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Dispatches from the Thin Orange Line
Jul. 29th, 2011 04:17 pmOne of the local news places has done an article about the clinic escorts. This is the group I work with. This is the place I escorted at last Roe v Wade day. This is the clinic I went to 20 years ago for basic gyno health care when I worked downtown. This is personal.
Check out the slide show, because there are some things I want to point out to give you some idea of precisely what is involved, personally for the escorts and clients, and also politically for women in America.
Slide 1.
Look at the guy in the black hat. WAMU calls him "Dick Retta, an opponent of abortion rights." Right now the Department of Justice calls him "the defendant," as he is being sued for repeated, long-term violations of the access to clinics act.
Looking at how that case is being handled is a perfect example of the rhetoric surrounding abortion and the clinics. There hasn't been a lot of discussion about this in the neutral or pro-choice news stories (WAMU ignores it entirely) so most of the Google News postings have been from places like LifeNews, Belief.net, & Catholic Online. (No, I'm not linking. If you want to give them the page hits, Google "retta abortion.") For the anti-choice groups, the headlines read things like "DOJ takes elderly pro-life activist to court for intimidation" and "Obama Admin: Fine Pro-Lifer $25000 for Stepping on Shoe." If you read the articles, there's a lot of pounding on the fact that Retta is elderly (uncontested) and that he is nonviolent (also uncontested). If you read the comments, there's a lot of heavy implication that he's being sued not just for being anti-abortion, but for being white. (Eeyore also hammers this theme; she keeps shouting at us that Obama hasn't done anything about the Black Panthers that reportedly kept people out of a polling place last election, but he's all about the black genocide of abortion.)
If you read the court article, you discover that he's not being sued for being elderly, non-violent, caucasian, or anti-choice; he's being sued because he has physically obstructed more than one person from going into the clinic (which, unsurprisingly, is a violation of the freedom of access to clinics act). And part of the proof of how doggedly he pursues and intimidates the clients is that he gets so close that he inevitably stepped on the back of a client's foot, breaking her shoe.
He. Touched. Her. Do I need to link back to my articles about assault? It doesn't matter that he didn't punch her (although we could argue about whether shouting "Don't let them take your child!" and offering post-abortion grief counseling is "compassionate" or "freaky stalker" behavior. You can guess which source's articles call it which.) He's not allowed to touch her and he's not allowed to prevent her from walking in the door. Period.
Think he didn't get that close? That she's blaming him for a wardrobe malfunction? Take a good look at slide 3. I was bumping shoulders with antis on Roe v Wade day.
Slide 4
Two things I want to note here. First of all, see how pale that one escort's vest is? We didn't change colors. He's been escorting for 20-odd years in our summer sun. That's how an electric orange vest turns yellow.
Second, see all that distance from the gate to the door? (You can also get an impression in slide 2). The antis went to court to have that all declared public property. On Roe v Wade day, not only were antis lined up all the way up and down the city block, with extra people right across from the gate and right across the street, both edges of the pathway were solid praying antis all the way to the door, with a guy lurking at the corner of gate and path with signs that he'd jump out and shake in people's faces.
You can't tell me that's not intimidation. You can call it "compassion" for the woman or her "unborn baby," but it's gauntlets like that that made women go to Kermit Gosnell's charnel house of unsafe horrors; news articles made it clear that women had been turned back by protesters from having a legal abortion done by trained doctors, and so went to where they could get an abortion without running the gauntlet - an unregulated illegal clinic staffed by unprofessionals where, in true "abortion is illegal" back-alley fashion, butchery went on.
So compassionate. So many lives "saved" by sidewalk counseling in Pennsylvania.
So, you can imagine my reaction to The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals deciding that a city can require a protester to obtain the patient's permission to approach her or talk to her - but must also apply that requirement to the escort. We escorts are violating the free speech of the protesters, you see, so we can't interfere with the protesters calling to women, nor can we shield the women from them by walking/standing between the women and the protesters, or by forming protective bubbles around them.
There has been talk of such rulings before, but this time it's actually gone through a court. Perhaps the justices should have talked to the women who were blocked out of the 16th St. Planned Parenthood - after all, Retta didn't approach them, he just moved into their way. Or the woman whose shoe was pulled off. Because I need someone to explain how that honestly counts as "free speech."
I also want to know how that affects women who do ask for escorts to walk them down. Maybe the justices need to talk to the woman who not only asked me to walk with her, she was so frightened that she clung to me.
Clung to me.
Past people shouting and calling.
To go into a licensed clinic.
For a legal operation.
