The Rice Thresher, Vol. 92, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, December 3, 2004 Page: 4 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2004
Saturday morning at the Fannin Street circus.
Pro-life activists think they are helping women, but is it just intimidation?
Crossing a street isn't difficult
—look left, then right, then left again.
It's a small routine in life that nobody
thinks about.
On Saturday, however, near the
Fannin Street office of Planned Parent-
hood, crossingis anything butroutine.
Client often run a gauntlet
of "sidewalk counselors"
thrusting brochures into
women's hands, protest-
ers holding signs aloft and
people praying softly to end
the evil—all while walking
to the clinic door.
By exiting her car, a
client does far more than
cross a street. She is laying
bare one of the deepest
divisions in U.S. politics
today: a division involving
religion, morality and, most of all, the
question of when life begins.
For three mornings, I talked to
protesters and escorts, and watched
the street. On one side are volunteer
escorts supporting free access to
medical clinics. They speak of privacy
and personal choice. On the other are
activists believing abortion — and
often contraception — is evil and
must be stopped. They speak of the
murder of innocents. Both think they
are helping women.
The first person a client encoun-
ters when exiting her car is an escort.
Neal Parker (Baker '64) is a Rice
alumnus and lecturer for WIES 301:
Introduction to Esperanto. He has
been escorting clients since 1999.
"It's really very interesting,"
Parker said. He wore sunglasses and
a baseball cap, the word "Choice"
printed across it. A wire ran from a
two-way radio clipped to his belt to his
ear, and a blue vest marked "Planned
Parenthood Volunteer" covered his
chest. Absent was his Rice class ring,
an effort to maintain anonymity from
activists.
"I mean, these people are nuts. It's
a new show every week," he said.
The escort's job is fairly self-ex-
planatory. "One of the things that I try
to do is to engage the client in conver-
sation," Parker said. "It's a distraction.
One of the things that I normally tell
the client is that they don't know why
you're here. I don't know why you're
here. It's none of my business, and
none of their business."
According to Planned Parent-
hood, only 6.8 percent of procedures
performed at this clinic are abortions.
And yet virtually every woman is
confronted.
"Even if they're not here for an
abortion, they're supporting the abor-
tionists," Ethelene Marshall said.
James
Sulak
Marshall, a motherly-looking
woman with short hair and glasses,
is what antiabortion activists call a
"sidewalk counselor." Whenever a
client emerges from the parking lot,
Marshall approaches, hand extended
andholdingabrochure, suchas"What
Every Christian Needs to
Know About Abortion."
She's not shy. As I watched,
Marshall followed clients
and their escorts across
the street, pleading with
them to turn around, and
condemned the clinic em-
ployees for supporting such
evil. More than one client
shrank away from her.
In Marshall's mind, she
is not being cruel, she is
just showing tough love.
"We're here to help women," she
said. "I want to look them in the eye
and just let them know that if there's
anything we can do to help, just don't
go in there."
She grew visibly distraught when
talking about the emotional toll of
abortions, about how hard it is to live
with the decision, about tearing up on
the "birth date" of the aborted.
"It hurts, it hurts bad," Marshall
said. Her concern for clients seems
entirely sincere and driven wholly by
her faith in God.
"I feel like I'm on God's side,"
she said.
There's the usual
crowd; the escorts and
activists are familiar
with each other.
Scores of non-religious people
believe abortion is morally wrong.
But none are here. Faith drives these
activists, faith affirms their righteous-
ness, and faith allows them to dismiss
the bounds of normal, respectful
human behavior. Devoid of faith, I
wonder how many could confront
a stranger about the most personal
of choices.
Helen Posvar, president of Hous-
ton Coalition for Life, is obviously
driven by her convictions. At first,
she said, it was difficult to confront
people.
"Because I'm a huge introvert,
it's real hard for me to get over
that," she said. "But once you do it
the first time, you just put a smile on
your face, and remind yourself that
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these people are human beings, and
they're coming here because they
don't know better."
The women crossing the street
are not the only targets of activism.
"We also pray for the employees,"
Marshall said. As she talked, a client
and an escort walked by. "I don't know
if they don't have a conscience," she
yelled, looking at the escort, "or if
they don't care about women and
babies or if they need the money."
In fact, no volunteers escorting
women receive monetary compensa-
tion. Try telling Marshall that. "Mon-
ey is the bottom line in these places,"
Marshall said. She was convinced
that escorts, despite the "volunteer"
label, start at $12 per hour.
"Do you really think that they
would come out here every Saturday
and walk them in without being well-
paid?" she said.
When I pointed out that she does,
she laughed and said, "Yes, but I'm
doing God's work."
