Abortion foes, accustomed to small wins, ready for a big one
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The first of them arrived outside the clinic past 4 a.m., before a steady rain fell and a scalding sun rose, and all along, they had prayed for a moment like this.
It’s abortion day at Planned Parenthood and, try as they might, those who lined the street hadn’t had much luck changing any minds.
Now, a patient pushes out of the center’s doors, limply drags her feet across the parking lot, 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.
One of the clinic’s rainbow-vested workers, Allison Terracio, sees what’s unfolding and cries, “They got one!”
A majority of Americans back abortion rights, and 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 is as alarmed as her opponents are hopeful.
As the patient walks away with the counselor, it feels as if every eye on the block has followed. The circle of praying Catholics, the smattering of evangelicals at every clinic driveway, even the lone protester here, Steven Lefemine, who stands by himself with a sign with a graphic photo of an aborted fetus, all seem riveted by the apparent change of heart.
“This is a glorious thing that’s happening here!” 66-year-old Lefemine exclaims.
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.
The possibility of looming success, perhaps undoing the constitutional right to abortion found in Roe v. Wade, isn’t talked about much here, though. That’s left to others entrenched in this fight. Those here on the front lines of the battle are focused on the task at hand: To change a single mind and, in their eyes, save a single life.
When that happens, Valerie Berry, the 27-yearold program manager for the biggest of the groups here, A Moment of Hope, says she’ll feel the tingle of goosebumps or the well of tears. Sometimes, she has burst into a joyous dance.
On this day, she’s not there yet with the patient who exited the clinic. But the woman is here beside her, sharing her story and openly discussing if there’s some way she can have another baby.
“It’s a miracle every time it happens,” Berry says. “In some ways, even a conversation is a miracle.”
Berry and a colleague lead the woman across the street from the clinic to their group’s idling RV, where she says she’s about seven weeks pregnant. She tells of a tough upbringing in foster care, an abusive partner who’s now out of the picture, the struggles of raising a 3-year-old, the problems with money, the hope of finding a new home and starting a career in music, all the things that seemed impossible even before her period failed to arrive and morning sickness started sapping her will.
Yet for all the reasons the woman lists to end her pregnancy, Berry feels encouraged that she’s reaching her. When she suggests the woman come see a doctor allied with her group who can prescribe something for the nausea while she weighs her decision, she is receptive. And when a colleague floats considering adoption, the flat rejection of the idea assures them.
“No,” they say the woman told them. “My child will be with me and we’ll just tough it out.”
The goosebumps return. Berry is tingling. Something miraculous is happening.
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 and the naïve 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 again.
And yet, here they are, all these years later, in the fight so long some have grandchildren at their side.
They made arguments about biology and fetal development that rarely swayed, then shifted to pleas rooted in civil rights and religion. They lobbied for laws on parental notification and waiting periods and licensing, really anything that might jeopardize an abortion facility’s operation, down to the width of its hallways. And, as a raging faction grew restless, some formed human blockades outside clinics or were driven, in the most extreme acts of anti-abortion radicalism, to plant a bomb, set a fire or draw a gun.
The image of an abortion opponent cemented in some Americans’ minds became a rabid protester shouting condemnation and clutching a gory sign, who would do anything to advance their cause, down to committing the very crime of murder they believe abortion to be.
Mark Baumgartner, the softspoken founder of A Moment of Hope, knows the caricature many have of anti-abortion figures like him. He shudders when noisy protesters show up here and wishes Lefemine didn’t bring his big foam signs. 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 53-yearold Baumgartner, who left behind his job as a pilot to create the organization. “At the start, in 2012, it was a one-man crusade. Now, Baumgartner leads a group of employees and volunteers big enough to stand outside Planned Parenthood every minute it’s open.
The first woman that Baumgartner approached a decade ago changed her mind, giving birth to a little girl whose picture hangs beside his office desk. It became the first of what the group regards as a “save,” when someone they’ve interacted with who planned to have an abortion changes their mind.
Inside the buildings where abortions are offered, workers say women who pass a throng of protesters will say: “They don’t know my life. They don’t know what I’m going through.” Outside, the sidewalk counselors say the arriving women often tell them: “Thank you for stopping me. I was hoping I would see some sort of sign not to go through with this.”
Inside, this is seen as a fundamental woman’s right, a type of healthcare that deserves no stigma attached. Outside, those who oppose abortion see it as pure evil that must be stopped.
Both sides see the truth as plain.
For so many who have been drawn to the anti-abortion cause, it’s baffling and frustrating how often their appeals feel unheard. It’s not 1973 anymore: They wonder how anyone could deny the scientific leaps, the advances in fetal viability, the way a heartbeat from inside the uterus can be heard and an image seen. To those with whom they disagree, they ask: Where is the line? When they hear talk of a fetus, an embryo, a clump of cells, they wonder, at what point will someone acknowledge it’s a baby?
So they return, time and again, to the pews where they pray for change, to the statehouses where they lobby, to the marches and protests where they chant. And they return here, to Middleburg Drive in South Carolina’s capital, beneath the magnolias and atop sunbaked swaths of asphalt, to plead their case.
In the long fight against abortion, there have been many days like this one. But they’ll return when the clinic reopens. They’ll return even if Roe falls. Many expect the fight to continue to their grave.
They’ve never felt more hopeful. A change, they are sure, is coming.