Is anyone a clinic escort?

[sbj405]

Care to share your experiences if you have been or are a volunteer. I drove by a local clinic which was recently the target of an attack. There were two cops and several escorts. Of course, the same anti-choice guy that is there every Saturday was there with his megaphone.

[Redstone]

1. No, but if we had a clinic around here I would be.

Redstone

[nosmokes]

2. i was one in san diego a while back

it was a gratifying experience and thankfully we rarely saw much action. interesting experience though. for abot 3 mos i was a regular at womancare on 6th ave, and every sat part of the anti-choice brigade that was out picketing was a young family, the parents about my age, and i'd always try and be friendly with these eople. anyhow, long story short, after a few weeks of this one sat i went to a deli close by and grabbed some juices and sammiches and invited this family and and another one of the escorts over and we had a pc-nic on thegrassy area in front of the clinic. we din't agree on abortion or change anyone's mind but it was a civil lunch and weekends afterwards we managed to smile at each other and i'd play with their kids and we both learned something

[Nobody]

3. I am

The clinic I escort for has a group of about eleven people picketing. Their leader is a very loud, very vocal woman who is past menopause. There are two women who look like they're of childbearing age. The rest are men, mostly middle-aged. I find the demographics ironic.

Things that have happened: Screaming from the leader about getting down on our knees, fearing the lord, we're all a bunch of murderers, we are worse than Nazis, and on and on. We try to keep up a running conversation to block out the vitriol. We try to do the same for the patients so they don't have to hear this crap.

One patient said to me: It's a little late for them to change my mind.

I responded: And none of this is anybody's business.

I can block this out and laugh at the absurdity, but verbal abuse does hurt. The protestors quote statistics on post-abortion guilt (I can't trust stats coming from them unattributed)but how much of it is caused by what the protestors are screaming, and how much is caused by other forms of harassment? They can't go into the parking ramp or the driveway in front of the door, but if you park on the street or take the bus, we have to be quick on the uptake to run interference. The antis will run to any car parking nearby and harass you as you get out.

[sbj405]

4. Thanks for sharing your experience. Have you ever feared for your safety?

I saw this guy that always there taking pictures of people's license plates one day. I found that a bit creepy.

[Nobody]

5. They might try to identify cars

And I'm taking advantage of the nice weather to try to keep in shape and save gas by riding my bike.

I'm not afraid of them.

Their main weapon is words.

I do have an experience with being a patient at a clinic that Operation Rescue was picketing. I've mentioned it here before, but I was nearly killed by Operation Rescue. They blocked my line of sight from both directions while I was trying to turn onto a busy street at rush hour. The only time I could get in for my Lyme Disease blood test was then, and I wanted to miss as little work as possible. They harassed me on the way in, stalking me up to the front door, and I yelled at them. Apparently to them a woman of child bearing age who isn't pregnant isn't life, but a fetus or embryo is.

I remember this incident and I am an escort in part because of it. I was somewhat wishy washy in my leaning pro-choice until that moment. Operation Rescue can be credited for turning me into a dedicated pro-choice activist.

[weeksbr1]

6. delete

[Lux]

9. Fearing for my Safety

When I first started doing clinic support, I had a lot of fears because everything was so heated here. Finally, one day I decided that those people were bullies and the only way to handle bullies is to stand up to them. Some of them threatened to picket me at my job and call my boss to "tell her what I was doing." She knew what I was doing and if they had come onto the campus where I taught, the security people would have booted them off. I told them to come ahead and do their worst--I even gave the college president's phone number. Of course, they never called or picketed.

We have a group here in town that calls itself Operation Rescue, even though it's not Randall Terry's group. A guy named Troy Newman took the name after he came here from California to start his little anti empire, which isn't so little money-wise. He and his minions take their "truth trucks" around to the neighborhoods of houses of clinic staff and clinic support people, where they park the trucks with their ugly fetus pictures and sing songs and pray. About all they accomplish is to make the neighbors mad. They have never come to my neighborhood. Either I'm not important enough or they're afraid because I live right in the middle of the barrio.

My name and picture were on an anti site for awhile until the guy was forced to shut it down. It's now on another anti site. I find this amusing because I'm always in the good company of other upstanding pro-choice people when those idiots post anything about me. I sent an e-mail to the latest guy to post me thanking him for the exposure. Usually whatever facts they have posted about me are just enough out of date to let me know they don't have a clue about what's really going on.

Right now, a friend of mine is looking into Troy Newman's funding sources, which seem at the very least, to be suspect. Recently, Troy and the bunch bragged that had bought a small abortion clinic here and shut it down. The fact is, the clinic shut down weeks before because the owners couldn't get a doctor to perform abortions. What Troy bought was an empty building--some of us are wondering where he got the money to do that. The theory that is that a rich anti here in town is funding all Troy's projects. I would like to see him feel the pinch of an expose, but that's not likely to happen.

So do I have any fear. No.

[politicat]

12. Do you know the maggot punks?

Same area.

Newman is nothing but a skeeze, and his little trick-baby girlie girls are some of the most self-loathing women I've ever had the misfortunate to meet.

[Lux]

13. MPs

Yes, I know the MPs. They are my friends, even though I'm not an MP (I'm too old for such frivolity :-)). We used to do clinic support together, and recently I helped one of them rewrite a story about Newman's financial empire. We've sent it off to a magazine, but haven't heard anything.

[musical_soul]

10. Nice to know the anti-choice movement hasn't changed.

They now claim to care about women. Anybody who cares about women wouldn't abuse them like that. What a load of shit.

