A father faces harassment from anti-abortion protestors while escorting his daughter, a young assault survivor, to a clinic. This story captures his struggle to protect her amid escalating hostility.
By Nellie
Trigger Warning: This story includes descriptions of harassment, sexual assault, abortion-related violence, and intense confrontations. Reader discretion is advised.
I was asked by a friend to submit a piece for this site. I agreed. I have been a clinic escort for the majority of my adult life. So, I wrote some rough drafts about the world and US politics. I tried to focus on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and how much it is affecting clinics. I wrote a brief opinion about seeing the young clinic escorts making their mark in reproductive rights. But none of it seemed to be working. They were basically grammatically correct rants. Instead, I decided to go to the journals about clinic escorting I have kept for, literally, decades.
I had memory of this incident but I downplayed it. All this violence and sadness and hatred was less intense in my mind. This writing is from the journal that day.
As escorts, we always watched people. People walking from the subways, exiting cars, getting dropped off by cabs or friends, we had to survey the situations. We had to be vigilant; for our safety, the safety of patients, the safety of staff, the safety of the clinic itself.
A car circled, obviously looking for parking. They found a space about two blocks away from the clinic. A man got out and put change in the meter. He looked around, front and back. It was clear he was preparing for trouble. A woman got out of the passenger side and opened the back door. A girl, about 12, got out and grabbed the woman’s hand.
(From this point, I will refer to the adults as the girl’s parents.)
When they heard the car door slam, the antis lifted their heads and saw the girl got out of the car. They screamed their rhetoric. They had signs with supposed fetuses with ‘abortion is murder’ written on them. One of the signs had a drawing of what they think satan looks like over the body of a person dressed as a doctor. The statement was ‘this dr. is a murderer, he belongs in hell forever and so do his patients’.
The antis dug in their pockets for leaflets and flyers. One of the women took out her rosary beads. As soon as the adults and girl made it across the street, the antis beelined toward them. Myself and another escort walked in front of them. We did not want to let the antis get there first.
But some of the antis were faster than us. Two of the male antis got to the father. They started talking at him, like they wanted to be friends. The father was not interested and it was clear. But the antis didn’t care. Even when the father walked away, they tailed him like a rancid scent.
The girl walked close to her mother; their stride was short. Female antis got involved with the mother and girl. They were talking about abortion. One of the women actually pulled out a book with supposed photographs in it. Shoved the pictures into this girl’s face and said that babies are being murdered in the building. It was overwhelming for this little girl. I got in between them and walked with her.
The closer the patients got to the clinic, more people swooped in and the louder they became. The antis were bombarding these people. They were screaming things about sin, about jesus, about murder. It was a purge of lies and hatred.
The antis knew, from experience, once a person goes into the clinic, they have lost the opportunity. The girl was crying, her mother looked like she was filled with true rage. She said a couple of things to the antis, like ‘leave us alone’, ‘please stop’. I think she kept her voice low because she was with her daughter.
The escorts finally got them to the door. Security opened it and the mother and girl walked in. When the father stepped toward the door, a male anti got within six inches of the back of his head and said ‘your daughter is pregnant because of her sins’. Father turned around and the anti moved even closer to his face, paused and said, ‘your daughter is a whore’. After that, everything changed.
What I saw in this man’s face was only rage. It was almost in slow motion that the father clenched his fist and hit the anti in the face. The punch knocked the anti into the street. He flew into the street in an arch, the kind one sees in cartoons. The father ran toward the curb, pushed a person out of his way so he could hit the man again. He looked like he was going to kill this anti.
The security guard, somehow, got involved. He pulled the father from the street and pushed him, actually quite hard, against the brick wall of the building. He got into his face and said, in a quiet voice, ‘Stop, stop. Go inside. Don’t do it again. Go.’ The father looked enraged but he seemed to remember why he was there. As he walked into the clinic he turned around and said, in anger and sadness, ‘my daughter was raped. You are lucky that security is here because I would have killed you’. Security pushed him through the door.
Security walked toward the antis on the edge of the street. The man was on the ground, bleeding from somewhere on his face. It was hard to tell because all that was visible was a waterfall of blood. The antis were yelling, ‘call 911! Call 911!’. The security guard simply looked at them and said,’ we did’ and walked away.
The ambulance got there quickly. The paramedics put a neck brace on the man, strapped him to a back board and put him on the ambulance. One of the antis joined them and the ambulance pulled away.
It was then that five police officers arrived. The antis bombarded them with false statements before they were asked. The security guard came out and spoke with the officers. The officers said they needed to get in and speak with the man involved. Security told them that he couldn’t let them into a medical facility as it was against patients’ rights. One officer told him he knew that wasn’t true. It was then that the security guard asked the officer, ‘what if someone called your daughter a whore? What would you do?’ The officer stopped and cleared his throat; he looked down and said they still needed to get into the clinic.
There were seven escorts at the clinic that day. With the police trying to get into the clinic, three of us decided to block the entrance. The officer said that we needed to move or we would be arrested. We refused. We blocked the entrance for about 15 minutes. The police appeared annoyed but were not very aggressive. After another warning, they cuffed our hands and the three of us were put in the back of one of the cars. From the backseat. I watched security open the door and the police walk into the clinic. The father was brought down, his hands behind him, in cuffs. He was quiet, his face covered in fury. He was forced into the back of another police car.
With no sirens or lights, the police drove us to the station. The father was taken out of the other car and brought into the building. We waited in the car for over thirty minutes and were then walked into the station. I expected to be arrested. But I wasn’t.
The three of us were seated in a row of chairs. Individually, we were called to a desk and were asked by an officer what happened. I told the officer about the antis going to the patient’s car and screaming at them. Stated that we had to help people get across the street so they could enter the clinic. I told the police that once we reached the open door, I turned around to make sure the other escorts were safe. I wasn’t able to see anything in detail as there were too many people. I did not see what happened. He said it was strange that, neither I or the other escorts, had seen anything. I shrugged and said, I don’t know why either. When the police were done speaking with us, we had to sit and wait for them to call us to be finger printed and photographed.
After about two hours of sitting in a long line of plastic chairs, without another person speaking with us, an officer came back and gave us each our bags. He told us we were not arrested and could leave. The officer said that they had our names and we would be fined for unlawful assembly. We all walked out, a bit confused. But we did not question it.
I thought there was going to be a trial, that we may be called as witnesses. It never happened. None of us were contacted. The antis scarred this family. It probably hurt the girl the most. She was raped and ended up pregnant, was harassed and chased, shown fake photos, violent signs. Her father was arrested.
The antis did not get any warnings. They were not arrested for harassment or violence. They were there when she left the clinic. They just moved on to harass another person. This girl experienced this trauma but antis didn’t care about her at all. They simply wanted control of her body and her choices.
-Nellie