Clinic defense: A prochoice band-aid

My clinic escort buddy Username Catbus recently posted reasons why clinic defense is a crummy volunteer gig, and why he does it anyway. His main points:

a) You have to listen to racist jerks yell babykiller epithets at you and patients. Further reading: Our local antis created a handy manual on how to harass women on the street who might be "abortion-minded"

b) It's boring and you risk sunburn/inclement weather/racist jerks

c) Clinic defense best suits volunteers with an even keeled temperament, so it's not for everyone, and

d) If you don't have an even keeled temperament, you're better off doing other prochoice work like lobbying or campaigning for progressive candidates, since clinic defense is just a band-aid for a bigger problem.

But we continue to volunteer because it is generally the most meaningful and rewarding reason to wake up at 7am on a Saturday. Really, clinic defense is my favorite volunteer activity and I encourage everyone who's pro-choice to try it. In addition to the general warm fuzzy feelings you get from volunteering, consider:

a) It's 8:30am. Sleepiness often trumps crankiness at antis.

b) You get to socialize with cool people you might not ordinarily meet. I've met prochoice bloggers, Hill staffers, dog walkers, federal contractors, college kids, and legendary local escort Phil. Far better than okcupid or networking happy hours.

c) You can have a really productive Saturday when you wake up early. Counterpoint: When you go out that evening, your friends will be perky and you will fall asleep in the bar, if you're me.

d) There's no minimum time commitment for volunteering with DC area clinics. Commitment-phobes welcome.

e) No papercuts.

f) It will make you even more pro-choice. Even if you just go to a short volunteer training, you'll feel smarter and angrier about clinic harassment.

If you are in the DC area and want to become a clinic escort, contact the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force. If you are elsewhere, join FMF's Adopt-a-Clinic campaign and email campusteam (at) feminist (dot) org for help finding a provider. Comment below and let us know how you're supporting your friendly local abortion provider!

Photo of crisis-pregnancy-center-mobile: j-No on Flickr

Anti-Choice Virginia Attorney General Tries to Increase Regulation of Abortion Clinics

Anti-Choice Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued an opinion Monday that gives the Virginia Board of Health the power to implement hospital-like regulations on women’s health clinics that provide abortion procedures.

According to the Washington Post, “In his seven months in office, Cuccinelli has sued the federal government over new health-care rules; waded into the national immigration debate, saying law enforcement can ask about immigration status; and launched an investigation into whether a former University of Virginia professor and climate scientist manipulated data to reach his conclusions about global warming.” Add abortion to the list and this guy is has taken on every right-wing issue in the book! These are the same anti-abortion regulations Cuccinelli failed to implement as a state senator. However, now that he suddenly has the “unbiased” authority of attorney general, he thinks he can bypass the actual lawmaking process to get his anti-woman policies through!

If the Virginia Board of Health moves to enforce Cuccinelli’s legal opinion (which is thankfully unlikely because a majority were appointed by VA’s former governor, a Democrat), 17 of VA’s 21 clinics might close because they would not be able to afford to make the required changes.

South Carolina has already implemented similar regulations to women’s health clinics in their state. Target Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP laws, are used by anti-s to drive up the cost of abortion through intentionally burdensome regulations in an attempt to cut off women’s constitutionally protected reproductive rights. According to the National Abortion Federation, 34 states already have some type of TRAP law on the books. It’s important that activists stay vigilant in their state legislatures to ensure that our constitutional reproductive rights are not circumvented through these purely political policies that seek to regulate only one type of procedure, abortion, above all else.

The Truth About Susan B. Anthony

How many of you have heard of the Susan B. Anthony List? They’re like the group Emily’s List, but instead of helping progressive, pro-choice women get elected, they support backwards, anti-choice, so called “feminists” who would like to see an end to women’s autonomy and control over her own body.
Yeah, I’m a little bit frustrated. But the reason isn’t because they’re anti-abortion. I know that some people are, and I try my best to respect people’s personal or religious feelings. And I want to see more women in politics because that will hopefully reflect back on all women’s ability to succeed in the workplace (though these candidates are likely to vote in ways that will restrict women to the confines of the home, chained to a crib for their adult lives). My major issue with this organization is the way they have appropriated the feminist icon of Susan B. Anthony, construing her as women-hating and anti-choice!
Let me throw some facts at you: Susan B. Anthony spent no political time on abortion. The one piece of public writing associated with Susan B. Anthony about abortion was written under the pseudonym A., one which she never used prior to this letter to the editor’s publishing, or after. Two leading scholars on Anthony argue that it wasn’t her who wrote it, she just allowed it to be published in her paper.
In her diary Anthony wrote about her dismay that her sister-in-law had an abortion, but that’s because abortions at the time were extremely unsafe for women. You see, when you make abortions illegal, they become back-ally procedures done with coat hangers. Women have performed abortion procedures since the advent of medicine; there will always be some women who choose to have an abortion. If anti-abortion activists are so “pro-life”, why don’t they care about the lives of women?
Many of the writings that the Susan B. Anthony List’s President, Marjorie Dannenfelser, sites in rebuttal actually prove the point that these early feminists cared about women first. Victoria Woodhull, the first female presidential candidate, told a newspaper of the day that "Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth." Woodhull is talking about a world with perfect contraceptives for women. Women are still not “free” from unwanted pregnancy, and that’s why abortion must be made available to them.
In a perfect world, the anti-abortion movement would actually be compassionate towards women, and provide them with the best possible alternatives to abortion rather than simply seeking to police their bodies. Until that time, I can not, and will not, take claims of an anti-abortion feminism seriously.

Photo Cred: GOP.com