Even a Pandemic Can't Stop Clinic Harassment

In case you missed it, states around the country are attempting to attack access to abortion by taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic and manipulating the definition of “essential health services.” While abortion providers are under pressure due to maintaining the safety of staff and patients, handling state-by-state legislative attacks, and continuing to provide essential and time-sensitive health care, they face an additional, unnecessary stressor; anti-abortion protestors ignoring public health protocol and crowding the entrance of clinics. While abortion clinics are simply trying to provide reproductive health care during a turbulent time, anti-abortion protestors are blatantly disregarding the safety and health of others. We talk to Calla Hales, executive director of A Preferred Women’s Health Center, about clinic harassment outside of and during this unprecedented pandemic.

Even when there isn’t a global crisis, harassment is very common outside of abortion clinics. Last year, Calla’s clinic saw over 18,000 in-person protestors. But in-person protesting is not the only way that clinics face abuse; online and mail-based harassment against clinics and abortion providers is often unmanageable. Some anti-abortion protestors use amplified sound tactics to harass clinics, forcing staff to wear earplugs during their day-to-day. Vandalism is also usual, with clinics experiencing things like broken windows and chalk-messages in parking lots.

Since the rise of COVID-19, conservative lawmakers are using the pandemic to curb and outlaw abortion care by referring to it as a “non-essential health service.” Reproductive health care needs don’t just disappear in the middle of a crisis, and these efforts to limit abortion will likely cause an uptick in forced births, chronic health conditions, and more.

Links from this episode

National Abortion Federation
Statistics on Clinic Harassment and Violence (NAF)
Abortion AF
National Network of Abortion Funds

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back, a podcast where we explore all things reproductive health, rights and justice. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and I'll be helping you stay informed around issues like birth control, abortion, sex education and LGBTQ issues and much, much more-- giving you the tools you need to take action and fight back. Okay, let's dive in.

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Jennie: Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of RePROs Fight Back, live from my closet. So as everybody is currently trapped at home, because of the pandemic, I am recording from my closet instead of the nice studio we have in our office. So a couple of things you may have to put up with this sound quality might not be as good, but I'm doing my best. But you also may have to put up with my cats. I was trying to think of what the right solution would be to keep them from being in the background on things, but there wasn't going to be one. You know, I could try and lock them out of the room I'm in, but they would probably just sit outside the door and cry and you would hear that. So hopefully they're not going to be too distracting or sit there and cry at me while I'm recording but no promises. But you know, that's where we're all at right now. I hope everybody's doing okay. I'm doing good. I am working from home and luckily I am not going too stir crazy. I think I've mentioned this before but I'm an only child and I grew up in kind of a rural area and I went to Catholic school in town so I didn't know anybody that lived around me. So I spent a lot of my time by myself as a kid. I am better mentally prepared for some of this. And I think I'm also an introvert, so I think I'm really lucky in that this really isn't too bad for me. I'm, you know, reading and you know, chatting with some friends online, but I haven't been going too stir crazy being trapped at home, which is nice. I hope everybody is doing well though. I know a lot of people are really struggling right now for so many reasons and just know that we're here for you. Like I said, I've been reading, I've been watching, you know, endless Netflix or Hulu or whatever. Right now, I'm getting close to finishing up the Americans, which is exciting. That's awesome. I forgot what's next. I don't really know what I'm going to move to next. So if anybody has any recommendations, always feel free to reach out. Same with books. If you have any good books I should be reading, but today's project I think is going to be, so I have been doing some bread baking, but as I'm sure a lot of people have seen, there's a shortage of yeast and flour quite often at stores right now. So that has made it a little more difficult because I didn't get a chance to stock up too much before.

