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Montgomery, AL - Fridays are procedure days @ one of the last three clinics in Alabama. This morning, the umbrellas are up, but it isn’t raining. Volunteers lined up at the entrance to protect the women arriving for an abortion. 
As women arrive, shielded under the umbrellas, anti-abortion activists yell through a megaphone “at 11 weeks, a baby smiles,” to try and dissuade them from going inside. Volunteers play loud music in an attempt to drown them out.
Across the street, a bus offers free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. A sign reading “fake bus clinic” is inside the car parked in front of it. Anti-abortion activists surround the bus with signs saying “choose life.”
The sign above the abortion clinic reads “this clinic stays open.” Volunteers at the clinic say anti-abortion volunteers are out in force today - “emboldened” after #HB314 was signed into law Wed. night - the law will make abortion illegal in most cases in the entire state
Volunteers rush to put paper over license plates of the patients inside the clinic. They say anti-abortion activists write down license plates numbers, look up the women and call them (or their parents) at home in order to dissuade them from getting an abortion
Inside the mobile clinic across the street, Kimberly Barker, says she gives ultrasounds to women so they are educated about an abortion procedure. She says the abortion clinic doesn’t always allow women to look at the ultrasound images - a claim the clinic denies
Robyn Blessing had an abortion in 1988 in Montgomery and said “they didn’t get the baby” the first time - so she had to have a second abortion. She now runs Life on Wheels mobile clinic that offers women free ultrasounds
This poem posted outside POWER House: If my vagina was a gun, you would stand for its rights. You would ride on buses and fight all the fights. If my vagina was a gun, you would treat it with care. You’ll wouldn’t spill all its secrets because well, why go there?
Poem part 2: If my vagina was a gun, you’d say what it holds is private. From cold dead hands could you pry, you surely would not. “If my vagina was a gun.” -Katie Heim
Two girls walked out of the abortion clinic as a male protester said, “it’s not too late to change your mind” another protester told them, “you don’t have to do this, I have a friend who will raise your baby for you.” The doors of the clinic remained shielded by umbrellas all day
