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.”

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