I had a fairly intense confrontation yesterday with someone I know about the volunteers in front of the clinic. They were angry, and thought that volunteers were making “a circus” outside on the weekends.

Clearly, it’s kept me up tonight. And I have thoughts. So let’s chat.

1) the circus has been here for five years, and it damn sure wasn’t us or any volunteers who brought it.

It’s the 18,000+ protesters we see each year. 200-300 every Saturday.

EVERY. SATURDAY.

2) we have tried so hard to do the “non-confrontation” & passive defending. we’ve tried to go above and beyond the high expectations of how the city/police feel we should behave (this expectation is never shared with the antis).

It’s only resulted in escalating antis behavior.

3) you can’t make “good faith agreements”/be civil to people that want to take away human rights. there is no such thing as a “peaceful” racist/xenophobe/misogynist. Their core beliefs are violent in themselves, they are rooted in oppression.

you give an inch. they take a mile.

4) all this being said- volunteers absolutely try to minimize chaos around the clinic itself. they actively try to move the distractions from the clinic sidewalk to the protester’s property itself.

Antis can’t hurl insults at patients if they’re too busy being bothered by us.

5) sidewalks are public property. you can’t be a proponent of free speech and try to force me to tone-police the volunteers who are choosing to put their bodies on the line to prevent our harassment/intimidation.

you can’t have it both ways.

6) If your complaint has the words “kids,” “little girls,” “attention seeking,” or “tiktok” in it, just stop now. these volunteers have successfully used a medium to educate people about abortion & expose how awful these antis are.

don’t be mad they did what we couldn’t.

7) volunteers are allowed to be happy. just because they’re in front of an abortion clinic doesn’t mean they have to be f-ing miserable- abortion doesn’t have to be this heavy, sad thing.

sometimes, some of the worst abortion stigma comes from ourselves and our best intentions.

I’m tired of this. I have agonized for years about how to deal with this shit. lost countless nights of sleep. dealt with backlash from antis, colleagues, friends, strangers. made peace w/ the fact the target on my back keeps growing.

you’re not telling me anything new here.

lastly- stop trying to use my safety or my “family’s legacy” as a weapon against me. you didn’t give two shits about this when I got raped. you didn’t care about this when I found a bottle of acid outside my car, or got death threats, or was accosted in public.

my “family’s legacy” is fighting for abortion access. it may look different now, but life is different now. the passion and drive is still the same.

so don’t tell me how my parents/family would be ashamed of me. because frankly, you don’t know anything about us.