I discovered this link while reading Boing Boing the other day. Every Saturday Morning is the blog of a volunteer escort at an abortion clinic in Kentucky, USA. These volunteers escort women entering the clinic past a gamut of vitriolic protesters, shield them and provide support from the abuse hurled at them.

It breaks my heart that the clinics needed to do this in the first place. I feel for each woman who has had to deal with abuse directed at them. Getting an abortion is a difficult decision and stressful enough, they do not need the added trouble from these anti-choicers. Many of those women were not even going to the clinic for abortions, but for other medical services.

Thinking about some of the stuff that goes at the clinic, it seems impossible to see where the protesters are coming from. Today, as a family walked away from the clinic after walking in with a client, a protester told a 5 year old that her mom was a murderer. Is this supportive, empowering, helpful, necessary, appropriate, and does it contain a shred of decency? No. Is that rude, insensitive, and incredibly small-minded? I think so. I also see it as inexcusable and unforgivable. For an adult to act that way is simply ridiculous. It seems like such an immature, below the belt low-blow sort of choice to make, something that any sane person would feel totally ashamed for having said. But to the protesters, that’s just another Saturday. This is just one example of how the protesters fail to provide support, or even be decent human beings.

I blanched and physically flinched at the photograph near the top of the blog with the huge photographic standee of an aborted foetus. I was furious that they had the bloody gall to print that and use it in their protest… furious, because it is a dirty tactic, horribly insensitive and damaging, not to even mention, without a single shred of compassion.

I had no idea that image triggered something in me that I did not know still existed; until I had an extremely vivid nightmare that very night about mutilated fetuses.

When I was a teenager in an all-girls’ public secondary school, a “family-counselling group” came to my school to educate us on sexuality issues. I remember that all of us were ushered into the school hall as usual for the weekly assembly; we were introduced to the counsellors who talked to us about abstinence, then launched into the main highlight of their talk.

It was a 10 minute video consisting of nothing but continuous images of aborted fetuses set to dramatic music. It was shown on the large screen and we were given no prior warning except “this may make you uncomfortable; if you are scared, close your eyes.”

We were not warned of the graphic content of the film. We were never given an option to miss the talk (unless you counted “close your eyes”) which was during school hours. My parents were not notified. We were even encouraged to watch the film because it was something we needed to know, “for our own good”. I kept my eyes open out of curiosity and because we were urged to, and I found myself unable to turn away because I was so completely shocked I could not react.

I remember freaking out when mid-way into the horror montage, a pink plastic model of a foetus was passed around and my classmate put it in my lap. I did not scream because I was so shocked I had no voice to scream but to hand off the plastic model to the next girl like a hot potato.

To this day I can still remember it so vividly that my stomach churns at the recollection — no other gore or horror film could do that to me. There was just something about the whole experience that affected me at a deeper level that other gore, shock, or graphic violent  images I’d been exposed to, did not.

Perhaps the counsellors, if they are reading my blog now, would be proud to learn how their “education programme” had been so memorable that I could vividly remember it even after a decade. Perhaps they thought the only way to “save” us hormonal 13-16 year old girls from the taint of pre-marital sex and losing our virginity was to scare us.

I remember exiting the talk not remembering anything of the abstinence information but with the firmest conviction that I will never, ever get pregnant, nor have any children. The first thing I said to my friend when it was all over, was, “It didn’t scare me off abortion. It scared me off babies. Forever.”

As an adult I still have occasional nightmares when I see such triggering images. I am angry, because infants are cute, beautiful, darling creatures, and yet that brief 10 minutes have completely ruined it for me. Today, I cannot look at a baby and not think of the horrific images in that film. I can’t look at someone’s ultrasound image of their baby and not think of dismemberment. I know deep down that I cannot picture myself being a mother, going through pregnancy, because I know I will always associate foetuses and unborn children with gore and horror and mutilation.

It is irrational, I know, but I cannot shake it off. Perhaps the majority of my classmates were unaffected and soon forgot about it. But the shadow of fear and disgust will always linger for me in the back of my mind.  They may not know what they have done, but I cannot forgive the people who condoned such a horrid tactic in the guise of “sexuality education”. It is most ironic that the same such groups often also call for greater censorship of media to protect children and teenagers from images of gore and violence.

I hesitated before writing the latter half of this entry, because I was afraid. But I made myself do it because being silent doesn’t help anyone. It’s surprising how much an impact such abstinence-only programs had on me, even though I was a cynical teenager and fairly rebellious and anti-establishment about things. There is a sort of psychological pressure at play that makes you swallow things hook line and sinker, especially if they were sanctioned by teachers and educators you respect in a school environment.