Crosses to Bear
At the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Bryan, questions of faith, conscience, biology, and politics collide every day on the front lines of the new war over abortion.
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On Wednesdays, an average of fifteen women arrive to terminate their pregnancies. Each patient is met in the parking lot by two Planned Parenthood escorts, who briskly walk her past the protesters that line the fence. "Mom, we're praying for you!" they might call out as she walks by. Inside, the chaos recedes. The clinic is sterile, white, and orderly, its linoleum floors polished to a glossy sheen. The walls are lined with pastel Georgia O'Keeffe posters, displays of sex-education brochures ("Teen Sex? It's Okay to Say No Way!"), and the occasional feminist exhortation ("You vote, girl!"). A sign next to the Coke machine proclaims "We respect our clients' dignity and intelligence." The waiting room is crowded with a cross section of society, from middle-aged Hispanic women with children in tow to ponytailed students, a few of whom lean into the crook of a boyfriend's arm. Some absent-mindedly flip through fashion magazines or stare at the TV, taking in the gauzy romance of The Young and the Restless. All around them are the mixed messages of a culture that says sex is good but pretends that there are no consequences. "Guys Tell What's Sexy (And Not Sexy) in Bed" announces a worn copy of Glamour, while Redbook promises to teach "The Secret Sex Move He's Got to Feel to Believe."
A glance around the waiting room makes it clear that unintended pregnancy is a great leveler. Whether women are privileged or poor, black or white, Catholic or Baptist, they all occupy seats in the waiting room. A few of the youngest ones, the teenagers among them, have braces and chew bubble gum. Not all of them agree with the notion that abortion should be readily available; some tell the nurses they believe abortion is a sin but say that their particular circumstances warrant an exception. Each woman has her reason for being in the waiting room: She does not want to drop out of school; she has just filed for divorce; she does not believe she can provide for another child or raise one alone. They are there because of slipped condoms, forgotten pills, faulty IUDs, wishful thinking, or just plain ignorance, which observes no boundaries of class, race, or education. A few teenagers swear they have never had sex or believe that the sex they did have could not possibly have resulted in pregnancy. "It was my first time," they explain, or "We did it standing up." The poorest women among them have never had so much as a pelvic exam. They all share a sense of urgency. A few seem truly desperate. The nurses still talk about the waitress who saved up her tips and paid for her abortion in cash, mostly in $1 bills.
Before a woman can see the doctor, she must have a sonogram to determine how far her pregnancy has advanced; the clinic does not perform abortions past the first trimester. She must also meet with a counselor—either a social worker or a nurse—to discuss her options. If the counselor believes she has been pressured by a boyfriend, for example, the clinic will send her away, with a referral to an adoption agency if it is requested. "Some women will say up front, 'I believe this is murder and it's wrong,'" said Santos. "Or it can be more subtle. They won't make eye contact, or they tear up in the waiting room. I say, 'What are the tears about?' and we talk about it. If she is hesitant, I'll send her home and tell her to think things over." The emotions that rise to the surface in the counseling room are not easily labeled. Some women cry; most are resolute. A few agonize over whether their decision is selfish. All speak of the relief they expect to feel afterward. Some pose the questions that they would not dare ask anywhere else: "Is there a heartbeat?" (Yes, from seven weeks on.) "How big is it?" (The counselor will hold up a ruler.) And occasionally they ask, "Will God forgive me?" (Counselors reply, "Do you believe God is a forgiving god?")
Before the clinic began offering abortions, in 1999, the questions were simpler. It first opened one block from the Texas A&M campus in College Station in 1975. Women had recently begun attending the historically all-male military school and had few ways to obtain low-cost birth control. Santos, a sturdy, no-nonsense woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a dry sense of humor, has worked at the clinic since 1980, when she started out as the receptionist. As she moved up the ranks, she saw the need for a clinic that would offer abortions. "Women in this part of East Texas had to drive to Waco or Houston," she said. "We felt they should not have to travel hundreds of miles for this procedure." In the mid-nineties Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas began a capital campaign to raise the necessary money for a larger, more secure clinic in the Brazos Valley where abortions could be performed. Santos knew that the BryanCollege Station area was, like most of this stretch of East Texas, politically conservative and deeply religious, but she was not prepared for the resistance she met. When no one in College Station would rent property to Planned Parenthood for the clinic, the organization bought land in Bryan.
