Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line (4 page)

Chapter Four

The Cause

The first time I pulled into the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas, I was a bit creeped out by the six-foot-high iron fence encircling the building and lot. Clearly the fence was designed to keep something locked in, or something locked out. I just wasn’t sure which. I didn’t have a clue how dramatically my own answer to that question would shift over time, nor did I foresee the powerful role this fence was going to play—and in fact, still plays—in my life.

I’m just here to check this out
, I told myself to quiet my nervousness.
If I don’t like it, I’m not obligated to come back.
Only one week had passed since I’d signed up at the fair, and I hadn’t exactly been trained for what I was about to encounter. All I knew was what Jill told me at the volunteer fair and a few brief instructions given me over the phone in a follow-up call—where to park (on a side street near the clinic), what time to come (about 6:50 a.m.), and how long I’d stay (about two hours).

The Bryan clinic is located on a mostly residential portion of 29th Street in a neighborhood filled, for the most part, with ranch houses built in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the homes sit on quarter-acre grass lots. No other fences caught my attention that day, so as I approached the clinic, I found the fence terribly out of place.

Before parking, I wanted to check out the building entrance. I pulled through the open gate that spanned a wide cement driveway and turned around in the small lot set between the fence and the building. Looking out my windshield at the iron bars gave me the distinct feeling of being in prison.
Not exactly a welcoming view,
I thought.
I wonder why they need the fence.
I had not yet grasped the sense of “war” between the prochoice and pro-life causes in Bryan. My education was about to begin.

I was surprised how small and unassuming the building was. Built of light-gray brick, the ranch-style office was not much different in shape and size from the homes surrounding it, though the short, wide driveway leading into the small parking lot, the line of windows facing the lot, and the glass entry door definitely had the look of an office rather than a home.

I’d arrived early—about 6:40 a.m. My shift was 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., but I wanted time to get acclimated before I was on duty. I really had no idea what to expect, even though the recruiter, Jill, had told me in general terms the duties of a volunteer escort. I had worried that morning about what to wear. Do I dress up? Go business casual? Jeans? What will everyone else be wearing? In the end, I dressed up a bit—dress slacks, a nice turquoise short-sleeved shirt, comfortable yet dressy shoes.

But after I’d moved my car to a side street and walked back to the clinic, I noticed the other volunteers, three that morning, were wearing cargo shorts and T-shirts! They said, “What are you wearing? Don’t you realize it’s going to be burning up out there today?” And besides, they gave me a vest, standard wear for all volunteers so they’re instantly identifiable to clients as someone official from the clinic. So who cared what I had on underneath it? No one could see it anyway. Those vests were royal blue back then. Later, we changed them to a bright, highlighter yellow. The rest of the Planned Parenthood staff—clinicians, nurses, office personnel, and the director—all wore scrubs of various colors.

I’d only been there a few minutes before I met Cheryl, the clinic director. Unlike Jill, Cheryl was all business and paired me up with a more experienced escort, who filled me in on my duties.

This volunteer explained that we would wait outside by the front door. When a client pulled up, we were to head to her car immediately so someone was there when she opened her door. By the time the clinic opened, the pro-lifers would be on the other side of the fence, she said. They showed up every Tuesday because they knew it was abortion day. When the client opened her door, we were to start talking right away. We could talk about anything—the weather, her clothes, her car—anything to distract her from the voices through the fence. They’d be harassing her, and we wanted to make sure our voices were the ones she heard.

“You walk with me the first few times to get a feel for it, okay?” she said as she ended her overview of my job.

It was all so strange. By 7:00, pro-lifers had begun to show up outside the fence. It was still fairly cool that first morning, which was good since I was ridiculously overdressed. We stepped outside to start our shift. I was extremely uneasy. As I waited, I was caught off guard by a few protesters on the other side of the fence. One fellow was dressed up as the Grim Reaper—he even carried a scythe. A woman took a spot outside the fence and began waving a huge placard with a picture of an aborted fetus on it—a grotesque image. I couldn’t imagine why she’d be so cruel as to show it in public. Every now and then she’d shout out some antiabortion slogan. Not everyone was so dramatic. In fact, some people gathered and just stood silently, and a few prayed in small groups.

The first client pulled her car into the lot, and I shadowed my trainer as she rushed to the opening car door. “How are you today? I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding us. Nice weather this morning, huh?” The young woman was half listening to my trainer and half doing what I was doing—peering through the fence to see who these people were.

I could hear a voice from the other side of the fence.

“Hi, I’m here from Coalition for Life. We can help you today if you like. We have alternatives to offer you. You don’t have to go through with this today.” My trainer did her best to talk over the voice by asking about traffic while pretending there was not another voice competing with her own. I was curious, though, to hear what the voice was saying.

Who are these people? Are they college kids like me?
I wondered.
Why are they here so early on a Tuesday morning, and what do they think they are going to accomplish?
Do they all know each other? Do they plan this out together?
My trainer kept up her chatter as we led our client away from the fence and through the door. A clinic worker greeted and escorted her to a waiting area, and we returned to the front door. And so it went, a surprisingly steady stream of clients while the same scripts on both sides of the fence were repeated time and again.

Between clients my trainer fed me general information about the women who came to the clinic. A relatively small percentage of the clients who came for an abortion were minors, she told me. The majority of women coming for abortions were in their twenties. Some women in their thirties came as well, though not as many.
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I asked whether most clients were single women who were pregnant for the first time. She told me it varied more than I’d think. Some were married, many not; some had kids already at home and maybe too many mouths to feed. Others were pregnant for the first time. Some of the clients were working women; some were just students who were scared and alone. Given the fact that Bryan is mostly white, most clients were white too, but again, that varied, not only because of the college population, but also because there weren’t many places in this part of Texas to get an abortion. Lots of women, she said, drove a good distance to get to the clinic.