Jennie: So I'm almost out of yeast, which is a bummer, but it's… I am going to start making a sourdough starter. It's something that when I talked about earlier with my new year, things I wanted to do in the new year was do some things that scared me. And for some reason doing sourdough and sourdough starter was always really intimidating to me. I'm trapped at home right now for who knows how long I'm going to do it, why not? I will keep everybody updated, but I'm going to start this starter today I think. But anyway, by the time you hear this, I will have started it for sure. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I will be able to make some sourdough bread. I'm looking forward to that. So yeah, I think with that, there's just a lot happening right now with just everything but with um, states trying to take advantage of the pandemic by attacking access to abortion by saying it's not an “essential service” and trying to close abortion clinics, which obviously abortion isn't an essential service, that there's a time restriction on it. You need an abortion when you need an abortion, you can't put it off for months. So, you know, this is really upsetting. And it looks like it's going to be going through the courts. And so I'm recording this the Thursday before this comes out, so it's April 2nd-- so things may have changed between now and when you're listening to it, but it looks like it's going to be have to go up to the Supreme Court to figure out if states can do that. So hopefully we'll have some good rulings. But it's a really scary time for so many people for so many reasons. But I'm really feeling bad for the people who are in states who are trying to access abortion care and who have had their clinics or their appointments canceled. Just know that I'm really thinking about the people who are struggling right now and have the added burden of not being able to get the abortion they need. We’ll be talking about that a little bit today in my interview, but just wanted to put that up top. So what I am doing around that is I've also been doing some donating. There’s lots of places where you can give your money right now to places that need help. I have given to a number of things. So one of them was crooked media had a donation fund that they set up. I think it was like crookedmedia.com/coronavirus and you could then donate to them and they would divide your donation between a number of organizations. I did that. I also made sure to donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds. Um, I have a monthly donation that goes to some local abortion funds, but I figured right now the National Network would, could use the extra money to give to the funds who need it. So I did that as well yesterday. If you were able and can, I think abortion funds could really use your support right now for people who are struggling to access care. So with that, let's turn to today's interview. I am really excited. I have been looking forward to interviewing Calla Hales for a while and I'm just really lucky that this worked out right now. That there is a lot of things that she has to talk about with ongoing clinic harassment during the pandemic. Even though the state she's in--North Carolina-- has been on a stay at home order and you still see people going to the clinic every day and protesting in defiance of that order. I think it's going to be a really great and important conversation with Calla talking about the ways that clinics are seeing harassment. So we're going to talk about clinic harassment in general, but we're also going to talk about what she is seeing right now during the pandemic. So with that, I have turned to my interview with Calla. Hi Calla. Thank you so much for being here today.

Calla: Thank you so much for having me, Jenny.

Jennie: I am so excited to talk to you, but actually about kind of a terrible topic that you have to deal with way too much.

Calla: I deal with lots of terrible things, but I'm assuming you mean protestors? Jennie: Yes. So unfortunately, you still have some, but we'll get to that. But let's start with talking a little bit about clinic harassment that you see or that is common around abortion providers. Do you just really want to talk a little bit about that and then we can talk about some of the different kinds?

Calla: Sure, so I am a the executive director of A Preferred Women's Health Center. I operate four clinics in the Southeast of the United States, two in North Carolina and two in Georgia. Specifically when it comes to her clinic harassment and protestors, our Charlotte location is very much a targeted place, arguably depending on how you define the “worst,” but our Charlotte location is the most heavily protested clinic in the world in terms of sheer volume, not necessarily behaviors. I can tell you that there are quite a few clinics that deal with incredibly brazen protesters that are in those situations. The numbers don't mean anything when you've got 10 guys who have no feelings for the law. Well, like I said, it's kind of arguable how you define it. Our Charlotte location, especially for the past five years has had a really increasing amount of protestors and it changes. It just increases every year. Last year we saw over 18,000 protestors.

Jennie: That is a mind boggling number.

Calla: Yeah, it really is. It is one of those situations where you just kind of wonder like how did this happen and why is it allowed and we never get to have real, real solid answers on that. And that's, that's a very upsetting thing that a lot of providers have to face is that we aren't always going to have people on our side to fight our battles when it comes to these things, especially when it comes to she government and policing anything where lawyers can be involved. Because the first amendment is a very sticky subject and especially when you're in the South where religion is a very huge aspect of the culture. People do not want to infringe upon any first amendment right involving religion especially.

Jennie: Right. And then really that has really turned into kind of a cudgel as we've seen with like the birth control benefit and things like that to say that their freedom of religion trumps your freedom to access healthcare.

