The day before yesterday I went for a run. I was on vacation so I was running someplace new. My Strava route took me past a cemetery. Cemeteries are pretty good to run in, because the chances of you getting run over by a car are low.
I am also a new runner, so I have to distract myself from thinking about how much discomfort I am in. I did this by reading gravestones. The cemetery I was running in was around in the mid-1800s, so I was getting a kick out of the older dates. Then I came across a couple’s stone — you know, the kind where you are buried next to your spouse? The woman had died, with an epitaph that read: “Honored mother and grandmother”. On the same stone was one of those half-dates, where the man was still obviously alive (1939- ), but he already had his epitaph waiting: “Honored father and grandfather.”
This disturbed me for some reason, and I was trying to get my mind around it. Why did this bother me? Finally I came to the conclusion that this living epitaph was...well, waiting for him. This was his end, the summary of everything that was important to him and about him in the man’s life. It bothered me, because I have no idea what mine would say.
Since I wrote my diary 35 Feet in June of 2014, describing the security issues at Planned Parenthood (and other abortion providers), I have returned to work there. A few months after I wrote that diary I got a call from a friend with an offer I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t even hesitate very long.
For a while, everything was okay. Usual status quo — a few nutters, pay attention — but nothing out of the ordinary for us.
Then the falsified tapes came out, and our lives exploded. Arsons (underreported), exponential increases in hostile protests, trespassing, harassment, death threats. Hacking attempts daily. Bogus “Congressional investigations”. Illegal attempts to drop us from Medicaid. State “surprise” audits and no public retractions when they found nothing. Hateful presidential candidate rhetoric. Constant defunding threats.
And then yesterday.
I followed the Twitter feed live, which very well may be the source of this absolute, unmitigated rage I feel. It is enveloping and like a dark, black velvet stole. I followed for hours. I watched anti-choicers simultaneously attempt to make this first sound like anything but what it was, then try and distance themselves (no, Live Action, no one needs your prayers, you started all of this tape stuff, really), and then just flat come out and say they couldn’t possibly care since these were murderers and “murders happen at PP every day”.
Then I watched everyone else’s agendas get inserted. While everything that was being said was true (yes, he definitely would not have walked out of there unscathed if he were a person of color; yes, if people were intellectually consistent we would be asking Christian leaders to condemn the attack; yes, we should not be afraid of refugees, worry more about men...well, men like this), only a few people got the real point, a point that was never picked up widely by the MSM: there were already bulletproof vests in that health center.
The public does not seem to understand what it is like, to live like this...to go to work hoping that you will make a difference in someone else’s life, and risk injury, stalking, or maybe death to provide that.
As the day wore on and the Twitter feed moved and people attempted to make it a bank robbery (at a bank ¼ mile away) or a coincidental hideout, my black velvet stole got larger, tighter, more enveloping. It was not particularly uncomfortable, a fact somewhat disturbing in itself.
Suddenly, I realized, around about hour 5, that no one in my family had called me to check in.
After a while I texted them and said that I was still waiting to hear if I knew any of the injured or dead. I got one, “well, we don’t know what happened, I’ve been following it” and one “I didn’t even know this was going on.” I got into it with the “we don’t know what happened” person because they did know about it and still didn’t think that perhaps this issue might have affected me, and the news source was, you guessed it, FOX. So all of a sudden I was fighting with my family about the idea that they should have asked if I was emotionally okay or not.
I stopped talking to them. It wasn’t their fault really...they are just like everyone else out there.
I watched a few people on Twitter shrug verbally. And then a few #IStandWithPPs. A couple of donations. That was something at least.
I couldn’t talk to my husband, still can’t. Poor man, he wants to help, but is unsure how. He is supportive, but he is only one person. The whole day I watched the toxic sludge underneath our country move. Reporters asking the same questions over and over. The tenacity of the bank robbery spin.
I thought I was very sad. Maybe I am sad. But I think rage is a better descriptor. Rage because people don’t care to know what it’s like to be afraid just providing legal and essential healthcare, and then still get up to go to work every day. So they just don’t think about it. Rage because you know that there is nothing stopping someone on your block from doing the very same thing this guy did, on any given day. Rage that all of a sudden it’s about the hypocrisy of #bluelivesmatter and the silence of #realDonaldTrump. Rage that when I sit next to someone on a plane and they ask what I do, I lie, because I have no idea who they are or what they believe.
Rage because it could be me, it could be my friends next. All because of lies and doctored video, hatemongering, ignorance, and terror unnamed for what it is.
And rage because...and yet, “we don’t know his motives.” “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.” “He’s not representative of all pro-lifers”. “I didn’t even know about it/FOX says we don’t know anything”. We DO know. It’s happened over and over. Progressives, in my view, are mostly ignoring what it is like to be people like me, to advocate for us, because it is uncomfortable and frightening and they hope it goes away instead. Where is the million person women’s rights march? The camp outs on Congress’s doorstep? SCOTUS protests? Lawsuits are great, but they take years. They will close us down due to this terror campaign before that and many progressives are...Twitter warriors? Why are progressives anemic in their reaction?
In 35 feet, I wrote:
That was the day I broke. I left that job not too long after that. I realized that nothing is going to stop the coming violence, and for the rest of my life when the inevitable happened on my watch I would never be able to live with it because I would feel responsible for not being able to protect staff and patients. Anti-choicers have been very successful, because everyone else minimizes how often this happens and how terrible it is. Everyone thinks the nail bombs are few and far between. Because everyone has been so apathetic...women are going to die, and people are going to get shot, stabbed, and blown up.
When Progressives are not loud enough, they leave us to get up in the morning, in cold silence, and go to work regardless of events like this. You asking a lot of us. They are active, why aren’t we? Why don’t we hear you? NARAL, you are raising grassroots money every time this happens on our backs (I see your emails) but when was the last time you did a counter protest? Antis are more than Twitter warriors -- they are true believers, and they are winning.
Days like yesterday, watching the barely contained smugness by some folks on my feed (“I remember millions of anti-choicers celebrating yesterday”) I wonder again why we, as reproductive health workers, bother. Is this worth dying for? Are people like this, who after all are choosing their own destiny — even if that means driving all of us off a cliff — worth dying to spite?
I don’t know the answer to that. Yes, it is gratifying to know that we help women, but not many women are willing to say they had an abortion, and the few that do get death threats in return, and so these voices are drowned in press conferences, presidential debates, and defunding circuses. I think whether it is worth it is a question I may ask myself for the foreseeable future as I get up in the morning and go to work.
After thinking about it for many hours, I still don’t know what my epitaph would reflect. I hope that ultimately it is something positive, and that I am not buried in this black velvet wrap.