Abortion foes, accustomed to small wins, ready for a big one
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-yearold 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 rainbow-vested 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.
“I'm not in the business of convincing anybody of anything,” Terracio says.
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.
“This is a glorious thing that's happening here!” 66-year-old Lefemine exclaims.
Baumgartner knows the caricature many have of anti-abortion figures like him. He shudders when noisy protesters show up. He knows a woman arriving here may see everyone on the street the same, but if he could just have her ear for a moment, he thinks he can convince her.
“They're expecting to get yelled at that they're going to hell,” says Baumgartner, who left behind his job as a pilot to create the organization. “We're here to be different.”