By
Alice Jane Axness
written for Cracked
Everyone has their Saturday-morning routines -- sleep in, spend time with your loved ones, recover from a hangover, furiously jack off, whatever. I'm not really big on mornings, so I generally skip that whole thing and wake up teenager-in-a-sitcom late.
However, almost every Saturday morning for the last two years, I've hauled my ass out of bed really fucking early so I could be at a local Planned Parenthood at 8:30 a.m. Though a few of the comments on my first Cracked article surmised otherwise, it's not because I'm the mayor of Cock Forest and thus must check in on Foursquare at the closest Planned Parenthood lest I lose my seat as Plan B Incumbent.
And who the fuck still uses Foursquare?
No, I am there because, like so many other abortion clinics in our
great country, it is occasionally surrounded by idiots frothing at the
mouth about Jesus and baby-killing, many of whom are there specifically
to harass women or stop them from doing a thing they have every right to
do.
I get that abortion is a "hot topic" issue, but this isn't about how I feel, and I certainly don't give a fuck about how you feel. That's not the point of this article. Instead, this is about all of the sad, terrifying and occasionally hilarious things I've learned escorting (yes, that's the term we use) women past abortion protesters for the last two years.
Anti-choice protesters are a lot like members of the CIA, in that you've probably seen one in public today and didn't even realize it. At my clinic, one is a former astrophysicist who tells us when the best time to see a rocket launch or an eclipse is. One lives near my mother and has come into one of the stores I work at a few times. They're just regular fucking people, you know?
In two years, there's been only one anti-choice protester I thought might genuinely have some sort of mental illness. This white woman was incredibly aggressive toward non-white people going in for procedures and tried to say that abortion was a mechanism of race wars, a subject she was passionate about because she'd adopted a black baby. She would then whip out pictures of that baby, which was very clearly a Cabbage Patch doll.
She had to stop protesting because she assaulted a woman who was
walking home from Whole Foods. Not a woman who was with my organization,
not a woman who was involved in anything at the clinic -- just some
random lady who was trying to cross the street with her quinoa and who
didn't have time to listen to an anti-choice spiel.
Again, that's the only person whom I thought might have some sort of serious medical issue. Everyone else might be aggressive in their opinions, but they're usually not mentally ill.
As I was writing the outline for this article, the only thing under this header for days was just "SOOOOOO RACIST."
Sure, it's important to remember that Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, was racist, ableist, and pro-eugenics -- a fact Planned Parenthood does not deny.
Also, one of the first large-scale clinical trials for the birth control pill was done using under-informed, poor, uneducated Puerto Rican women who experienced a host of negative side effects as researchers tested out different hormone levels on them.
Yes, that's all really fucked up. No one is disputing that, least of all pro-choice escorts.
It's important to not lose that context while also recognizing the truth in what I'm about to say -- abortion protesters are some racist motherfuckers. When you pretend to have a black child (which two or three of the anti-choice women do) and use that pretend child to guilt-trip black women about making a decision regarding their own bodies, that's racist.
When you learn a few phrases in Spanish so you can terrify Latina
women going into the clinic, just to vilify immigrants in the next
breath, you're fucking racist. If you capitalize on fears of racial
genocide, not because you care about non-white communities but because
you want to essentially trick them out of getting a medical procedure,
you're fucking racist.
It goes beyond your usual "the clinic is dangerous; you'll always be a mother of a dead baby" bullshit (which is a real thing people say, by the way) to a whole different level of "Are you fucking kidding me? How do you sleep at night?"
When it's not horribly depressing, there are definitely moments that would be 100 times funnier if they were from a sitcom rather than real life, but I'll take what I can get.
There was the time that one of the more aggressive protesters parked in front of the building and played gospel music the whole time, only to have her car die when she tried to leave.
There was the time a protester yelled, "Abortion is reversible!" to a couple leaving the clinic.
Once, a protester tried to convince me that she found a bunch of paperwork that was signed in blood, like Planned Parenthood is some Harry Potter cult or an Illuminati franchise instead of a legitimate medical office.
My favorite moment, though, was this time a couple was leaving the
clinic and, after the woman got into the passenger seat, the man
realized he'd left something and had to run back inside. One of the
protesters, who'd been shouting absolutely heinous bullshit at clients
all fucking day, started to edge toward the car. I followed her, saying,
"Look, the procedure's been done, leave her alone, it's not going to do
any good." The protester gave me a shit-eating grin and ignored me, but
once we got up to the car, she realized the woman inside was on the
phone and, no joke, I swear to God, out of the mouth of this protester
who had told five different women they were going to hell within the
last hour comes, "Oh! She's on the phone. Well, I wouldn't want to be
rude."
