to see some of what happens outside of clinics, it
also does motivate me to realize that somebody needs to
be fighting back. Somebody needs to be helping and supporting
(22:55):
and defending the people who need to access clinics and
get whatever form of health care that they need. If
you could tell the protesters outside of clinics, one thing,
would it be, I'll tell you something that I have
told a protester or two. UM. I don't engage as
a clinic protester. It is not my job to counter protest.
It is not my job to shout back. It is
(23:16):
my job to get a person in the door safely
and without incident and in the most stressful, stress free
way possible. Um. But in context where I have had
business at a clinic personally on a day when I
wasn't escorting and there were no patients involved, I might
just shout back. And what I have said to some
(23:36):
of these protesters is that Jesus would be really ashamed
of you. I went to Catholic school. I have read
my Bible. Jesus was not about harassment, he was not
about shaming um. In fact, he hung out with some
of the same sorts of women that would be called
sluts and horrors by the religious right today. So I
have told protesters that Jesus would be ashamed of you
(23:59):
because is your practice is a mockery of Christian love,
and they should be ashamed. They're not, but they should be.
After talking to Michelle, I wanted to know more, so
I went to Planned Parenthood. You'll hear how that went down.
After a quick break and we're back, I spend the
(24:26):
morning outside of a Planned parent at health center in Washington,
d C. A health center i've actually gotten routine preventative
services myself. When I arrived, it's thirty degrees at eight
am on a Saturday, and already a handful of women
outside the clinic are holding signs. One of the protesters,
an older black woman, smiles warmly at me. I can
see how it would be difficult to be in polite
(24:47):
to her. She actually looks a lot like my own grandmother,
and I realized that a lot of being an escort
is just waiting and waiting and waiting. I remember something
the clinic escort trainer said as clinic defenders, the best
day is a bo ring day. A day where no
one shows up and the escorts do nothing is considered
a good day on the job. Today is not one
of those days. As people begin to enter the clinic,
(25:10):
protesters rush at them, pleading them not to go in.
We can help you, They say, your mind, you can
help you. Please come time. You don't have to do
your child times. What would it takes you not to
(25:30):
go through with the abortion. We will do anything anything
to help you in the name of Jesus. We will
do anything to help you anything. We're here to save lives.
Despite their protests, all of the women still enter the clinic.
By eleven, there's a larger crowd. The crowd includes a
(25:51):
few young people in their twenties and thirties, the sort
of people you'd imagine will be a brunch at eleven
a m on a chili Saturday, not shouting. Outside of
planned parenthood, I see a nun shuttling car pulls up
people a few times back and forest, some holding prayer beads.
A priest leaps the group in prayer, but stops because
he wants to know what I'm doing, all right. The
(26:20):
older black woman, the one I pegged as a sweet grandma,
asked me if I'm married, and I shake my head. No,
that's because your husband was probably aboarded, she tells me.
A young black couple enters the clinic cradling each other.
Two older women, one black, one white, began to engage them.
They continue even after they disappear into the building. Found
(26:46):
plan Margaret. In case you can't hear that, she says,
I would hope a black man wouldn't take a child
to a place like that. For her, this is racially charged.
She hands me pamplets about abortion and being black, chenocide,
(27:07):
and about how mlk's niece says she regrets for abortion.
I knew I'd feel really angry, but mostly I just
feel sad. It made me sad that patients are made
to deal with this. It makes me sad that anyone
would choose to spend their Saturday berating strangers for their choices.
What's your advice for someone who might want to get
involved in escorting? So my advice for potential aspiring clinic escorts.
(27:31):
UM Number one, Not every clinic uses escorts. There are
some that actually think it just kind of makes things worse.
UM Number two, Not every clinic um needs escorts. Fortunately,
it is not every clinic in this country that does
have a harassment problem, although it is many of them. UM.