Calla: Yeah. And it's something that we've continued to see over the years in culture and just in varying places as well. Uh, like you mentioned with the birth control mandates with whether or not people should be forced to “serve clients that have different lifestyle choices”, whether it be sexuality, religion or…I mean it's some places cultural differences, the ability for small business owners to refuse service to them. And even going as far as situations like at clinics where you're having large-scale protests that are being allowed to happen that because of a religious aversion to abortion. But we all know in the back of our minds if this was a Black Lives Matter rally-- or in Charlotte's case I can actually cite like a Charlotte Uprising incident that this would never happen. Like there is no policing, there is no even support of free speech among citizens. Jennie: So that's one type of harassment that clinics see. I think one that we've been hearing more and I think there was a big example recently of online harassment. Do you guys have a lot of online harassment? I'm sure you personally do cause you tweet pretty openly about the work you do

Calla: On the business side for the clinic, social media, we don't exactly receive large amounts of online harassment. A lot of the harassment we receive for the business is either in person or via mail. I, however, I personally on my accounts do have to deal with a lot of internet harassment. I choose to be more vocal about my work, especially in the past few years because I found it to be really important as a lot of people didn't know what the level of harassment at clinics was like. I was constantly being told that it was just little old women who wanted to give other people a choice and it was this idea that like the protesters outside weren't forceful. They were just quietly standing there and that was this blanket assumption that people had about protests at abortion clinics. When you and I know that that's radically untrue.

Jennie: Yeah, that's definitely the image that people were painting around the Supreme Court case around buffer zones was, it was just this little kind lady just gently handing you literature to, you know, steer your choices, not people just sitting there yelling at you.

Calla: Yeah. And that image stuck with people and it's definitely then a drive of mine now to make sure that people realize that this, that's not what's going on. So I have been very open, much to the dismay of my friends and family about my job and particularly on Twitter. And it definitely has resulted in quite a bit of online harassment. There've been a couple of incidents where something I would tweet would be…would be taken out of context of course. And it would be kicked up by a politician. I had that happened last year about, uh, the Born Alive Survivors Bill Act that came up in North Carolina. And one of the Republican senators picked up one tweet from a Twitter thread about it and made it seem like I wanted to kill babies up to 30 days, 30 days old. And out of nowhere I'm getting, you know, yeah, threats. I'm getting all of these crazy tweets and messages and it gets picked up by Glenn Beck and the Blaze.

Jennie: Oh man.

Calla: Just horrific. And you don't really go back and you look at this tweet, I mean like I still do this from time to time. I'll go back and I'll read this tweet and I'm just like, how did you get there? How did you make that leap? But you know, it's the internet. A very weird place. People are usually really emboldened to say things they'd never tell you in real life. And then, you know, you have the flip side, uh, that I've been very lucky to have a lot of lasting connections, especially in the repro world from folks on Twitter. And that's how we connected. And that's, that's actually been such a boost the past couple of years to be able to talk to people about how rough it can be. Jennie: Yeah, no, it's really great. You know, it was nice to, that's how I have found out. I mean, you hear from a lot of different sources, but following your Twitter has really helped shed light on what you're facing every day at your clinic. You know, seeing the protesters that are there every day or yeah, hearing about whatever the latest incident was. It's nice to keep it in the forefront of my mind. And I think that's important. And I think it's important to our listeners here, what people at clinics are facing every day.

Calla: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad that even if it's just me tweeting and you know, yeah, lots and lots of cursing, F-bombs and bad humor along the way, but if that's what it takes, I'm glad that I can help in some way.

Jennie: Well, so I don't know if I ever told you, but my origin story actually goes back to, I went to Catholic school K-8 and I had a friend and I don't know, fourth, fifth, sixth grade. I don't remember when this happened-- asked me if I wanted to go with her and her family to go save babies in Madison and saying, “yeah, no, I mean obviously yeah, let's go save babies.” And like going home and being like, “mom, mom, mom, can I go with so-and-so to go save babies?” And mom sitting me down and being like, “so let's have a conversation” and not telling me what to think, but kind of just doing the real basic like, “well have you ever thought about this or what if this person is in this situation?” And then being like, “do you still want to go?” And like totally changing my mind. So I trace my role in this field and the work I do back to a clinic protester.

