I haven't been to the clinic in a while because I had guests and was out of town, but I finally got a chance to go back this weekend. It was another slow morning; there were only two antis there, maybe because it's suddenly gotten unseasonably cold here. I guess saving women from themselves is more of a warm-weather activity.
Because it was so quiet, I had a lot of time to stand around and think about how frustrating this whole process is. If there weren't two seventy-something men trying to shove pamphlets at the women and their companions trying to walk into the clinic, I wouldn't have to be standing out there, stamping my feet and counting down the minutes until they gave up. Because if the antis aren't there, there's no reason for us to be there either. Without protesters, we would be obsolete. Which would be wonderful.
The image of these two elderly white men trying to impose their own views on the women who come to the clinic, despite the fact that they are completely lacking in context or information, is an unfortunately familiar one. It gets played out over and over again in Congress, in the courts, and in everyday life. The idea that women aren't capable of making their own decisions, that if they just had a little more time, a little more information, they would come around to the "right" answer. As if these women haven't spent hours or days playing this decision out again and again in their heads by the time they get to the clinic. As if being told by these men, "Well, honey, why don't you just give it a little more thought?" is in any way helpful. As if by bringing an unwanted child into the world, they could force it to be loved, simply because it was born.
Eventually Phil (the main old-guy anti) and his old-man friend wandered away, and then it was just us, the escorts. Eventually we left too. Because without the antis, there's no reason for us to add one more layer of possibly stressful interaction to these women's days. They're not looking for anyone to baby them, to walk them across the street, to make smalltalk as they potentially head towards a difficult decision. Absent our role as buffers, they don't want us there any more than we want to be there. These women want to be treated like adults, both by the law and by us. They want to be able to make their decisions without being second-guessed by people they've never met, and they want to go about it with dignity and privacy. So when there's no one there trying to disrupt that, we leave, and let them think, walk, mourn, celebrate, and decide for themselves.