And then she walked away. I slowblinked so hard I think I may have
permanently broke something. To this day, I still mutter, "Wouldn't want
to be rude," when a protester says something so far outside of reality
that it baffles me.
Everyone has their Saturday-morning routines -- sleep in, spend time with your loved ones, recover from a hangover, furiously jack off, whatever. I'm not really big on mornings, so I generally skip that whole thing and wake up teenager-in-a-sitcom late.
However, almost every Saturday morning for the last two years, I've hauled my ass out of bed really fucking early so I could be at a local Planned Parenthood at 8:30 a.m. Though a few of the comments on my first Cracked article surmised otherwise, it's not because I'm the mayor of Cock Forest and thus must check in on Foursquare at the closest Planned Parenthood lest I lose my seat as Plan B Incumbent.
And who the fuck still uses Foursquare?
I get that abortion is a "hot topic" issue, but this isn't about how I feel, and I certainly don't give a fuck about how you feel. That's not the point of this article. Instead, this is about all of the sad, terrifying and occasionally hilarious things I've learned escorting (yes, that's the term we use) women past abortion protesters for the last two years.
#5. Abortion Protesters Aren't Crazy
Ingram Publishing/Ingram Publishing/Getty Images
Anti-choice protesters are a lot like members of the CIA, in that you've probably seen one in public today and didn't even realize it. At my clinic, one is a former astrophysicist who tells us when the best time to see a rocket launch or an eclipse is. One lives near my mother and has come into one of the stores I work at a few times. They're just regular fucking people, you know?
In two years, there's been only one anti-choice protester I thought might genuinely have some sort of mental illness. This white woman was incredibly aggressive toward non-white people going in for procedures and tried to say that abortion was a mechanism of race wars, a subject she was passionate about because she'd adopted a black baby. She would then whip out pictures of that baby, which was very clearly a Cabbage Patch doll.
Again, that's the only person whom I thought might have some sort of serious medical issue. Everyone else might be aggressive in their opinions, but they're usually not mentally ill.
#4. They Are Unspeakably Racist, Though
RomoloTavani/iStock/Getty Images
As I was writing the outline for this article, the only thing under this header for days was just "SOOOOOO RACIST."
Sure, it's important to remember that Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, was racist, ableist, and pro-eugenics -- a fact Planned Parenthood does not deny.
Also, one of the first large-scale clinical trials for the birth control pill was done using under-informed, poor, uneducated Puerto Rican women who experienced a host of negative side effects as researchers tested out different hormone levels on them.
Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Correct.
Correct.
It's important to not lose that context while also recognizing the truth in what I'm about to say -- abortion protesters are some racist motherfuckers. When you pretend to have a black child (which two or three of the anti-choice women do) and use that pretend child to guilt-trip black women about making a decision regarding their own bodies, that's racist.
It goes beyond your usual "the clinic is dangerous; you'll always be a mother of a dead baby" bullshit (which is a real thing people say, by the way) to a whole different level of "Are you fucking kidding me? How do you sleep at night?"
#3. They're Also Unintentionally Hilarious at Times
Design Pics/Design Pics/Getty Images
When it's not horribly depressing, there are definitely moments that would be 100 times funnier if they were from a sitcom rather than real life, but I'll take what I can get.
There was the time that one of the more aggressive protesters parked in front of the building and played gospel music the whole time, only to have her car die when she tried to leave.
There was the time a protester yelled, "Abortion is reversible!" to a couple leaving the clinic.
Once, a protester tried to convince me that she found a bunch of paperwork that was signed in blood, like Planned Parenthood is some Harry Potter cult or an Illuminati franchise instead of a legitimate medical office.
Pavel Potapov/Hemera/Getty Images
They have franchises, right?
Also, because the clinic is in an office building, the protesters
sometimes have to roll the dice on who they're yelling at, and the
gamble doesn't always pay off. Once a woman responded to a protester's
self-righteous entreaties for her to not go into the clinic by saying,
"Bitch, I'm going to the dentist, calm the fuck down." That protester
was a 60-year-old woman.They have franchises, right?
Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Correct again!
Correct again!
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