Calla: Huh. That's actually like, that's super interesting because I feel like a lot of folks, especially who grew up in religious households or did religious schooling have that type of moment. It's either make or break for them. My husband grew up in a very Catholic family and went to Catholic school all the way up until college. We have this discussion a lot about how much his life has changed since he, you know, left Catholicism. But how like he wouldn't have even spoken to me when he was growing up because I would have been the devil and now he's married to me.

Jennie: So my parents were never that way, so it was just not like part of my realm. Like it just wasn't part of my world. And I think that the school was actually pretty good. Like we didn't go to like March for Life. Like it just wasn't part of our vocabulary. Like it just didn't happen. But it was just like this one specific family that was like really into it. And so it was her asking me to go, but like I don't remember ever hearing about it like in school per-se. I mean obviously when we did like sex-ed, which was obviously abstinence only…but there was never a huge focus on it and I don't know why.

Calla: I don't know either. That makes me kind of hopeful hope that uh, not every person has been to Catholic school has had this forced on them. That makes me feel a little bit better. I do know that the school he went to is particularly stringent about their anti-choice rights. So, and I do have quite a few friends here in the South that have grown up with the same mentalities. It's interesting to see that change over time, whether it be a specific incident like yours or a radical paradigm shift like his, it's, it's somewhat enheartening to know that that change can happen.

Jennie: Yeah, no, I agree.

Calla: Sorry. I know we've gotten totally off topic and talking about--when I say I'm heartened by that, that does not mean I think that any of them re going to wake up one morning and realize how much [damage it does] but one can dream. One can hope.

Jennie: Yeah. So you know, you mentioned that you get mail harassment too.

Calla: Yes, I do get some mail harassment. We get a lot more of it at the clinic than I do personally.

Jennie: That's good. I mean I'm glad like it's always scary when they have your address and use it.

Calla: Yeah. It's uh, it, it hasn't been the best. Unfortunately, in North Carolina your address or home address is on your voter registration and you can look it up online.

Jennie: Gotcha.

Calla: So it's very public. There are ways to find that, which is something that I've been reaching out to a lot of folks about. Like how can I get this off for like safety reasons. But it was also a couple of years ago, back in 2015 I had a personal attack that ended up being a major part of my life but and also ended up being something that was talked about in a large publication. And around that time all of my informed public and or all of my private information got doxed-- my phone numbers, my email addresses, like all sorts of things. So it's been an ongoing struggle to like maybe keep as much private stuff private as I can. I guess though I will say that the private mail coming home has really like dwindled over the past couple of years. It's really just going to the office now, which is nice. That's as nice as it can be. A lot of the mail we get though is usually, it's usually on the mass mailer side, like groups.... I have a couple of like individual folks that like I recognize their handwriting at this point and those individuals send me letters constantly, things like that. But it's usually like the same shtick of “you don't have to work here anymore…” That's the only thing I think of, but I get a fair amount of that every now and then we get some super off-color freaky messages. But uh, they hadn't been too terrible over the past couple months at least. We did get copies of Unplanned. That was, that was fun there. I just want to let you know if you're wondering what to do with unwanted copies of DVDs, they are great coasters. They're also really fun throughout drive over them cause they crack. Just so satisfying.

Jennie: [Laughs] Um, that’s what we should do with the the ones we got. So that's definitely something we've done.

Calla: And yeah, the mail, I find the mail less creepy than the online harassment, but I think that just also says something to me as a millennial. I'm just used to being online-harassed. Like the online harassment is more prevalent to me I guess.

Jennie: Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. So protesters… I know you get a lot of them. You said you had 18,000 last year, which again just blows my mind at the one location.

Calla: Just the one location. Yeah.

Jennie: Wow.

Calla: Uh, it is, you know what? Protestors are a very odd part of this job that I never thought would be as big of a part of like work as I when I started this job, I thought that that was going to be like a, oh, the cops will help us out. The city will help us out…kind of moment. Yeah. That has not been the case. It takes a lot of additional work on our end to make sure that we're keeping as much, like, I guess protocols in place to really cut down on the impacts that protesters have in our community and in our neighborhood. And it's really sad to know that it falls down to a clinic that is already pushed to its capacity to have to protect itself. So that's been a really eye-opening part of this job for me. We definitely have our usual suspects like every clinic, you know, we have lots of folks from Cities for Life and you know, we do have a few more of the high profile protesters at our clinic… We also are having a very dubious distinction of being the first clinics that Love Life started their program at. And well, and it's also the largest program. They have Love Life started in Charlotte back in 2015 and each year it's just gotten bigger and more involved in the Charlotte community and also starting to reach out. They now have presences in Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina, and they recently started a chapter in the past couple months in New York City, which astounds me, but to each their own. I suppose the Charlotte location in particular, we've had some really tricky times trying to sort out how to coexist with protesters, particularly Love Life. They're set up is this program called 40 Weeks of Life, so for 40 weeks, every Saturday—

Jennie: That’s almost a whole year, 40 weeks.