(27:54):
But if you live in an area that uses clinic
escorts at the local clinic, and that needs clinic escorts
at the clinic, the thing I would say is that
it's not for everybody, and that's okay, because you really
do have to bite your tongue. The anti choicers on
that sidewalk are gonna mock you. They're going to get
up in your face. They're gonna shout at you, they're
(28:15):
gonna shame you, they're gonna take your picture. They're going
to try everything they can to harass and intimidate you.
And you cannot react at least not they're on the sidewalk,
because the entire goal is getting patients, visitors, and staff
inside of that clinic safely and without incident. If you
(28:35):
want to counter protest, if you want to argue with
anti choicers, I'm here for that. I do that, but
I do that at a rally, I do that on Twitter.
I do that away from this place of conflict that
should be simply a place of healthcare. So, if you
are the kind of person who can't bite your tongue
when somebody is trolling you hard to your face, I
(28:58):
thank you for your interest in helping with our cause,
but I would ask you to stay away from our clinics.
Well sminthy listeners, this was a tough one. I want
to know. Are you a clinic escort? Is it something
you'd ever consider doing? Have you seen clinic escorts in
your town? Let me know. You can find us on
Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You, on Twitter at
(29:19):
mom Stuff podcast, and as always, we love getting your
emails at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Pridget and you're listening the stuff Bomb
never told you. Now today I want to give a
quick trigger warning. We're talking about abortion, and today's conversation
(00:25):
includes mentions of gun violence. So if that's something that
is hard for you, just know that's what we're talking
about today. Now. Today's episode is the first in a
series called All About Abortion. You may already know some
of the basics about the abortion debate, but on this series,
we're really breaking down some different aspects of abortion that
you might not know about. And we're starting with clinic escorts.
(00:47):
When I worked at Playing Parenthood, most of my work
was done behind a computer. Occasionally it took me to
an in person rally outside Congress or the Senate, but
for the most part, my colleagues and I helped reproductive
justice from the comfort of a temperature controlled office. Clinic
escorts are different. If there's a war on women's health,
they're at the front lines. You see them in brightly
colored vests, walking people into planned parent and health centers,
(01:10):
using their bodies to create a physical barrier between throngs
of screaming, praying, anti abortion protesters and patients seeking abortions.
But what exactly does a clinic escort do and what
does it take to become one? For answers, I attended
to training for soon to be clinic escorts in Washington,
d c. UM. Our focus is the patient. We are
(01:30):
not counter protesters and UM that is something we're going
to be repeating frequently throughout this training because it's very
important and it's it's not for everybody. So if you
decide at the end it isn't for you, that's just fine.
UM there's a UM does it. We are appro choice
(01:57):
organization obviously, and some of us are very passionate about
being pro choice, but our focus when we're on site
of the clinic is to be UM non political in
that in that we do not engage with protesters who
show up. That is not our focus. Our focus is
(02:20):
a patient, So our agenda is going to be too.
UM Olivia is gonna talk a little bit about the
history of the organization. You're welcome to ask questions at
any time. So I'm just doing just a little history
and lactif UM and this will roughly correspond with whatever
(02:42):
you read on cage two. UM WATIF was and originally formed.
UM we always sort of we sort of say, we
have this kind of cumbersome name, the Washington Area Clinic
Defense Task Force because watch it was originally formed in
the late nineties when there starting to be a lot
of clinic flood. Paige and a lot of clinics were
(03:03):
experiencing her asplant patients were being blocked, and so a
bunch of different area activists were trying to help out,
and they found that they were all sort of converging
on um on the same clinic on the same days,
and other clinics were not getting any protection, and so
they formed. But they thought was sort of an ad
hoc back in the last very long a group, the
(03:24):
Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force whactive we call ourselves,
and uh in fact, WACKTIF has now been around for it.
We're probably closing about thirty years. So it wasn't as
ad hoc as we hoped, but it's it's kind of
I think it's a typical DC story and that you
have a lot of activists, you have a lot of
(03:44):
people who like organized so um so in interesting I
was told by the security director of the National Abortion
Federation in two thousands seven, I believe that whacked IF
is the only free standing, not specifically clinic affiliated clinic
defense group that she knew of in the nation, most
(04:04):
other Uh, if you've a scored it anywhere else, and
we might will probably ask you if you have. If
you have scored anywhere else, you're probably organized by the
clinic by to be a clinic volunteer. And so Wactive
is very unusual and that we are completely we are
our own five oh one C three UM, and we are,
as Megan said, all volunteer run. We also run on
a consensus um also legacies from the original founding and UM.
