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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Bereit vigorously denies that the coalition has had any involvement. "The mailings are tasteless and uncharitable and go completely against our mission," he said. "We are a Christian organization, and we adamantly oppose these tactics. Can I guarantee that whoever is behind the mailings is not someone who has stood with us outside the clinic? No. I wish I could police every single person who thinks as I do, because these mailings are counter-productive to our cause." The coalition does, Bereit acknowledged, keep a logbook in which patients' license plate numbers have been recorded. Its purpose, he explained, is to collect information that can be handed over to the police "in case protesters are harassed and the police need to contact witnesses." Now, coalition members make note of no more than the first three characters of clients' tags. "We have to be above reproach not only in our actions but in our appearance," he said.
Bereit's denials have done little to convince the clinic's employees that the coalition will not use underhanded tactics if proven effective. Inside the clinic, a mood of fear and suspicion prevails. Santos often stands in her office behind the half-drawn gray blinds, surveying the fence line. Outside, the clinic's escorts stand at attention, poker-faced, staring back at the protesters from behind dark sunglasses. As in war, the women who work at the clinic share a fierce camaraderie. They gather on breaks to talk in the kitchen, where a pot of coffee is always brewing, finding solace in conversation. They do not talk about the toll that this battle has taken: the nurses who have left because of the harassment, the therapy that employees have sought to manage the psychological stress, the nightmares about people—real or imagined—who might do them harm. Instead they talk about the news, their children, their plans for the weekend. Every effort is made to keep up appearances. "There is a constant siege mentality," Berigan said. "It wears on all of them. Dyann feels responsible for the safety of everyone who works there, and that is a big burden to carry."
If the women who work at the clinic agonize over the question that some of their patients do—when does life begin?—they do so privately. The intensity of the opposition leaves no room for ambivalence. They all share the conviction that women, not the protesters outside, should have the right to control their own bodies. But they do not spend their time in abstract discussions about ideology; their days are consumed by the practical realities of providing a medical procedure that no one else in this part of East Texas is willing to offer. They feel a responsibility to do so despite the personal cost. Just as the coalition finds purpose in the sonogram images of the fetus, so the clinic's employees find purpose in the stories of the desperate women who come to them: the college student who was raped, the woman in an abusive marriage, the pregnant twelve-year-old. When asked why she does her work, Santos did not cite familiar arguments or political slogans about a woman's right to choose. "We provide a service that is needed," she said simply. "The people who want to shut this clinic down have not walked in these women's shoes. Women don't struggle with these decisions lightly. They do a lot of soul searching. They—" she gestured toward the protesters outside—"try to make the complex simple. In what I do, I see the complexity of life."
WHILE THE DOCTOR WENT ABOUT his work, the nurse kept the patient engaged in conversation. The light sedation she had requested had begun to flow from an intravenous tube, and as it eased the tension of the morning, she began to relate her story. "I used to have my life all planned out," she told the nurse. She had been an honors student in high school, she said, and she had planned to go to college on a scholarship. Then she had gotten pregnant when she was seventeen. "So I never got to go to college," she said. "I had my daughter." She sighed and gazed up at the ceiling. "I love her so much. She is so precious to me."
"How old is she?" the nurse asked.
"She's three. She's so smart."
"Do you read to her?"
"All the time."
Below her, out of her line of vision, the plastic tube that led from her uterus filled with blood. The trail of red sputtered along until there was no more. When the doctor was finished, he pushed his stool away from the examining table and looked up at his patient. All told, the procedure itself had taken little more than a minute. "We're done," he said. "We'll do an ultrasound just to make sure."
She closed her eyes. Under the blanket, her body slackened. "Thank you," she said.
ON A HUMID MORNING IN early May, when the heat was already starting to rise off the pavement, the Coalition for Life held a Mother's Day prayer vigil next to the clinic. Hundreds of tiny white crosses stood in the grass along the sidewalk in a makeshift memorial to the unborn. Around them stood a crowd of nearly one hundred people. Young women in sundresses fanned themselves. Towheaded children sat, flushed, in the grass. Retirees in folding chairs shaded themselves with umbrellas. Tied to several strollers were balloons that read "God is pro-life." After prayers and songs and testimonies, David Bereit, wearing a dark suit in spite of the heat, fired up the audience. He stood atop a plywood platform and launched into a litany of grievances against Planned Parenthood. "For more than four years this organization has poured out lies and misinformation!" he cried, gripping the podium. "For more than four years they have poisoned our community with harmful messages and 'lifestyle choices' that result in death and destruction!" His speech was a call to action, an exhortation to each of the coalition's supporters to continue protesting during the hot summer months that lay ahead.