Marshall's convictions are strong.
So strong, in fact, that it seems dif-
ficult for her to imagine how people
could disagree with her morality. It
would be easy to dismiss her as crazy.
But is she? Just as so many people
stared at the television in disbelief
as the presidential election results
rolled in—what are those 51 percent
of Americans thinking?—she cannot
comprehend how anyone could hon-
estly condone what goes on inside
Planned Parenthood.
After all, when she truly believes
that abortion kills innocent humans,
when her absolute authority of knowl-
edge — the Bible — tells her "Thou
shalt not kill," anything that contra-
dicts this cannot be correct. Anybody
who disagrees cannot be both honest
and moral. Lackingaconscience, they
must be motivated by greed.
Posvar said she thinks Planned
Parenthood is in the business of
selling abortions, and the escorts are
there to prevent women from having
second thoughts and leaving.
"1 think that the women (escorts!
are post-abortive and the men are ho-
mosexual," Posvar said. Although she
qualifies this as a "gross generaliza-
tion," it is still a disturbing stereotype.
She's not alone. Marshall pointed out
which men she believes are gay, and
two sign-holding men decried the
sins of "gay" escorts.
Just like Marshall, many escorts
cannot comprehend the activists,
calling them "nuts" or, at the very
least, an intellectual curiosity.
"Now one of the interesting
things is that I'm willing to concede
sincerity to them, but they're not
JAMES SULAK/THRESHER
Members of Rice for Life pray outside the gates of the Fannin Street office of
Planned Parenthood.
willing to concede sincerity to us,"
Parker said.
For all of this conllict and disagree-
ment, what is most striking about a
Saturday morning in front of Planned
Parenthood is that it all seems so ...
normal. There's a usual crowd; the
escorts and activists are familiar with
each other.
"Generally, they know the rules,"
Parker said.
Scores of non-religious
people believe abortion
is morally wrong.
But none are here.
But for a client trying to cross
the street, it cannot possibly be
routine or normal or even sane.
Every time a woman passed,
dogged by an activist, every time
a haggard man looked at her and
held up a sign asking how many
babies the doctor had killed, I had
to look away. I could not add to the
public spectacle being made out of
someone's private life.
Maybe it is just because 1 do not
see abortion as murder, but ulti-
mately, despite every attempt to see
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both sides and understand people I
disagree with, I could not shake my
gut aversion to this street circus.
Removed from its context, the faith
and conviction of the activists are mov-
ing, even if their methods are not They
are giving their time to help strangers
in the ways they think best. After all,
one of the greatest rights we have as
Americans is freedom of speech. But
just because it is a right does not mean
it is pretty. Abortion is an ambiguous
moral issue, and it should be talked
about, openly and honestly. This street,
however, is not the best venue.
It certainly is not a venue for
the worst of the antiabortion move-
ment. Some people working under
the pro-life banner do terrible,
intimidating things, using faith in
an absolute moral principle as jus-
tification. They set up cameras to
take pictures of clients, they mark
down license plate numbers, they
pressure contractors to boycott
clinic construction.
There is even violence. On
March 7, 2003, Frank Bird Jr. drove
a delivery van through the entrance
of the Fannin Street office of Planned
Parenthood. Fortunately, no one
was hurt.
It is important not to paint the
whole antiabortion movement or,
worse, all those who question the
morality of abortion, with a broad
brush. Those who attack clinics or
aggressively pursue women across
the street do not represent the main-
stream in either tactics or belief.
They do not even represent
many activists. Members of Rice for
Life have carpooled to the clinic on
Saturday mornings for much of this
semester. Standing on the sidewalk
opposite the clinic entrance, they
softly prayed and sang, keeping to
themselves. A pair handed out pam-
phlets but, quiet and polite, they
were no Ethelene Marshall. They
are new to "sidewalk counseling"
and don't look comfortable.
As it started to rain, it did not
look like the conflict would ever be
resolved. When an escort and an
activist watch a woman approach,
they see the same shapes and
colors, and hear the same sounds,
but there the similarity ends. The
activist sees a woman, guided by
conscienceless escorts, about to
make a mistake. The escort sees a
group of activists, crazy and intimi-
dating, spouting nonsense.
Working from different assump-
tions and speaking in different
languages, they just talk past each
other. Listening to them, I cannot
escape the conclusion that they are
actually standing, side by side, on
completely different streets.
James Sulak is a Hanszen College
senior and former opinion editor.
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Gilbert, Lindsey & Yardley, Jonathan. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 92, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, December 3, 2004, newspaper, December 3, 2004; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth398440/m1/4/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.