"Local businesses were pressured not to work with us," Santos said. "Electricians turned us down. The security company backed out. The plumber would not park his company van outside. The gates, the fences, the roof—everything came from out of town. The contractor drove in from Houston. Even people who had done business with us for twenty years were afraid." She did not know at the time that it was the beginning of a long and ugly war.
THE DOCTOR WALKED INTO THE room and sat down on a stool at the woman's feet. He was a portly, white-haired man in green scrubs who smelled like soap. He had the genial manner of a doctor who listens well. He smiled and introduced himself.
"Are you from Bryan?" he asked her.
"No. I live in _____," she said, naming a small town in East Texas.
"What do you do there?"
She worked at a discount store, she said.
"Do you like it?"
"No. I get a headache every time I walk in there," she said. "I want to go back to school."
"What do you want to study?" asked a nurse.
"Broadcast journalism," she said. She smiled for the first time that morning. "Put me in the spotlight and I shine."
The doctor was busy now. He examined the grainy black-and-white sonogram before him, which indicated that she was seven weeks pregnant. A tiny white oval, the size of a small coin, lay at the bottom of a dark sea that rose and fell.
LONG BEFORE THERE WAS A clinic, there were prayers. Before the grassy patch of land on Twenty-ninth Street was surveyed or the ground broken or the foundation laid, Christians gathered in protest. The property was still shaded by scrub trees when demonstrators first assembled there, holding candles in the winter chill. They came on Valentine's Day of 1998, after the BryanCollege Station Eagle ran an article about Planned Parenthood's purchase of the land. During the weeks that followed, people gathered there each night to declare their opposition. Students strummed guitars and sang worship songs. Church groups stood in the cold, bearing witness. People passing by stopped to bow their heads and count the rosary: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. "We were angry that Planned Parenthood was bringing abortion into a community that is so family-oriented and traditional," said Lauren Gulde, a 27-year-old mother of two who believes that the clinic's work involves the taking of human life. "People here want to live good, wholesome lives," she said. "We couldn't just let this happen. We had to do something."
Gulde, who was then working as a church secretary at St. Mary's Catholic Center, organized a strategy meeting for like-minded people that February—a call to action for the pro-life community. She had reserved the St. Mary's library for the gathering, but so many people showed up that the crowd was moved into the main sanctuary. All told, 450 people from thirty churches of varying denominations attended. "People overcame major differences about doctrine to unite over this issue," said A&M English professor Bedford Clark, the faculty sponsor of Aggies for Life. "It was a triumph of ecumenicism." The conversation continued late into the evening and sparked the creation of the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life. Gulde became its executive director, and that spring she set up shop in a donated office space up the street from the Planned Parenthood property. Like most people involved in the coalition, she felt that she was answering to a higher power. "That's what God's plan was for me," she said. Gulde and a new board of directors settled on a guiding principle: that life is sacred from conception to natural death. (Execution is murder, they hold, because man is not the author of life.) Their mission statement read, simply, "To love, respect, and protect life."
During the final phases of the clinic's construction that fall, Gulde penned a fundraising letter to coalition members that showed the depth of her devotion to the cause. "What I'm about to tell you will make your blood boil!" she wrote. "My Friend for Life, imagine a savage killer who has vowed to destroy your children right here in Bryan/College Station! Is there any expense that you would not spare to make sure that you STOPPED him? Of course not! You'd DO anything, GIVE anything, and SACRIFICE anything to save the precious lives of your babies!" She went on to ask for their prayers, but despite her efforts the clinic opened the following spring, in 1999. "We stood outside and prayed on the first abortion day," recalls Amber Matchen, an A&M graduate who joined the ranks of the coalition as its outreach coordinator. "There was an ominous feeling of death around. We were awestruck by what was taking place inside this ordinary-looking building. Lives were being taken right here in our town." The powerlessness that she and many coalition members felt as they looked on, week after week, was demoralizing. Though protesters still turned out on days when abortions were performed, many had a sense that their mission was foundering.
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