[weeksbr1]

7. Sort of...

I volunteer at my local Planned Parenthood (the only guy there... the ladies love it!) but mostly office stuff (aka - filing), and I work with VOX on MSU's campus and in the EL community. But there was one instance when I was more of an escort. By the way, I only tell this story because it has such a happy ending (not to brag... I hate that). Anyway, one day my boss called me and asked if I was available to drive a woman to Ann Arbor (Lansing doesn't provide surgical abortions, only medication abortions... Ann Arbor does both) because she wanted to have an abortion and she was too far past the point to have a medication abortion. The catch was that she was a prisoner at the county jail. I was wary, but agreed anyway, because everyone deserves to have control over his/her own body (as, I'm sure, everyone here agrees) and because I figured it would be an adventure, and I'm all about that! So, my coworker and I went to the jail to pick her up in the morning, but the guards had no idea who we were talking about when we said that we were there for the woman. They gave us the third degree about why we were there, but we just told them that she had a doctor's appointment in Ann Arbor, and it was something that couldn't be done in house (he was very suspicious). Anyway, we finally tracked her down after several phone calls and visits with different depts. within the jail. She was a little shady looking, but it was only because they wouldn't let her have her normal clothes and made her wear a black seat-suit with shoes that didn't have shoe laces. It was a little rough making conversation at first, but we eventually found things to talk about. Finally, after about a half hour, she brought up the reason that she was in jail (the question that had been weighing on our minds since we volunteered for this job). Apparently she had been a rape victim in another city, but when she reported the inccident, the police discovered that she had a warrant out for her arrest for a marijuanna related offense from over a year earlier. So, her reporting her rape was what led them to arrest her - no wonder rape victims don't report the crime! Anyway, she obviously became pregnant, but couldn't take care of it sooner... because she was then in jail for 60 days.

We got her to the Ann Arbor clinic, walked her inside and said good bye. The procedure took 5 hours with recovery. Then we picked her up, took her to McDonalds (we had to pay for everything because the jail wouldn't give her the $ she had had on her when she was brought in) and we ate a ton of food. The whole time we were driving there, she did nothing but talk about how horrible the food was, and how little of it there was in jail. So, after McDonalds, we stopped at a Chinese Buffet and we pigged out again. We were having a great time. We let her use our cell phones to call her family, we stopped and danced in a parking lot to a really good song that came on on the radio, and we talked about our lives (mostly her daughter who was staying with her mother until she got out). It was getting close to 8pm and we needed to have her back at that time, so we had to bring her back to jail. We dropped her off at 7:54 and said our goodbyes. I learned a lot about how I view "criminals" that day.

That was about two weeks ago, my friend still writes her letters. She now has about 14 days left of her sentence and will be out soon so that she can start taking care of her 5 yo daughter again. We had a great time and I think we really helped her out. I love Planned Parenthood!

[Lux]

8. I Used To Be

Now I'm "retired." Starting in the '90s with OR's assault on Wichita, I would get up at 5 a.m., get dressed in jeans and whatever other clothing I needed, depending on the weather, and go to whichever clinic needed people the most. For a few years, several of us defended a small clinic that is now closed. We came away from there more than once bruised and worn to a frazzle after encounters with home-grown and imported antis. For several years, I also escorted at Dr. Tiller's clinic. He has hired a security company now to protect patients and the property, so he doesn't need escorts anymore. Antis there would lie in front of cars or knock on car windows to try to get patients and those with them to talk to them. One day, an anti jumped into the back seat of a car that was circling the block to get into the clinic and scared the patient and the driver half to death.

So much happened in all those years of escorting that it would take a book to convey it all. Peggy Jarman, Dr. Tiller's PR person at one time, has written a book about the year OR came to town. It's called Fetus Fanatics and it's quite fascinating to read.

I made a lot of friends escorting and some of us joined together to do other types of actions. We also have been involved in politics and we socialize now that our escorting days are over. I miss the fun, but I don't miss the frigid mornings and the awful way I felt after a day of dealing those misfit, misogynistic antis.

[politicat]

11. Was when I lived in Colorado Springs, but they aren't needed up here.

Thank dog that Boulder and Denver metro are nicely liberal.

Colorado Springs needed them occasionally, but more often than not the protesters showed up on Wednesdays and Sundays, when there was nothing going on. I won't say what day of the week that CSPP does abortions, but Sundays they're closed. (Dumb protesters. Duh.) Half the time I was signed up for escort work, they didn't need me, and the other half all we did was remind the protesters that Colorado has a bubble law, and that they were not allowed to stand in the street (the edge of the bubble) but had to be across the very busy 4 lane street. And called the cops to cite them for standing in the middle of the street (which the cops were usually happy to do.)

Bubble laws are the best thing that ever happened to clinics. They make escorts virtually unnecessary.

Now, we have had young women stay in our guest room; there are a lot of counties in Wyoming, Utah, western Colorado, Nebraska, and now South Dakota that have no providers, so they come to Denver-Metro. We usually have a couple a year. (Never boyfriends or husbands, though. They apparently can't be bothered.)

[Name removed]

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[Omaha Steve]

15. I was for a couple of years

Now that I work early hours on Saturday, I can't do it.

[mwooldri]

16. OK, how do I volunteer?

I'm in Greensboro... naieve but I'm willing to support those up to 2nd trimester who wants this medical procedure? Are there clinics in Greensboro area?

Many thanks, Mark.

[Nobody]

17. Contact your local NARAL chapter

If you're not a member, sign up to receive their newsletter. Volunteer opportunities of all kinds are announced. Escorting requires training (about 2 hours and mostly about what to expect), and you'll need a reference or two.

If it makes you feel better, none of the women I escorted were showing yet, despite the delaying tactics the right wing here is using.

I fully support choice in all three trimesters precisely BECAUSE of right wing delaying tactics.