“I didn’t know how to help,” says Elle. She’s talking about the time before—before she got trained, practiced, and learned how to become an abortion clinic escort. She lives in New Jersey, a state that has strong protections for abortion rights. At first, she wasn’t even sure whether her help was needed.
This spring Elle celebrated eight years of volunteering as a clinic escort. She does it about twice a month, on weekends. “In any state, there’s always something that you can do,” she says.
On Friday, June 24, the Supreme Court released the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, which had for over 50 years asserted that abortion is a constitutional right. More than half of all states are now set to ban abortion. In the absence of Roe, people seeking abortion—at least those who have the means to do so—will pour into states with protected abortion rights. And in those states clinic escorts like Elle will be waiting to welcome them.
What is a clinic escort?
A clinic escort is a person, often a volunteer, who assists patients at abortion clinics—welcoming them and helping them get in and out of clinics safely and efficiently. Abortion clinics are frequently targeted by protesters who harass and even attack health care professionals and patients seeking abortion.
The task is to accompany patients and “to be their lifeline, their support. I put my body on the line for theirs,” writes longtime clinic volunteer Lauren Rankin in her recent book Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America.
Most of us are not capable of providing abortions, fighting for reproductive rights in court, or voting for them in Congress. There are vital ways for regular people to make fighting for abortion rights a lifestyle choice—setting monthly donations to abortion funds, volunteering for activist groups, canvassing voters and people in your own life, and more. Clinic escort work is a very direct option.
How do you sign up to be a clinic escort?
Volunteering as a clinic escort is as simple as finding the abortion clinic closest to you that is taking volunteers and attending a training session. Search abortion clinics in your areas, click on the volunteer page, and see if they’re looking for clinic escorts. Keep this in mind: States where abortion clinics have been thrown into an emergency may not have need right now. An abortion clinic’s number one focus will be on serving patients, not cultivating volunteers.
Other states that plan to act as “abortion havens,” may have an increased need for volunteers. “We are looking for volunteers but we have had a huge influx in the last week,” Elizabeth Barnes, President of The Women’s Centers, which has clinics in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut—you can sign up to volunteer here. “We are figuring out the best way to give people opportunity in service to abortion care access, but we are recruiting.”
Planned Parenthood of Illinois is looking for more clinic escorts in the expectation of an influx of patients. If you’re in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, or South Dakota, you can get information here. Right here is volunteer information for New Mexico and Colorado. “In the meantime while clinics are reaching for the best possible way to help the largest number of people we can,” says Barnes, “I would also strongly encourage people to look at volunteering for campaigns for pro-choice candidates in their local areas, and to run for local offices, school boards, and library boards.”
How do you train to be a clinic escort?
No clinic will send volunteers out to escort patients without training and support. Taylor, a 25-year-old in North Carolina, says that her clinic started with a virtual training program that included rules, expectations, and best practices to prepare volunteers for potential harassment. “They had videos that were taken at our clinic,” she says. “We got to see examples of what it was going to be like out there before we got out there.” Then new volunteers were paired with experienced clinic escorts in their first shifts, shadowing them rather than just being thrown in. Things you might learn at a clinic escort training: how to talk to patients, how to move with confidence, how to navigate around protesters, how to scan for danger or illegal activity.
“I’m very fortunate that I have not felt super unsafe,” Taylor says. “I haven’t personally felt like my safety was at an immediate risk.”
What is the time commitment like?
Every clinic escort who spoke to Glamour for this story shared that they found clinic work to be a flexible time commitment. “We have a lot of people in our group who are parents or work full-time jobs, but they’re able to squeeze in a Saturday every so often,” says Taylor. She usually signs up for weekday morning shifts, from 8:30 to 11:30. Asia, a student, signs up for shifts when she comes home on college breaks.
What’s the work like?
Asia started clinic work in Mississippi when she was a sophomore in college and the pandemic sent her home from school. “I started to get really depressed being in the house,” she says. She had been excited to study public health and volunteer at college.
The only abortion clinic in Mississippi—the very same clinic in the Supreme Court case that rolled back Roe—was more than 40 minutes away. So she would drive early in the morning, arriving by 7:00 or 7:30. Escorts at the clinic are called The Pink House Defenders. They wear rainbow vests and, unlike at most clinics, have a policy of engaging verbally with protesters.
“I just fell in love with the work because I got to interact with patients,” she says. “I feel like I helped them to feel empowered and to kind of act like that guardian between them and the aggressive protesters that we got.” The work is tough and emotional.
“I’ve had to comfort patients during tears or moments of frustration or even anger at the protesters or even moments of fear,” she says. “It’s a scary sight to try and turn into a clinic that already has an extremely small driveway and an extremely cramped parking lot. You might be stressed about your appointment, or you might not be but the protesters might make it stressful regardless of how you’re feeling about being there at the clinic because they hold up these graphic signs and they’re usually standing and fully blocking the driveway.” Protesters try to get patients to roll their windows down and scream things like, “Don’t go in there! We’ll adopt your baby! You’re already a mama to your baby!” Asia says.
Asia is a Christian and would tell protesters so. “The God that I believe in would also support bodily autonomy, free will, free choice, and people making decisions that work best for themselves and their families to live the best abundant life that they can,” she likes to say. “I would try to tell them, ‘Did you know that in Mississippi we have the worst maternal and infant outcomes for Black women in the country?’ and ‘Did you know that Black women across the country and in Mississippi are four to five times more likely to die due to childbirth or pregnancy complications?’” Most protesters, she says, didn’t know that.
Asia is a Black woman—so are most of the patients at her clinic. The protesters are mostly white men. The racist taunting is frequent. “I was often told that I was going to hell that I was assisting in the genocide of my people, or that I of all people should know better that I should be ashamed of myself that I was murdering Black babies,” she says. She’s not surprised that her arguments about health and life don’t tend to get through to them. “The anti-abortion movement has more to do with control and patriarchy and wanting to strip women and black women of their reproductive rights,” she says. But the work has been deeply meaningful: “It made me a stronger and more confident person and helped me see that I can make a difference in people’s lives, that I have a part to play in the fight for reproductive justice, that I have influence.”
Clinic escort work is not for everyone who wants to bring about reproductive justice, and that’s okay. Some people are better suited to volunteering in clinics, to fighting with gusto as part of activist groups, to raising money. For other people, abortion clinic escort work is just right. Elle says: “If you want to be on the ground, and you want to be making change in an individual’s life, I very much recommend it.”
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