(04:30):
And so when you when you're volunteering with WACT, if
you are a wactic volunteer, you're not a clinic volunteer. UM.
So that's one change. I don't know if I need
to say much else about the history of WACKED. If
we're going to talk a little bit about if we
got through the goals and bedlines, we'll talk about some
stuff that you still apply more and we still talk
(04:51):
about it. UM. But we're gonna try to give you
a really good picture of what a sporting looks like,
what a typical Saturday lessite quoteille expective of you UM
certainly UM Megan and I both escort at the UM
at the the Planned Parenthood that's actually not that far
from here UM. But we've also escorted at a few
(05:12):
other sites. We can give you some things about that.
They asked me to shut off my recorder and I did.
But here's what you need to know. The trainers say
the most important goal in escorting is making sure the
experience is as calm as possible for the patient entering
planned parenthood. When a patient enters a health center, sometimes
they're confused. Sometimes they're understandably in their own head and
(05:33):
not fully aware of their surroundings. This is where escorts
come in. It's important that patients visually identify clinic escorts
as their friend right away. They can be physically overwhelmed
by anti choice protesters rushing towards them to offer pamphlets,
screaming in their face, or otherwise invading their personal space.
It seems kind of unbelievable, but in d C, protesters
(05:55):
can legally get pretty close to someone entering the Planned Parenthood.
It's considered public property, and they reached the door. And
while they can and often do and pose on their
physical space, protesters can't physically block plan parenthood doors. This
is thanks to FACE, or the Freedom of Access to
Clinic Infrances Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in
May of nineteen. It's the only law of regarding protest
(06:16):
at reproductive health centers in the US. Enacting this bill
to provide freedom of access to clinics has been a
priority because protecting the freedoms of our citizens is surely
chief among the responsibilities of the President of the United States.
This bill is designed to eliminate violence and coercion. It
is not a strike against the First Amendment. Far from it.
(06:39):
It ensures that all citizens have the opportunity to exercise
all their constitutional rights, including their privacy rights under the Constitution.
Faith was enacted after the murder of doctor David gunn In.
Guns children were in the audience during the signing. From
there were six murders of doctors who provide abortions and
(07:01):
their staff. Now FACE prohibits three things, one the use
of physical force, to threat of physical force, and three
physical obstruction to intentionally interfere with any person who was
obtaining or providing reproductive health services. Now Before FACE, anti
abortion protesters would physically block health enter doors, but this
(07:21):
law forced them to change their tactics to cite. Clinic
escorts are organized and trained on a specific set of tactics.
Anti abortion protesters who stand outside clinics, well, they're trained
and organized too. They arrive in shifts. After Face made
it illegal for them to physically block clinics, they divided
into two major camps. Prayer sayers people who stand outside
on the sidewalk and pray out loud and quote sidewalk consolers,
(07:45):
or what the trainers just called stalkers. These are people
who rush at the patients and desperately talk them out
of trying to have an abortion. The anti abortion protesters
have a whole slew tactics, but mainly it sounds like
they just want to get the clinic escorts vote and
make them lose their cool. One train or even shared
a story about one particular anti abortion protester who walks
slowly in front of clinic escorts and stops abruptly. If
(08:08):
the escort who's walking behind her bumps into her, she
causes a scene and threatens to call nine one one.
You might be thinking, why don't they call nine one one, Well,
it turns out the flashing lights and police outside of
a health center does not make for a coming experience.
