Thread by @jskilesskinner

I was a Planned Parenthood volunteer patient escort from 2009 to 2011 in Nebraska. Here's some of the stuff I saw:

The Catholic church purchased the house next door to the clinic. They called the house a church for tax purposes, but really it was a fake health clinic.

They would flag cars obviously trying to drive to Planned Parenthood into the "church" driveway instead, then make it hard for them to leave. They tried to seem like a medical clinic, misleading the patent for as long as possible into thinking they could get an abortion there.

They followed clinic employees into their personal lives. Showed up at their houses. Approached their children at school sports events to tell them how sinful their parents were. Protested at their churches.

Not sure why Brett Kavanaugh thinks this won't happen to him, too.

Clinic staff were physically attacked. The neighboring church would psych them into these attacks. Once an angry family member of a patient stormed out of the house-church and tried to force his way into the clinic. The manager was visibly injured in the struggle.

Once, the clinic was bombed with a molotov cocktail.

Not sure why Wisconsin Family Action didn't expect the same treatment.

I was always careful to hide my identity as an escort. I arrived on the bus, because people who drove there would have their license plate numbers run by the antis, who evidently had connections in government allowing these lookups, and who would then show up at their houses.

One of my fellow escorts previously worked with George Tiller in the neighboring state of Kansas, until Tiller was murdered in 2009 (a few months before I started). I hadn't truly thought of our volunteer gig as dangerous until I heard her story. She was like a refugee.

On abortion day there were normally 10-20 anti-choice protestors in front of the clinic. But occasionally they bussed in hundreds of Catholic priests, or Catholic school children who clearly didn't want to be there, or a Tea Party buss of radicalized elderly people would show up.

The 10-20 regulars would harass us, and try to block the driveway, and we'd call the cops occasionally. But they didn't make too much trouble because they knew it would all start over next week. We had a detente with them.

It was the bus people that were really scary.

Among the dozens of people on a bus could be, like, a dude mumbling angrily to himself, with the hood up on his hoodie on an inappropriately warm day, staring into space with absolute murder in his eyes.

Most patients arrived by car, but those with the misfortune of arriving on foot were running a gauntlet. Anti-choicers would "sidewalk council" them, trying to shove rosaries into patients' hands and to divert them in any way just short of physical assault.

Escorts tried to be as grounding and psychologically comforting to the patents as possible in the middle of this maelstrom, while moving them through it quickly.

Most patients looked scared of the anti-choice protestors or just, like, wft. Some were very, very angry at them.

Any time a man approached (including me, before they recognized me) the antis would shout "tell your girlfriend she doesn't have to do this!"

They *always* assume an abortion patient is 1.) not married and 2.) being coerced by a man

Both of these are ridiculous assumptions

The protestors had elaborate rituals, like, encircling the clinic in a line of salt. Which is a Catholic thing I guess?? It felt like they were trying to use magic against us. Which shouldn't be a big deal, since it's fake, but it was scary because it seemed unhinged.

In 2011 the clinic moved to a location where the arrangement of driveways, parking lots, and entrances was more difficult for protestors to obstruct. I would recommend this to Brett Kavanaugh. Enlarge your perimeter, Brett.

I stopped when the volunteer escort program was shut down because of increased insurance cost and liability risk due to increasing acts of violence. The clinic was forced to hire professional security.

Thanks for reading, my favorite typo I made is "wft"

PS, here's the only news coverage I'm aware of about the Molotov Cocktail attack on our clinic. As you can see, that's almost zero coverage. But when anti-choice people get attacked in the same way it is national news.
web.archive.org/web/2009090106…

PPS, the anti-choicers also hated birth control, and they would talk to me about it all the time. (They would tell us whatever they thought would make us quit volunteering, and we weren't permitted by PP to respond.)

I was so confused by their opposition to birth control!

In the beginning, I believed the weekly standoff at the clinic was about a difference in opinion about abortion. This didn't jive with the protestors hatred of birth control -- which of course prevents abortion -- or their preoccupation with sex. They talked about sex A LOT.

At the risk of employing an overused word, I felt gaslighted. All of society was telling me this is about "when life begins" but my experience was showing me something else.

The writing of @AmandaMarcotte was the first to help me put together the truth:

@AmandaMarcotte It's about sexuality, and it's about misogyny. People protested that clinic because they want to create a world where conservative Christianity wholly monopolizes sexual expression and gender roles.

Concern about "life" is decidedly secondary to this.