I Became a Clinic Escort to Protect the Right I Once Needed

It's early morning when the first patient enters the parking lot. Our team is there, wearing rainbow-striped vests emblazoned with the phrase CLINIC ESCORT. I gently approach the patient and her mom and introduce myself as a clinic volunteer.

It's impossible to ignore the nearby shouts of "Young mom, don't kill your baby today!" and worse. As we walk toward the clinic, I drown out the protestors' voices with idle chatter, then open a huge pink umbrella, carrying it sideways like a shield to block the family from view.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade more than a year ago in the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. That decision prompted me to become a clinic escort. I had to protect the right I once needed.

My abortion happened in 1995, in the same Southern city where I escort now. My husband worked as a musician, I made a living as a writer, and we were the overjoyed and exhausted parents of a 9-month-old baby girl. We could not afford to give our daughter a sibling for years to come.

Breastfeeding exclusively, we know, acts as an effective form of birth control. But we didn't realize the protection lasts just the first six months after birth. After that, pregnancy is possible even if the mom is still breastfeeding.

I'll never forget the night I ricocheted back and forth between our kitchen's cantaloupe-hued walls, praying, trying to breathe and waiting for the pregnancy test results while our daughter slept. When it came back positive, I crumpled to the floor. My husband and I agreed: Neither of us was able to care for a second child when we were still figuring out how to make things work with our first.

It didn't take much time to set up an appointment with a reproductive health clinic in the same medical office complex where I got my allergy shots. No protestors told me I was going to hell as I entered the facility for a surgical abortion. It was an emotional process, but in retrospect, far easier than what patients endure today.

Clinic escorting dates back more than 40 years, according to Lauren Rankin, author of "Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America." The earliest reference Rankin found to clinic escorts was a Fort Wayne, Indiana clinic in 1978 when a group of feminist-minded residents banded together to help protect women and girls seeking care.

"For the nearly 50 years Roe vs. Wade existed, the law only provided so much protection," Rankin told me. "It wasn't really the law that solved the problems for people seeking abortions. It was other people." Now I am one of them.

When I escort, patients range from late teens to their 30s and represent a variety of racial backgrounds. Few that I've seen look pregnant. Patients come alone or with boyfriends, partners, relatives, a friend. Some are frightened of the protestors. Some laugh them off.

Before I began escorting, I imagined what it would be like. I'd murmur encouraging words to patients about my abortion: "I made the right decision for me, and you'll make the best one for you." I'd wrap an arm around their shoulders, and we'd develop a relationship in a few dozen steps. My vision, it turns out, was ridiculous.

It's not easy to know what to say, but the weather, a comment about a pretty T-shirt, or "pay no attention to the noise" usually works. What doesn't: rage. One regular protestor, a minister who positions himself centimeters from clinic property, heckles the escorts to pass the time between patients. 

"What a bunch of ugly old women," he observed recently, his latest variation on a theme. I think but don't say all the snarky retorts filling my mind, trying my best to adhere to the clinic's strict non-engagement policy.

Despite his keen-eyed assessment, the escorts vary from a woman who nearly died from an illegal abortion in the 1960s to men in their 20s compelled to step up. Some protestors become familiar faces: The dad who brings his young sons. The woman who tells patients that she's a doctor. The guy who holds up a "pray to end abortion" sign and never says a word.

The scene has a strange performance vibe, as if a director calls "action!" when a patient arrives or leaves, and the cast promptly hurls their lines, including unfounded claims that abortions can be reversed. They primarily talk to each other in between, mixed with interludes of insulting the escorts.

I've never seen a patient turn back without entering the clinic or respond with some version of "You're right, I've changed my mind." Instead, they often thank us for walking alongside them on one of the most important days of their lives, a day, for some, when they take back their life.

I volunteer with patients seeking an abortion because about 60% of them, at least in the U.S., are already mothers, just like I was. I do it because of The Turnaway Study from the University of California-San Francisco, which found that women who do not obtain a wanted abortion are more likely to subsequently face economic hardship, including insufficient money to pay for housing and food. 

And I do it because 62% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center. Attacks against reproductive health clinics have increased since Dobbs. Our regulars know what to say and do so that they won't be convicted of violating the 1994 FACE Act, which made it a federal crime to use force or threats against patients seeking reproductive health care. 

The police park nearby some days. I keep up my guard, but my clinic is one of the quieter ones. The protesters talk about God's will. To those who believe abortion is a sin, I respect their right not to have one. But my faith, Reform Judaism, recognizes life begins at birth, and protecting the physical and mental health of the pregnant person is paramount. 

The abortion bans enacted post-Roe threaten religious freedom and social justice. Recent history shows us what will happen if abortion becomes impossible to access. Wealthier people who need abortions may find a way. Others will not, and their lives may never recover.

Abortion bans don't harm just those seeking abortions. KFF, a health research nonprofit, recently surveyed 569 board-certified OB-GYN on their experiences in the last year; 68% reported that Dobbs has "worsened their ability to manage pregnancy-related emergencies" such as miscarriages.

Of those surveyed, 64% percent said the ruling has "worsened pregnancy-related mortality," while 70% found it exacerbated "racial and ethnic inequities in maternal health."

The right to reproductive self-determination, once settled law, has slipped away in some states, particularly in the South. Abortion is almost completely banned in Alabama and Tennessee. Georgia has banned the procedure at six weeks before many people realize they're pregnant.

North Carolina recently began requiring two in-person office visits 72 hours apart for abortion care. 

If patients travel there from out of state, they now have to take more time off work, pay for a hotel or sleep in a car if lodging is beyond their means.

No one should have to face those kinds of obstacles to obtain care. 

I wish I had not accidentally gotten pregnant nearly 30 years ago. Still, I have not for a moment regretted my abortion nor my decision to have a second child years later when my husband and I were emotionally and financially ready. I believe my adult children — all our adult children — deserve that kind of control over their own reproductive lives. We owe it to them to fight for that right.