Walking into a clinic and providing a comic experience for
the patient is a clinic escorts number one goal. Another
thing to know about these protesters is that they have
(08:30):
a surprising secret weapon, politeness. Many of these protesters are older,
some look like kindly grandmothers. Many of them are white
and male. Many of the people entering a health center
will be young people of color. The anti abortion protesters
know this. They know that the social moray is to
be polite, particularly if you're young and the other person
is old. Think about it. When you're hands at a
(08:52):
pamphlet on the street. Usually just take it, even if
you're planning on throwing it in the trash later. Abortion
clinic protesters know this, and they use it to their advantage.
The trainers tell me that politeness is one of the
biggest enemies to their work. Part of their role as
escorts is simply giving the patient permission to be rude.
You don't have to take that flyer. I can throw
it away from you, or those protesters might say some
(09:13):
nonsense to you as you walk in, but you don't
have to listen. They simply remind the patient that it's
okay to not engage. The escorts seemed to almost have
a working relationship with these protesters. They know most of
them by name, and if not by name, by nickname.
They know their personalities and behavior. Some are described to
me as manic pacers, others as big, loud personalities who
(09:34):
get in your face. Some are sulky and unassuming. The
thing that surprised me most about the women running the
training volunteers who've been escorting for years is how much
of a sense of humor they have. They joke about
the best insults they've heard on the job and the
most memorable things they've seen. They almost sound like military
buddies swapping war stories, and in a kind of way
that makes sense, as the fight for reproductive freedom at
(09:55):
times can seem like an actual war. I think there's
definitely a war on women's health. It's sounds like such
a catchphrase. It sounds like marketing propaganda, but it's kind
of the only way you can describe it um looking
at it from a number of angles. The first thing
is that simple access to healthcare for women, or reproductive
(10:15):
health care for anybody, becomes so politicized as soon as
legislation is introduced or an issue is being discussed in
the national dialogue about access to women's healthcare quote unquote,
the assumption is that this is a trojan horse from
a militant left wing agenda, and and and and we
(10:36):
have to stop this when really, sometimes no, it's just
about women deserve to see the doctor. People deserve to
have reproductive healthcare. But it can never be talked about
just in those terms. It's always hyper politicized. Known as
clinic escort on Twitter, Michelle has been escorting since the
murder of Dr Tiller into thousand nine. After the shooting
at a planned parenthead in Colorado killed three and injured nine,
(10:59):
Michelle began tweeting out the details of a hundred tacks
on planned parenthoods using the hashtag is a hundred enough?
You also have to look at the numbers on maternal
mortality in this country are shameful, They're egregious. It doesn't
have to be that way, but it is that way.
Directly connected, I think to politicization of health care access
(11:21):
is the fact that women in America are much more
likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than they are
in most of the other so called developed countries. UM.
And it's of course that's worse when you look at
different socioeconomic classes. Um. There's parts of the country where,
for example, black women are twelve times as likely as
(11:42):
white women in those same communities to die in childbirth.
What is that? That is? That is politicized access, That
is racism, that is economic disparity, and and yeah, that's
warfare because that's killing people. Um. Another way in which
there is a war on women's health is the atmosphere
(12:02):
outside of so many of our clinics is deeply politicized,
deeply contentious. It is a site of conflict when it
should just be a site of somebody trying to walk
through a door to see a doctor for whatever reason,
they need to see the doctor. But in order to
do that, they've got this this gauntlet they have to
(12:22):
run of people with signs or propaganda or condemnation. And
that's madness, that is absolute madness. I can't say that
that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, because American
anti choices have in fact exported clinic harassment to numerous
places around the world via the forty Days for Life campaign,
(12:43):
via any number of other other attempts to politicize healthcare.
They're the same way they have here. It's growing, it's spreading,
and it's shameful. Where all have you done clinic escorting?
