Abortion foes are ready for a big win
Activists hopeful Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned
Columbia, S.C. For tens of millions of Americans who see abortion as wrong, it’s gone this way for a half-century: One woman swayed to reconsider as dozens of others follow through. One clinic’s doors closed only to see desperate patients go elsewhere. One law passed, another overturned.
A movement built of tiny steps and endless setbacks, though, now seems poised for a massive leap, with the Supreme Court weighing undoing the constitutional right to abortion found in Roe v. Wade.
“Folks are more hopeful now than we have ever been,” says Mark Baumgartner, the 53-year-old founder of A Moment of Hope, an anti-abortion organization whose workers and volunteers stand outside the Planned Parenthood clinic here every minute it’s open. They try to engage women in conversation, talk them out of an abortion if they’re considering one, and offer support if they decide to go through with their pregnancy.
A majority of Americans backs abortion rights, and one of the clinic’s rainbowvested workers, 45-year-old Allison Terracio, believes the anti-abortion group’s sidewalk coterie uses trickery, empty promises and manipulation in the guise of kindness to sway women from something they’ve already carefully thought through. She says those due in to take an abortion pill or undergo a brief surgery have already thought through what they wanted and nothing Baumgartner and his crew can offer will change the circumstances of the prospective mother’s life.
On this day, the first of A Moment of Hope’s crew arrives before the sun even rises and, for hours, they haven’t had much luck changing minds. But now, a patient pushes out of the center’s doors and heads straight into the arms of an anti-abortion counselor who, a short while earlier, asked her not to do what she came here for.
The patient walks away with the counselor, and every eye on the block seems to follow. The circle of praying Catholics, the smattering of evangelicals at every clinic driveway, even the lone protester here, Steven Lefemine, all seem riveted by the apparent change of heart.
Talk to someone who’s been immersed in opposing abortion long enough and they’ll tell you the disbelief they felt when news of Roe broke in 1973 and the naive certainty they had that it would be overturned in a couple of years. They’ll tell you about the politicians who collected their votes and never delivered, and the judges seen as allies who went on to disappoint. They’ll tell you how the issue ended friendships or landed them in handcuffs or brought them heartache again and again. And yet, here they are, all these years later, in the fight so long some have grandchildren at their side. Last year, they estimate about 1,600 women had an abortion at the clinic. They logged 66 saves. They’ve never felt more hopeful. A change, they are sure, is coming.