I thought of my own abortion just a year before and the long drive I’d made to Houston. I hadn’t even known about this place then.

“Why do the pro-lifers assume all the women coming in are having abortions?” I asked her. “Planned Parenthood offers all kinds of services, right? Pap smears and pregnancy testing and ultrasounds, right?”

“Yeah, but not on abortion days. On Tuesdays we mostly do just abortions, and they know that. Okay,” she said as another car pulled into the lot. “Your turn this time. I’ll walk with you, but you do the talking. Are you ready?”

I was there the moment the new client opened her car door.

“Hi. I’m glad you found us okay. I’ll walk you to the door.”

“We know this is a hard day for you,” another voice chirped during my brief pause. “We are out here because we care about you.” My immediate thought was that if they cared about this woman, they wouldn’t look so frightening with a Grim Reaper and a huge photo of an aborted fetus on display. That certainly didn’t look caring to me. My client turned her head to see who had spoken through the fence. My eyes followed hers for a second and landed on a young woman about my age.

“Sorry about these people,” I spoke up, drawing her attention back to me. “Let’s get inside.”

Just then someone at the fence shouted, “Abortionists are murderers! Repent!”

“Starting to warm up, isn’t it? I love the color of your shirt.” I was groping for words but could hear how ridiculous I sounded in light of the accusation we’d just heard. Another voice was talking over me, now calling louder, as the client and I were heading toward the building.

“We have alternatives for you if you don’t want to go through with this today,” a man’s voice called. The client’s eyes locked on mine, and I saw anxiety there.

“And here we are. Let me get the door for you,” I offered in as soothing a voice as I could, now feeling I needed to protect her. I walked her to the receptionist. “Here we go. She’ll help you now.”

“Thank you,” the girl answered timidly, her eyes on the floor. She looked frightened.

I gently patted her arm, then left her with the receptionist and went back outside, feeling a bit rattled.

The trainer said I’d done a great job talking to the patient while keeping her moving. “We need to do all we can to protect our clients from those pro-lifers,” she added. “See that guy over there?” She pointed to a man on the other side of the fence who looked about ten years older than me.

“Yeah. Who is he?”

“That’s David Bereit. He’s the director of Coalition for Life. Their office is just down the street.” She went on to explain that the group’s purpose was to turn the community against us and shut us down.

I looked through the fence at the pro-lifers assembled there. Some college-age kids, guys and girls, stood praying together with heads bowed; two young moms with strollers simply stood and looked on; a middle-aged couple walked the fence, speaking to another client being escorted toward the clinic door. The costumed Grim Reaper just lurked, occasionally waving his scythe in the air. A gray-haired man had shown up and was strolling back and forth carrying a big handmade sign crudely lettered “MURDERERS” in red paint. The woman with the aborted fetus picture was marching back and forth, raising and lowering it like she was on parade. A young couple stood holding a simple sign that read “CHOOSE LIFE.”

This is unbelievable,
I thought.
What have I stepped into?
It was like a face-off through the fence. A war zone. The tension in the air was palpable.

Another volunteer took the next car, and I just watched. Clients had two parking options when they pulled in. They could turn left to park facing the fence like I originally had, or right to park facing the building. This client parked facing the fence. A friendly looking young woman outside the fence, about my age, stepped forward, pressed herself against the fence, and spoke softly to the client the second she opened her car door. From my spot by the front door I couldn’t hear what she said, but the client paused and listened. The woman outside the fence had a kind face and continued speaking in quiet tones. The Planned Parenthood volunteer was trying in vain to get the client’s attention but hadn’t been fast enough. I watched as the client stepped toward the fence, then she and the pro-lifer walked side by side with the fence between them toward the open gate, where they came face-to-face.

“Uh-oh. They got one,” my trainer said. “I wish they’d leave these poor women alone. Do they have to harass them over such a personal decision? Why can’t they just accept that not everybody sees the world as black and white as they do?”

I watched as the pro-lifer handed our client some literature—she didn’t look like she felt harassed to me. Clearly, she’d chosen to talk to the pro-lifer. Her Planned Parenthood escort stood glaring at the pro-lifer for a moment before managing to get the client’s attention. The two then walked into the building.

I felt confused. That client had looked truly interested in the information from the pro-lifer.
If we are prochoice
, I thought,
then we believe in women making their own choices, right? So why do we feel we need to protect clients from conversations about their choices? What does it hurt if they hear information and make the choice to leave? We want them to consider their alternatives and to make the decision that’s right for them. Right?
I found myself wondering if I belonged here.

But another look across the fence jolted me from such thoughts—the marching woman with the horrid photo, the Grim Reaper now waving his scythe silently in the air, the sign with blood-red letters spelling out
MURDERERS
. Some of these people hardly seemed balanced, helpful, or reasonable. Clearly, they had an agenda of their own.
They aren’t here offering women choices,
I thought.
They just don’t want them to choose abortion
. I thought of the professional demeanor of the clinic director, Cheryl; the sparkling clean office inside with clinicians, a doctor, ultrasound equipment; all of the professionals able to offer cancer screening and STD testing. Surely we were on the right side, weren’t we?

Unsettled, I found myself looking forward to the end of my shift.

When my two-hour shift was finally up, I couldn’t wait to hand in my vest. I walked briskly toward my car, down the street. The female pro-lifer with the kind face I’d watched earlier fell in beside me.

“Hi. I’m Marilisa. I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” she said.

“No. It’s my first day.”