So I've done clinic escorting in nine states, UM A
couple of states, Pnsylvania and New Jersey were places where
I was a regular kind of weekly escort. But I
(13:05):
also go to protests that are kind of a big
national event when anti choicers mobilized to harass the crap
out of one particular clinic. And that has been in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska,
and in North Carolina. How did you get into this
kind of work? I started volunteering as a clinic escort
(13:26):
in June of two thousand and nine, which was one
week after anti choicers killed Dr George Tiller in his
church in Kansas. Dr Tiller was a pretty well known
provider of later pregnancy abortions. He had been harassed badly
for many years. There had been in the nineties thousands
(13:47):
and thousands of arrests of protesters at his clinics. There
had been attacks. He had even been shot once before
but survived and came back to work. In two thousand
and nine, a former protester and militia A member named
Scott rhoder Uh set a trap and waited at Dr
Taylor's church where he was an usher, and and shot
(14:09):
him in the head for for having had the temerity
to give women reproductive health care that they needed. And
I knew that I needed to get involved. I remembered
the nineties. I'm on n f that I remembered the
clinic violence of the nineties. I remembered when other doctors
were being killed that hadn't happened at all in years.
The entire Bush administration went by without a single doctor
(14:31):
getting shot. But but within months of President Obama's election,
um right wingers went nuts in this country and they
began the violence again. I knew that I had to
get involved because it just it just pisces me off
the idea that that that that people in this caring
profession who helped people in a very vulnerable place, they
(14:54):
have to risk their lives to do that, and patients
have to show up afraid to go to the doctor.
I mean, if I can help that, I'm going to
help that. And so that's why I started. Do you
think that when Obama was elected. That changed the way
that anti choicers were operating. When Obama was elected, UM,
(15:14):
you saw things change in anti choice kind of engagement,
in in the culture and in politics. I think that
when w was president, the second Bush presidency, UM, I
think that they felt pretty comfortable that their kind of
ultimate aim, which is, of course, to end abortion. I
(15:36):
think that they felt that goal was being advanced in
legislative means and that they didn't have to take matters
into their own hands. When Obama was elected, that change.
They could no longer rely on the Department of Justice
to kind of turn a blind eye to to clinic harassment. UM.
And so yeah, clinic violence began to increase. The National
(15:59):
Abortion Fed Ration tracks numbers, so does the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Both of those organizations watch clinic violence over time, and
you can see in the incident reports that absolutely things
got a little wild outside of the clinics. UM, as
soon as Obama was elected. Let's take a quick break
(16:24):
and we're back. What's the most memorable thing you've seen
as an escort. I have seen some kind of crazy
things as a clinic U S Court. UM. I mean,
most of the time, it's boring. And that's good because
if it's boring, that means that the anti choicers are
choosing to use their manners that day and um, and
(16:46):
that means that patients are having an okay experience getting
in past them. But the other ten percent of the
time things can get crazy on the sidewalks I have seen.
So the first clinic where I regular really escorted in
New Jersey, we had an evangelical biker gang who showed
up um every Saturday. They would roll up on their bicycles,
(17:09):
on their on their motorcycles, excuse me, and they would
roll up real quiet, and when they were done harassing
people for the day, they tear off with a great
roar of engines. Um. These evangelical bikers at this clinic
in New Jersey war biker drag is how I think
of it. They had these like big leather jackets with
(17:29):
like God stuff written on the back, and they had
like chains and and and long hair and like they
were in drag. They were wearing a costume. They were
playing the part. And they show up on their motorcycles
to to scream things like don't go in there, it's murder.
We can help you. Well, I just gonna look at
the Jesus screaming biker gang at the end of the
clinic driveway and be like, Yes, you're the guy who's
(17:52):
going to help me. You're exactly the savior I needed
in this moment um. That was always a fun time.
I have seen I have seen anti choiceters outside of
clinics um decorate snow banks with bottles of ketchup to
make it look like blood, and like plant a sign
at the top of this snow bank that says abortion
(18:13):
kills and then they use ketchup to make blood. And
I guess that makes a very personally super argument to
somebody somewhere. I guess I don't know. Um. I have
seen anti choiceters put a closed sign at the end
of a clinic driveway to try to turn people away,
which is absolutely a violation of the Freedom of access
(18:36):
to clinic inters Is Act, but they don't care. Um
my god. I have gone chest to chest with dudes
who felt like trespassing it was a thing that could
get away with if nobody stopped them, and I felt
it was my obligation to try to stop them. And
when you are standing there with your chest pressed up
against a dude who six five and three hundred pounds
(18:58):
if he's an ounce, you realize that that you have
no control over where the situation is going to go. Um.