Calla: Yep. They have large demonstrations on Saturdays, which is for most clinics, the busiest day we have. And these demonstrations for us regularly average around 300 and they desperately and definitely interfere with what we're doing. Um, there's amplified sound, there's-- in some cases they get parade permits and the city lets them shut down part of the street. We see cars being waved in and traffic being impeded by people walking in the streets. It's definitely a huge nuisance, not just for us, but our entire neighborhood and business park. Oh yeah. In a more kind of insidious way. In the past two years we've really been focusing on amplified sound because the amplified sound is outrageous. You can hear straight through the walls. There are days where I have to wear earplugs inside of my office because I can't like, I can't hear anything but them. And we went to the city and tried to have a noise ordinance pass to have a little bit of like a sound free buffer. I hate to use the word buffer zone because that means has already raises so many alarms for folks, but a noise-free area around the clinic. These quiet zones, which are pretty standard in a lot of neighborhoods across the country, really depending on what the neighborhood is, whether it be a medical necessity, whether it be close to a hospital, things like that that come into play. So you know, this was all based off of things that were already existing. However, when the ordinance got passed, it was for 150 feet around a clinic or a health care zone, a school or a place of worship. You could not have a permit for amplified sound. Well, Love Life took ownership of a property that was next door to our administrative building, which puts it just over 150 feet away from the clinic. And because they have the property, they have the ability to bypass public ordinances and can use private property ordinances for amplified sound, which is a higher volume. So it was ultimately worthless for us as a clinic. It has been helpful at other clinics in the city, but for us it's been pretty worthless. We have amplified sound every day. It's actually set up right in front of my office. So my office in particular is incredibly loud and it doesn't really stop. And those, that type of choice made on the behalf of the protestors is very clearly a deliberate choice to continue to interfere and harass people. You hear protesters say all the time that they're there to give other options and educate people on other choices they may have. And then you run into situations like this where it's very intentional what they're doing and it has nothing to do with education but everything to do with harassment. You have clinics like our own, we had one of these issues a couple of years ago where protestors are coming with their own WIFI notes and labeling their WIFI, something like abortion clinic or preferred clinic, whatever. And you know, you sign in and this pop up comes up that looks like a health clinics website. But really it's an anti-site saying… Jennie: Oh man, I don't know if I've heard of that.

Calla: Yeah, we had one of these couple of years ago. And um, it still happens every now and then. But yeah, the websites, these I guess like a portal to WIFI, you know, you have to go through the front page. It's one of those, like it does information on abortion and you open it and it's that one of those really graphic and grotesque like cartoons of what protestors think abortion is and you know, they're airdropping this and Bluetooth downloading this on people's phones in the waiting room. There's nothing counseling or educational about that. That is purely harassment and it's purely intent to deceive. And that's something that has constantly stuck with me as that I am constantly amazed by the lengths protesters will go to, to deceive, shame and harass patients.

Jennie: Another area that a lot of clinics were seeing a rise in was vandalism. Have you been dealing with that as well?

Calla: We definitely have had incidents of that over the past couple of years. We've had a window get knocked out. We've definitely had messages chalked on our sidewalks and in our driveway, folks have, this is very weird and creepy habit of uh, hanging little, I guess like little ceramic baby feet. It's very weird. But ceramic baby feet to our fence. Like we have a trellis fence in front of our clinic with um, privacy bushes and like, they pin them to the trellises. It is so bizarre. But I like to go through, I have to pick those up once a week. It's interesting. We have not had the type of vandalism some other clinics have had and I think most of that has to do with the fact that we are in a pretty busy business bark. So that's been kind of helpful. But yes, we still get our fair share of weird incidents.