Don't talk to me about the "compassion" and rights of the anti-choice crowd. Don't tell me that what the escorts do isn't plain and simple protection from harassment and intimidation. Not while I remember the sound of her voice and the feel of her hands.
Check out the slide show, because there are some things I want to point out to give you some idea of precisely what is involved, personally for the escorts and clients, and also politically for women in America.
Slide 1.
Look at the guy in the black hat. WAMU calls him "Dick Retta, an opponent of abortion rights." Right now the Department of Justice calls him "the defendant," as he is being sued for repeated, long-term violations of the access to clinics act.
Looking at how that case is being handled is a perfect example of the rhetoric surrounding abortion and the clinics. There hasn't been a lot of discussion about this in the neutral or pro-choice news stories (WAMU ignores it entirely) so most of the Google News postings have been from places like LifeNews, Belief.net, & Catholic Online. (No, I'm not linking. If you want to give them the page hits, Google "retta abortion.") For the anti-choice groups, the headlines read things like "DOJ takes elderly pro-life activist to court for intimidation" and "Obama Admin: Fine Pro-Lifer $25000 for Stepping on Shoe." If you read the articles, there's a lot of pounding on the fact that Retta is elderly (uncontested) and that he is nonviolent (also uncontested). If you read the comments, there's a lot of heavy implication that he's being sued not just for being anti-abortion, but for being white. (Eeyore also hammers this theme; she keeps shouting at us that Obama hasn't done anything about the Black Panthers that reportedly kept people out of a polling place last election, but he's all about the black genocide of abortion.)
If you read the court article, you discover that he's not being sued for being elderly, non-violent, caucasian, or anti-choice; he's being sued because he has physically obstructed more than one person from going into the clinic (which, unsurprisingly, is a violation of the freedom of access to clinics act). And part of the proof of how doggedly he pursues and intimidates the clients is that he gets so close that he inevitably stepped on the back of a client's foot, breaking her shoe.
He. Touched. Her. Do I need to link back to my articles about assault? It doesn't matter that he didn't punch her (although we could argue about whether shouting "Don't let them take your child!" and offering post-abortion grief counseling is "compassionate" or "freaky stalker" behavior. You can guess which source's articles call it which.) He's not allowed to touch her and he's not allowed to prevent her from walking in the door. Period.
Think he didn't get that close? That she's blaming him for a wardrobe malfunction? Take a good look at slide 3. I was bumping shoulders with antis on Roe v Wade day.
Slide 4
Two things I want to note here. First of all, see how pale that one escort's vest is? We didn't change colors. He's been escorting for 20-odd years in our summer sun. That's how an electric orange vest turns yellow.
Second, see all that distance from the gate to the door? (You can also get an impression in slide 2). The antis went to court to have that all declared public property. On Roe v Wade day, not only were antis lined up all the way up and down the city block, with extra people right across from the gate and right across the street, both edges of the pathway were solid praying antis all the way to the door, with a guy lurking at the corner of gate and path with signs that he'd jump out and shake in people's faces.
You can't tell me that's not intimidation. You can call it "compassion" for the woman or her "unborn baby," but it's gauntlets like that that made women go to Kermit Gosnell's charnel house of unsafe horrors; news articles made it clear that women had been turned back by protesters from having a legal abortion done by trained doctors, and so went to where they could get an abortion without running the gauntlet - an unregulated illegal clinic staffed by unprofessionals where, in true "abortion is illegal" back-alley fashion, butchery went on.
So compassionate. So many lives "saved" by sidewalk counseling in Pennsylvania.
So, you can imagine my reaction to The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals deciding that a city can require a protester to obtain the patient's permission to approach her or talk to her - but must also apply that requirement to the escort. We escorts are violating the free speech of the protesters, you see, so we can't interfere with the protesters calling to women, nor can we shield the women from them by walking/standing between the women and the protesters, or by forming protective bubbles around them.
There has been talk of such rulings before, but this time it's actually gone through a court. Perhaps the justices should have talked to the women who were blocked out of the 16th St. Planned Parenthood - after all, Retta didn't approach them, he just moved into their way. Or the woman whose shoe was pulled off. Because I need someone to explain how that honestly counts as "free speech."
I also want to know how that affects women who do ask for escorts to walk them down. Maybe the justices need to talk to the woman who not only asked me to walk with her, she was so frightened that she clung to me.
Clung to me.
Past people shouting and calling.
To go into a licensed clinic.
For a legal operation.
Don't talk to me about the "compassion" and rights of the anti-choice crowd. Don't tell me that what the escorts do isn't plain and simple protection from harassment and intimidation. Not while I remember the sound of her voice and the feel of her hands.