It ended up fine, by the way, but it was
kind of terrified for a few minutes. There. There's a
lot that happens outside of a clinic that that would
be acceptable in no other social context. In this country,
(19:21):
it is targeted harassment. You don't see people standing outside
of steakhouses screaming meat is murder and like, I don't know,
flinging propaganda at people. You don't see people standing outside
of tobacco stores vape shops shouting about lung cancer with
giant six foot tall blow ups of cancer as lung tumors.
(19:45):
That doesn't happen, But somehow this is just kind of
accepted outside of clinics. So what do you think motivates
people who feel this way? People who stand outside of
clinics in the cold and shout at strangers as they're
going in. What do you think would make someone to
do that? I cannot begin to imagine what goes through
(20:06):
somebody's head to think that, Like, who would Jesus harass today?
Jesus would probably not actually harass anybody, um, and yet
anti choicers do it. I do think that on the
anti choice side, there is a myth that is purposely
(20:27):
propagated about the efficacy of what they call sidewalk counseling.
I call sidewalk bullying. They call it sidewalk counseling. Um.
They put out these numbers like, oh, you know, we
saved X number of lives today, and and it probably
makes them feel really good. But also those numbers are crap.
And I can tell you they're crap because having been
(20:49):
inside and outside of clinics where these counts are happening,
I know that a life saved by an anti choiceters
account may very well be just a patient who walked
in and was sent out the door again because she
was at the wrong location. That happened frequently at my
New Jersey clinic, where there were two clinics very close together.
A patient would show up at the wrong clinic and
(21:10):
be sent out, and the anti choices on the sidewalk
would rejoice, hallelujah, she changed her mind. We saved a baby. Woo.
That's not a safe She's going around the corner and
she's getting that abortion, dude, so so, but so they
they have this kind of hero narrative. Sidewall caressers have
a hero narrative where they kind of feed on each
(21:32):
other like we're making a difference, We're actually doing the thing,
but you're you're not. You're just making life harder for
people whose life in that moment is actually probably already
pretty difficult. Does your work as a clinic escort ever
make you want to give up on humanity? You see
such horrible things, You see people harassed during what's probably
a tough time in their life. Does it ever make
(21:52):
you want to give up? Like? How do you say
saying when you see this kind of thing all the time.
I don't want to give up on humanity from what
I've seen as a clinic escort, but I do less
of it now at this point. I'm no longer a
regular escort at anyone clinic. I just kind of travel
to the larger, national scale events because it does kind
(22:13):
of wear on you to drag yourself out of bed
before dawn on a Saturday morning and get screamed at
for hours. Um. But I'm not going to give up
escorting completely, and I'm certainly not going to give up
talking about the need for safe, legal abortion access because
it's a fact of life. People need this service, people
(22:35):
deserve this service. And it as much as it makes
me just despair for the way humanity can treat each other,
to see some of what happens outside of clinics, it
also does motivate me to realize that somebody needs to
be fighting back. Somebody needs to be helping and supporting
(22:55):
and defending the people who need to access clinics and
get whatever form of health care that they need. If
you could tell the protesters outside of clinics, one thing,
would it be, I'll tell you something that I have
told a protester or two. UM. I don't engage as
a clinic protester. It is not my job to counter protest.
It is not my job to shout back. It is
(23:16):
my job to get a person in the door safely
and without incident and in the most stressful, stress free
way possible. Um. But in context where I have had
business at a clinic personally on a day when I
wasn't escorting and there were no patients involved, I might
just shout back. And what I have said to some
(23:36):
of these protesters is that Jesus would be really ashamed
of you. I went to Catholic school. I have read
my Bible. Jesus was not about harassment, he was not
about shaming um. In fact, he hung out with some
of the same sorts of women that would be called
sluts and horrors by the religious right today. So I
have told protesters that Jesus would be ashamed of you
(23:59):
because is your practice is a mockery of Christian love,
and they should be ashamed. They're not, but they should be.
