Kim Gibson wore a pastel rainbow-striped vest with the words “clinic escort” in bold, black letters as she glanced over at the arriving white van. She was irritated by the sudden appearance in Jackson of more Christian anti-abortion protesters in front of Mississippi’s lone abortion clinic.
She watched as the vehicle pulled up, letting out two sisters. They dropped picket signs onto the Jackson sidewalk before their mother drove off to park. When she walked back with her teenage son, Gibson yelled: “Shame what you do to these children. Shame, shame, shame.”
The young boy held up a poster nearly as tall as himself, with a picture of an aborted fetus: “The wages of sin is death,” it said.
Gibson marched down the parking lot to turn up the song on the speakers in front of the clinic doors and Gwen Stefani lets everyone know she ain’t no hollaback girl for the seventh time that day.
It’s part of the “going in” soundtrack – all upbeat songs – for patients arriving at the clinic. Another escort dances along, facing the protesters, trying to create a buffer between the protesters and women going in for state-mandated counseling sessions or procedures.
Mississippi is the only state in the south with a lone abortion provider and attracts special attention from protesters. As a wave of states across the US, including conservative southern states like Mississippi, pass ever stricter anti-abortion laws, the role of such clinics has become ever more important.
Mississippi is one of nine states to pass restrictive abortion bans. These all come as a reinvigorated evangelical right in the US challenges access to abortion. The bans are designed to place pressure on Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that protected a pregnant woman’s legal right to choose to have an abortion.
And in order to function, there is one group of people the clinics desperately need: the escorts who help patients run the gauntlet of protesters determined to stop them having abortions.
Here in this corner of Mississippi, they are the Pink House Defenders: nicknamed for the garish color of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization’s exterior walls.
All the escorts are volunteers. Most have full-time jobs and schedule work shifts around clinic days. They have been organized for more than six years by 60-year-old Derenda Hancock.
Gibson’s and Hancock’s attention shifts quickly to new protesters, particularly one clad in a pink vest, motioning for a car driving up to the abortion clinic to roll down the passenger window. At first, the passenger hesitates but when the teen tugs at her pink vest, suggesting she works at the clinic (she doesn’t) the passenger rolls down the window.
A pamphlet is thrust into the car and the girl speaks to those inside: “What did your baby do wrong?”
Frantically, Gibson motions to the car to keep driving. “C’mon, sweetie! ” Hancock sighed, rolling her eyes. “This is Mississippi. They are too polite to drive past these people.”
Dale, Gibson’s husband is another escort. As a patient makes her way from the lot to the front entrance, protesters peek through the gap in the black tarp, pleading for the woman to reconsider. Using a tambourine, Dale tries to drown out the “sidewalk counseling”, as protesters call their work. The song coming through the speakers is “Twist and Shout”.
Each volunteer plays a role in keeping the chaos to a minimum, when they can.
James Parker, Hancock’s longtime partner, keeps an eye on the traffic in and out of the parking lot. Another morning, before patients arrive, Parker repaints the white parking spot dividers to mitigate potential traffic jams. When he told colleagues at his power plant where he spent his off days, they assumed he was picketing the clinic.
“They only think it’s admirable if you’re protesting,” he said.
Escorts would be unnecessary if not for the protesters who seem to match them shift-for-shift. A 73-year-old woman protester claims she was the first one to start protesting the Jackson abortion clinic more than seven years ago. Now, she tries to make sure at least one anti-abortion protester is covering the shift each morning.
“Good morning. How are you?” another protester asks Hancock later one morning, walking toward the tarp-covered pink wall begging a patient to reconsider. Hancock can’t help but respond: “Better before you got here.”
Spending so much time together, the escorts have gotten to know the protesters and which ones to worry about.
One morning, Hancock and Gibson lean into their portable red chairs at the entrance of the lot, not worried about the trio in front of them. The 73-year-old protester can’t scream very loudly, Hancock says. “[Her friend] is loud, though,” Gibson offers. Hancock points to a younger woman and labels her a “screecher”. This mother, who has brought four of her children to protest, Hancock relays, has 10 children but they’re quieter than their cousins, 14 in total.
“They’re good kids,” she added.
Right now, the larger set is on a road trip with their parents. Hancock doesn’t hold it against the children. She even gave the kids a list of sights to see as they make their way around the midwest and keeps tabs on them through their father’s Facebook page.
With the recent attention on anti-abortion bills in the south, anti-abortion protesters and women seeking abortions aren’t the only ones showing up. In recent days, an older man from California joined the tight knit group, claiming he’s a pro-choice lay minister. He himself would like to offer counseling options to women after they’ve had an abortion, he tells the group.
Frustrated by his presence, Hancock refuses. There’s already enough religion being thrown around healthcare here, she points out.
“It’s just so much. Everywhere. All the time,” Gibson said.
