Through the rain

Two mornings as a volunteer outside Tulsa’s only abortion clinic

THEN:
"But the women never went to the doctor’s office and they were never told his name. Each woman was instructed not to tell anyone where she was going, to meet the doctor in the parking lot where Steve’s Sundry used to be, to bring cash, and to come alone.  She was told to lie down in the back seat of his car, covered with a blanket so she couldn’t see where she was being taken, and she was driven to the doctor’s lake home that had been converted into a clinic."
-Barbara Santee, Ph.D., Former Executive Director, Oklahoma Chapter of (NARAL), National Abortion Rights Action League

(NARAL is national organization of pro-choice men and women that works to protect and expand reproductive freedom.)

NOW:
Thursday, July 10, 2014

It’s a hard, angry rain, falling straight down. I am parked in the corner of an empty lot. I sit in the car in front of a building:

Reproductive Services
Adoption Affiliates

A police car approaches, disappears, and then reemerges, parking to my left.

“This isn’t going to be good,” I think to myself. I am taking notes, pictures. How do I tell the officer I’m one of the good guys?

Am I one of the good guys?

The cop, a woman, is out of her car, walking to the front of the clinic. I get out, walk slowly to her.

“Hi,” I say, “I’m here with Peaceful Presence. Is this where I’m supposed to be?”

“Yes, right here.”

“Things get crazy, huh?”

“Yeah, but it’s raining, so we’ll see.”

Captain Karen Taylor—she’s off duty, paid by the clinic—is on her phone, checking the forecast.

“They’ll be here soon,” she said.

Peaceful Presence. They’re volunteers from the Oklahoma Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which is part of a national coalition of mainstream religious organizations who are pro-choice.

They come on Thursday and Friday mornings, as does Captain Taylor. Everyone here calls her Karen. 

Why Thursday and Friday mornings? Abortions. Most here are done on these days.

Why is Peaceful Presence here? To escort women from their cars to the clinic.

Why is it necessary? “You must be a new member of the vulture clan,” screams a fat man in red under a tree.

He is screaming at me.

I’m told that’s Jerry, a protester. He, too, is here every Thursday morning, quoting scripture and yelling at women he doesn’t know. Another protest group takes up the torch on Friday mornings.

“The real bad stuff isn’t even here yet,” says Karen.

I can’t tell if she’s talking about the weather or the protesters.

A car pulls up.

“Don’t kill your baby,” the man I’m told is Jerry urges the woman who exits her car.  She puts her hands over her ears and jogs inside.

“C’mon, man up. There’s a baby in there,” he says to someone, maybe to me.

Soon, other Peaceful Presence volunteers come: Jan, Vicki, Jack. Jan brings me my purple vest that reads, “Clinic Escort.” Vicki helps me put it on. Too many volunteers are no good, I’m told. Scares the patients.

Soon, two other protestors join Jerry: a man and a woman—they all stand under the tree.

“Don’t kill your baby,” the woman says. She is holding a banner:

RAPE AND ABORTION ARE WRONG
They are both violent forms of aggression

“They sing, too, sometimes,” says Jack. “They’re pretty good—three-part harmony, but it’s the kids.”

“The kids?” I ask.

“They bring their kids,” says Vicki. “Six, seven-year-olds giving you dirty looks.”

“They have to learn that kind of hate,” says Jack

By law, Jerry and the other two are not allowed any closer than the grass on the other side of the parking lot (the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting a Massachusetts law requiring a 35-foot buffer zone between the protesters who gather to confront women trying to enter clinics doesn’t apply here, for this is private property). At Reproductive Services, there is also a quiet zone. If the protesters can be heard inside the facility, they can be fined.

The agreement I signed with Peaceful Presence read, in part:

I commit to be peaceful. I will not raise my voice in anger or make threatening gestures or statements. I will not touch a patient without her permission and I will not touch any protester unless in self-defense.

“I got out of my car once and Jerry was waiting for me,” says Jack. “Asked me, ‘Are you a pedophile?’”

Jan heads off with an umbrella to help a woman into the clinic.

Some don’t want help.

I open the clinic door for the woman. Her eyes are on the ground. Jan follows her in. There are no walk-ins. Everyone is on a list. There’s no payment plan. $100 deposit; $550 at time of procedure, depending on length of pregnancy. Something called The Roe Fund helps women, women who can’t afford abortions, but the money from the fund always runs out before the requests.

“Vicki, do you notice,” Jan says when she returns, “that lately, the women, the girls coming are more resolute, less rattled, stronger?”