As Bereit laid out his case, he invoked stark images of evil, speaking of the "awful darkness that blocks the sun from this place." Behind him, coalition volunteers had hung an American flag at half-staff. "On Wednesday morning, Planned Parenthood brought their contract abortionist to town," Bereit told the crowd. "And in the first few hours of the day at this facility, he went from room to room to room, systematically cutting seventeen tiny children, limb from limb, destroying their bodies before suctioning them out of their mothers' wombs." His voice grew more insistent as he spoke of the toll. "In a sense, we are all involved in the death of these seventeen children this week, because we tolerated the opening of this horrific facility here. We tolerated their poisonous rhetoric of choice. We tolerated the weekly slaughter of innocent children while going about our oh-so-busy lives. We tolerated the lie that human life is only sacred when it is wanted by another. We tolerated the intolerable!" Overcome with emotion, one woman kneeled on the grass before him and began to weep. Bereit urged the audience to show their opposition. "With God on our side, victory will ultimately be achieved!" he said, as the crowd cheered and applauded.
Several weeks later, the Texas Legislature handed huge victories to abortion opponents. Among the bills that were passed was the Prenatal Protection Act, which defines a fertilized egg as an "individual." The act allows for criminal charges to be filed if a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus is killed. Although the act exempts abortion, it lays the groundwork for future court cases that could test Roe v. Wade. The Woman's Right to Know Act requires a 24-hour waiting period for abortions; clinics must offer to show photographs of fetuses to women who are considering the procedure and inform them that abortion will possibly increase their chance of developing breast cancer—a claim refuted by the American Cancer Society. But the most sweeping action was a new law prohibiting organizations that provide abortions from receiving any state funding. Current laws already prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions. But the effect of the law will be to eliminate state funding for a host of non-abortion-related services offered by clinics like the one in Bryan, from Pap smears to birth control. For Planned Parenthood, at whom this bill was directly targeted, it will mean a loss of some $13 million per year in Texas. Many of its clinics will have to turn away patients who cannot pay for birth control. While the law is intended to deter clinics from providing abortions, the consequence will likely be a rise in unplanned pregnancies, thus defeating the intent of the bill. The rider was sponsored by Steve Ogden, the state senator from Bryan. Ogden spoke at a coalition event in January, and his father, Emil, is one of the coalition's most generous donors.
And so the battle over abortion continues outside the clinic in Bryan. For a war, it has an odd predictability to it. Each morning the foot soldiers assume their posts on opposite sides of the fence. The protesters come in straw hats, smeared in sunscreen, with bottles of cold water and placards and rosaries. The escorts stand, stone-faced, at the entrance. Both sides keep logs, noting each other's movements. There are moments, every now and then, of everyday humanity—the days when one side wishes the other a Merry Christmas or comments on the weather or compliments someone on a new pair of shoes. And then they remember that they are in a battle. It does no good to talk to the enemy. They retreat to their posts, where they stand and stare at each other, again, through the fence. Each night they leave, only to return the next day. The impasse remains. Lost in the shouting on both sides is the woman at the center of the storm.
SHE WAS HELPED INTO A wheelchair and pushed down the hall into the recovery room, where there were heating pads and ibuprofen and cups of apple juice. A nurse guided her into a recliner and draped a damp washcloth across her forehead. Two other patients sat nearby, exhausted, their eyes closed. She and I talked for a while—about her hopes for the future, her job, her daughter. "I want to do what's best for her," she said. Under the fluorescent lights, she looked much older than twenty. The strain of the morning was plain to see; her face was tired but softened by the comfort of conversation. We talked until the other patients had left the room.
Before I left her alone with her thoughts, she grew somber. "I talked to the baby last night," she said suddenly, in a near whisper. "I used to talk to my daughter when I was pregnant with her. I told her stories and sang her songs. But I never talked to this one." Her eyes began to water. "Last night I got into bed and I talked to it. I told it that I wanted to bring it into the world someday, when I wasn't struggling so hard."
The self-control she had maintained all morning vanished. Tears streamed down her face. "I'm struggling so hard right now," she said. "I asked the baby to please forgive me."
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