Jennie: So, you know, you kind of touched on this with uh, talking about the Born Alive Bill that was in North Carolina. You know, there's just been this real escalation in rhetoric and really inflaming on the anti-choice side and I feel like, have you been seeing then that commensurate reaction among the amount of harassment you're seeing?

Calla: I would say yes. With everything going on right now, with all of the laws, these executive orders being passed and, and over the past couple of years with different laws coming through and lawsuits in general, I would say that protesters in particular are feeling pretty emboldened. They feel like this administration's on their side and supports them and that if you're against them, that you're just wrong and the government will have their back. Unfortunately, they're not exactly wrong.

Jennie: Right.

Calla: The, this administration does not have our back. It is not protecting anyone, whether it be providers of abortion care or those seeking abortion care. But particularly right now with coronavirus and a pandemic going on, and all of these stay at home orders we are seeing, this is very real and honestly scary switch from protesters trying to push and tow that line of what is legal and what is not to just blatantly doing what they want because of the first amendment rights because executive orders aren't being enforced right now in a lot of places. We've seen two arrests of Love Life leaders in Greensboro recently, but what's really ironic to me is those leaders were actually in Charlotte that morning on Saturday where they actually started in Charlotte. We're getting the attention they wanted and went to Greensboro and got arrested.

Jennie: Yeah, I mean I think it's really important to make clear that you are still seeing protesters every day.

Calla: Every day. We are still seeing protestors. I mean granted I, cause I've had some people tell me like, well this is a smaller number than you're used to and you know, that's not necessarily wrong. We had the past couple weekends we went from before all this happened, having 300 a weekend to seeing the first weekend of recommendations of people less than 50 and stay at home. At this point it was recommendations. You know we saw 150 and then on the next weekend, which was the 21st, we saw, I think we saw 96 and then last this past weekend we saw 45 so as the numbers of gatherings that the state or your government is local governments allowing get smaller, the protest groups are still getting smaller, but they're still radically over that limit. We're still seeing large groups showing up on week days. Arguably we're seeing bigger groups on weekdays and we're used to, I'm honestly used to seeing anywhere between 5 and 15. And we average honestly around 9 or 10 on a weekday and if we're being honest, we're averaging closer to 15 now and we have some days where we've got 25 or so spread out along two driveways. It's, it's definitely more on weekdays and we've ever been used to before.

Jennie: Yeah. You would have hoped that they would follow the common sense guidelines and stay home. But I think that just kind of feeds into the next thing is they're treating their protest as essential while arguing and trying to get states to argue that abortion itself is not essential in trying to force clinics to close. Do we want to talk about that and why that's so problematic?

Calla: Absolutely. There is this ongoing conversation that between anti-choice folks and I would say the general public because I'm not seeing a lot of pushback from even folks that would label themselves advocates or activists for abortion, but I'm still seeing the general like support of this for abortion being essential across the board, but anti-choice folks in general are really loudly asking Republican lawmakers to declare abortion nonessential in a lot of states and we're already seeing this issue happen. We're seeing Republican legislatures using a pandemic too as a way to curb abortion care and straight out in some cases just outlawed, which is honestly grotesque and a human rights violation. Admittedly this entire, the entire handling of this pandemic is a human rights violation, but it's another, like just another level added.

Jennie: I mean, I'm just thinking of like all of the people who have lost jobs and like the right choice for them may not be to have a kid right now and then to be forced and be unable to go and access the care you want. Just horrifying to me.

Calla: Absolutely. Yeah. Abortion care is absolutely essential. It is time sensitive health care that the longer a person who is forced to wait, the more obstacles they are going to have to face. Whether it be TRAP laws, distance, economics, personal issues with family. I mean the list goes on about the longer people have to wait, how much more they have to go through to get care. And to be quite blunt, we don't know when this is going to end, right? We don't know when COVID-19 is going to magically decide that it's going to go on the downturn because none of us know how to handle this and our government is clearly not handling it all. So this is something that's going to probably last for months. If a person seeking abortion care today that was, I don't know, 12 weeks but still had to wait months to receive care, chances are they would not be able to receive care at all. And then you forced the pregnancy on someone who A) didn't want it, and B) probably had their own reasons for not wanting to carry this to term, whether it be safety or economics or honestly just any variety of reasons.