Vicki says she does.

The rain doesn’t let up. I’m told there are eight women scheduled that day. Karen takes another call from her daughter.

“Look on the dresser,” she says into the phone, for the third time.

Life goes on.

“Murderers!” someone screams.

“These are fair-weather protesters,” Karen says.

“I wonder how long they’ll stay?” asks Jan.

Not long.

Jerry and the two walk back to their cars, holding protest signs under their arms, disappearing, it seems, into the rain.

Thursday, July 17

It’s raining again, softer this time.

The protesters brought children today. One child stands in a red hoodie under a tree, motionless. The other child, his small head barely visible over a sign which reads, “Abortion is Murder,” rocks side to side, holding on to the outer edges of the placard.

“My son is eight, he doesn’t even know what abortion is,” says Melissa, a volunteer, my girlfriend. “And he shouldn’t,” she adds.

This is not Planned Parenthood, and anyway, Planned Parenthood doesn’t perform abortions in Oklahoma.

Let me repeat that. Planned Parenthood does not perform abortions in Oklahoma. 

Cecilia, one of the volunteers, tells me a story.

“A woman, a Catholic, who works at a church and already has two kids, gets pregnant. But she is diagnosed with uterine cancer. She needs chemo. If she waits nine months, she’s told she’ll die; if she undergoes chemo now, the baby dies. What does she do? She decides to abort the fetus. This is a devout Catholic, mind you. She comes here and is called a murderer. You think Jerry cares?”

Jerry is not here today.

“There’s a baby in there,” we hear a protestor say. “Your blood. God’s blood. You’ll have nightmares the rest of your life.” His voice is guttural, nasal, repetitive, hypnotic.

Another man holds a sign: “Christ died for your sins. You don’t have to murder your baby to cover them up.”

The signs, some with pictures of aborted fetuses, are part vile, part incoherent.

A car pulls up. A woman, early 20s, gets out, walks towards clinic with her boyfriend. She’s under the umbrella; he’s not. He flashes the protestors the middle finger over his shoulder.

“We’re not allowed to do that,” I say.

He smiles.

In 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 5,860 women obtained abortions in Oklahoma. In 2013, 2,279 procedures took place here. There were fewer abortions in America in 2011 than at anytime since 1973, and about 61 percent of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children¹.

Abortion has too many statistics. It’s too much; it’s not enough.

Each woman is a metaphor. Each woman is alone.

“I think,” says Santee, “some are afraid that their friends or neighbors will see them.  There used to be some crazy couple with a long-lens camera taking pictures of the patients and their license plates as they got out of their cars. We heard that he posted them on a bulletin board in a fundamentalist church. One time when I was escorting patients to the door, an older couple came up in a taxicab, an obvious attempt at disguise. They both wore large sunglasses, she had a scarf covering the bottom part of her face, and he had his coat collar pulled up. And they literally ran into the clinic.”

There’s a law in Oklahoma that goes into effect in November that will require abortion doctors to have admitting privileges to hospitals within 30 miles of their clinic. The policy, if upheld in court, will force the clinics in Norman and Oklahoma City to close. Only this one will be able to stay open.

It will be the only one left in the state.

Another car pulls up, a woman with two men inside. Melissa goes to the car with an umbrella. She comes back. “She’s not ready,” Melissa says. “She wants to wait until her appointment at nine.”

It’s 8:50.

“It happens,” says Jan. “When they’re talking in the car, I leave them alone. They change their minds. Sometimes they drive away.”

The front passenger side tire on the car is going flat.

The men exit.

“You guys want help with that flat?” Jack asks.

“Nah,” says one, “we’re going to take a walk, have a smoke first.”

The woman then looks at Melissa through the window. The rain hasn’t let up. I can see Melissa mouth the words, “Are you ready?” The woman in the car nods. Melissa again goes to the car with the umbrella.

She gets out, stands close to Melissa. They smile at one another.

“You’ll have nightmares the rest of your life…that’s a baby you’re killing. There’s blood. Your blood. The baby’s blood,” a male protestor says.

A child, no more than eight, stands to the right of this protestor. Another protestor, wearing a bonnet, stands near her.

Melissa and the woman from the car walk toward the entrance.

“You’ll have nightmares the rest of your life.”

The woman leans in slightly to Melissa. They could be sisters. Melissa is saying something I can’t make out.

Melissa pats her arm. The woman is ready.  She enters the clinic alone.

Someone goes to find a jack.

¹Guttmacher Institute Fact Sheet: Induced Abortion in the United States.