After talking to Michelle, I wanted to know more, so
I went to Planned Parenthood. You'll hear how that went down.
After a quick break and we're back, I spend the
(24:26):
morning outside of a Planned parent at health center in Washington,
d C. A health center i've actually gotten routine preventative
services myself. When I arrived, it's thirty degrees at eight
am on a Saturday, and already a handful of women
outside the clinic are holding signs. One of the protesters,
an older black woman, smiles warmly at me. I can
see how it would be difficult to be in polite
(24:47):
to her. She actually looks a lot like my own grandmother,
and I realized that a lot of being an escort
is just waiting and waiting and waiting. I remember something
the clinic escort trainer said as clinic defenders, the best
day is a bo ring day. A day where no
one shows up and the escorts do nothing is considered
a good day on the job. Today is not one
of those days. As people begin to enter the clinic,
(25:10):
protesters rush at them, pleading them not to go in.
We can help you, They say, your mind, you can
help you. Please come time. You don't have to do
your child times. What would it takes you not to
(25:30):
go through with the abortion. We will do anything anything
to help you in the name of Jesus. We will
do anything to help you anything. We're here to save lives.
Despite their protests, all of the women still enter the clinic.
By eleven, there's a larger crowd. The crowd includes a
(25:51):
few young people in their twenties and thirties, the sort
of people you'd imagine will be a brunch at eleven
a m on a chili Saturday, not shouting. Outside of
planned parenthood, I see a nun shuttling car pulls up
people a few times back and forest, some holding prayer beads.
A priest leaps the group in prayer, but stops because
he wants to know what I'm doing, all right. The
(26:20):
older black woman, the one I pegged as a sweet grandma,
asked me if I'm married, and I shake my head. No,
that's because your husband was probably aboarded, she tells me.
A young black couple enters the clinic cradling each other.
Two older women, one black, one white, began to engage them.
They continue even after they disappear into the building. Found
(26:46):
plan Margaret. In case you can't hear that, she says,
I would hope a black man wouldn't take a child
to a place like that. For her, this is racially charged.
She hands me pamplets about abortion and being black, chenocide,
(27:07):
and about how mlk's niece says she regrets for abortion.
I knew I'd feel really angry, but mostly I just
feel sad. It made me sad that patients are made
to deal with this. It makes me sad that anyone
would choose to spend their Saturday berating strangers for their choices.
What's your advice for someone who might want to get
involved in escorting? So my advice for potential aspiring clinic escorts.
(27:31):
UM Number one, Not every clinic uses escorts. There are
some that actually think it just kind of makes things worse.
UM Number two, Not every clinic um needs escorts. Fortunately,
it is not every clinic in this country that does
have a harassment problem, although it is many of them. UM.
(27:54):
But if you live in an area that uses clinic
escorts at the local clinic, and that needs clinic escorts
at the clinic, the thing I would say is that
it's not for everybody, and that's okay, because you really
do have to bite your tongue. The anti choicers on
that sidewalk are gonna mock you. They're going to get
up in your face. They're gonna shout at you, they're
(28:15):
gonna shame you, they're gonna take your picture. They're going
to try everything they can to harass and intimidate you.
And you cannot react at least not they're on the sidewalk,
because the entire goal is getting patients, visitors, and staff
inside of that clinic safely and without incident. If you
(28:35):
want to counter protest, if you want to argue with
anti choicers, I'm here for that. I do that, but
I do that at a rally, I do that on Twitter.
I do that away from this place of conflict that
should be simply a place of healthcare. So, if you
are the kind of person who can't bite your tongue
when somebody is trolling you hard to your face, I
(28:58):
thank you for your interest in helping with our cause,
but I would ask you to stay away from our clinics.
Well sminthy listeners, this was a tough one. I want
to know. Are you a clinic escort? Is it something
you'd ever consider doing? Have you seen clinic escorts in
your town? Let me know. You can find us on
Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You, on Twitter at
(29:19):
mom Stuff podcast, and as always, we love getting your
emails at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
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