Jennie: Yeah.

Calla: And whatever their reason is, that is their choice and it's valid, but it's been taken from them. And I think honestly what's going to end up happening is this pandemic is going to be the first of several massive healthcare issues and cultural issues that we see over the next few years. This is not something that when this pandemic ends, that's the end. This is all taken care of.This is going to have lasting repercussions for years, if not decades. And one of the major things we're going to see is, you know, an influx of unwanted births. We're going to see a lot of strain on economic systems. I can tell you that a lot of folks have already mentioned how bad the uptick of intimate partner violence and intimate domestic violence is just that uptake is happening because people are being forced to stay in quarantine and close quarters with abusers, which is a [bad] situation. It becomes even more once, once pregnancy comes into play. So this is not going to go away. And it's really horrifying to me that abortion is something that several patients use as a like to prevent their life from being ruined. Abortion literally saves people's lives and governments are trying to take that option away. Like there's nothing healthy about that, there's nothing, “ pro-life” about that and that's incredibly upsetting.

Jennie: So with all of that, what can listeners do? What actions can listeners take to help with harassment or anything right now?

Calla: So I would say I always have like the same few recommendations for folks who want to help and it's not, I'm a broken record, I'm sorry. If people are financially able, which I know is very hard right now, especially if they're financially able, I always recommend donating to abortion funds because abortion funds directly impact patient care and make sure that patients are getting the care they need with or without protesters. They don't even encounter this. I also want to go ahead and plug a couple of other groups like the National Abortion Federation and Abortion AF because they do support clinics on the ground with practical needs as well. Whether it be security, whether it be trying to get ahold of much needed materials right now and a pandemic or in some cases just to support staff and make sure that we're not going over the edge personally. They're very, their support is very much needed. If you know financially, that's not feasible right now. Honestly, talking to your legislators and just be having that conversation with people in general about clinic violence and harassment and wake your feelings on it, how less impact in communities. Just even having that conversation is helpful because like I said, a lot of folks don't know what's actually happening on this level. So even furthering that education is one of the best things we can do. And you know, like I kind of mentioned it, but really talking to your legislators and supporting any of the, the moves they make to ensure abortion access and cut back on clinic violence, supporting that is really crucial. And you know, that's a great way to show support.

Jennie: Great. So I decided that in these dark times, maybe to throw in one more really important question, what are you doing right now that is bringing you joy or just keeping you sane? What is like getting you through right now?

Calla: What am I doing right now that is bringing me joy? So I am…throughout this entire pandemic and on top of all of these ongoing issues, right now I'm actually pregnant. So what's been really a good like escape for me has been doing just kind of nursery planning and stress shopping onesies. But one of the really big things that I've really focused on is building a library for her. So like going through all the recommendations for books for kids and yeah, we're um, that's, that's really been my, uh, escape the past couple of days and it's been really good.

Jennie: Yes, that's a good one. I like that. Especially building a library because I'm a great big book nerd, so…

Calla: Oh, absolutely. I'm a huge book nerd and uh, like my cats are named after book characters and that was one thing that my, my husband was like, you cannot name our daughter after a Harry Potter character. And I was like, Oh, just you-- surprise, I'm going to, I'm going to spring it on him after delivery, it was like, oh, by the way, after all of this, this is the only thing I want right now. But yeah, just going to pull that guilt card really hard.

Jennie: All right, well, Calla. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.

Calla: Absolutely and thanks so much and you know, thanks for sticking with it even with the uh, the technical difficulties.

Jennie: Okay everybody, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Just know that we will be thinking about you during these trying times. I hope everybody is staying safe and doing what they can to flatten the curve and staying home when they are able to, if they're able to and making sure to tip people extra who are in a service and delivery, who are bringing you things if you are able and yeah, if you can donate to your local abortion fund or food bank or whatever, they're all really hurting right now and could use your support. So with that, just know that I will be back in two weeks and hope that everybody is stays healthy and we will see you soon.

Jennie: Thanks for listening everyone. And we'll see you on our next episode of RePROS Fight Back. For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website at reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at RePROS Fight Back, or on Instagram at reprosfb. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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