For the past 14 years, Eileen Spratt Ehlers has dedicated her Fridays to escorting women into an abortion clinic, facing protestors equipped with megaphones and graphic signs. Her journey is one of resilience and compassion in the ongoing fight for reproductive rights.
By Eileen Spratt Ehlers
For the past 14 years, I’ve spent Friday mornings as an escort on the sidewalk outside an abortion clinic. My role began as a simple greeter position, being the first face of the clinic to meet arriving patients and help them navigate the secure entrance. It has evolved over the years to today’s role as a defender of patients when they arrive for their surgical abortion procedure. Read that again: Women coming to the clinic for a doctor’s appointment they freely and legally made for their personal reproductive care need to have defender outside the building! At no other type of medical facility for any other kind of patient does this occur. Going to the doctor’s office ought to be an anonymous, safe, unimpeded process.
Over the years the abortion protesters have grown in number from four or five people calling out to ask the patients to consider adoption. Now it is an emboldened mob of up to 25 men and women. They display huge graphic and gory signs of fully formed fetuses, purposely mislabeled as “4 weeks of age”. They carry signs with scripture passages warning of hell for the sin of murder, telling women to repent and to fear God. They use megaphones and microphones amplified with speakers to yell at patients and partners, screaming at them that they will go home as the parents of a dead baby. They call the patients and partners cowards. They rage-preach the Bible, disturbing neighboring residents and businesses. The abortion abolitionists tell escorts we hate children, that we are murderers with bloody hands, that we will stand before a God who will punish us. They call out to the doctor that she is a butcher. They tell passers-by that evil murder is happening right in front of them. All of this verbal assault and abuse and lies are done in the name of Jesus, they insist.
I’ve escorted patients and partners to the door who exhibit the full spectrum of emotions. I’ve consoled women as they crumble in fear and grief. I’ve supported couples who arrive, nervous and shaken by walking the gauntlet of intimidation and shame. I’ve stood by as confident, bold women are relieved to finally have arrived for their procedure. I’ve de-escalated enraged male partners or parents who want to engage with the cruel, intrusive protesters.
I’ll share with you a couple of scenarios will never leave my memory and heart.
One winter morning the normally adequate pedestrian space was significantly narrowed with fresh snow piled high on the sidewalk edges. I’d already helped a foreign language interpreter gain entrance to wait for the arrival of the non-English speaking patient. I spotted her coming down the sidewalk; a physically small stature young woman, alone, was making her way towards me. I walked to her and I saw sheer terror on her face as she looked at the mob gathered in front of the clinic. Two male protesters, holding their gruesome signs like shields approached us, nearly blocking the sidewalk. They were close and yelling; bold and loud voices with words the woman could not understand, but obviously unfriendly and threatening. They towered over her. I put my arm around her shoulders, and could feel the tremble of her entire fragile body. She shrunk into herself and against me as I brought her past the men, up the stairway, and in the secured entrance. She made eye contact as I stood outside, ready to pull the door closed behind her. Big brown eyes locked onto mine, her tears ready to stream down, her arms hugging herself to hold her body intact. Her interpreter stepped forward, and she heard a kind voice speak to her in her language. She was safe. She would be fine. I’ll never forget her. She is one reason I continue to volunteer.
On another day, the last scheduled patient and her husband approached. The large group of antis were aggressive and riled up that day. They had demeaned and judged patients all morning and were ready to focus on their next victim. The man and woman were arriving for miscarriage management; they were losing a desired pregnancy that they had happily anticipated as the third child in the family. The shouting began. “Don’t kill your baby”. “Men should protect their children”. “Real men would tell her NO”. “Your baby has a heartbeat”. My own heart was thumping, and the couple was shocked by the intentionally hurtful words which hit them like a ton of bricks. They were already emotionally vulnerable and now they were taunted by strangers for the situation in which they found themselves. They did their best to maintain composure climbing the stairs. Once inside, the abject sadness brought them both to their knees. It took the staff nearly an hour to calm them down to a level to endure the procedure, so broken were they by the heartless and ignorant taunts.
Don’t ever think that abortion protesters are a couple of kindly grandmothers knitting booties. They are intentionally cruel people, intending to cause pain. They are a cult of born-again “christians” and abortion abolitionist misogynists. They lie, they spew medical falsehoods, they judge and condemn and try to cover their behavior by holding a Bible. They are dangerous sidewalk terrorists. We escorts put ourselves on the line as a buffer between patients and protesters. We will not back down.
–Eileen