Three blocks from the Alabama governor’s mansion, in Montgomery, a police officer stood outside a small brick building as the sun rose. “It’s just a job,” he said, “but my personal opinion is: what two grown people decide is what two grown people decide.”
He nodded toward a parking lot, where a dozen people wearing rainbow-colored vests that read “Clinic Escort” were waiting. Abortions are performed here once a week, usually by doctors flown in from out of state. The clinic hired the officer last month, after Governor Kay Ivey signed the country’s most severe abortion ban; if it takes effect, victims of rape and incest will be required to give birth.
A patient headed for the clinic door, holding a male companion’s hand. Her face was hidden beneath a beach umbrella with “Title 13A § 13A-11-8,” Alabama’s legal code for harassment, handwritten across it. An escort held the umbrella with one hand and placed the other on the patient’s back.
“Ma’am, I know you know better than what you’re about to do,” a young man standing on the sidewalk yelled. “Your baby is fully formed this morning, Mom!”
“Where’s the music?” an escort asked.
“I’ll check,” another replied.
Kari Crowe had the music. Crowe, a thirty-two-year-old clinic employee and escort with blue hair, wore a small speaker on a cord around her neck; it played Pink’s “So What.” A label on the speaker displayed the name of a frequent protester followed by the words “is a weak ass bitch.”
“That’s the guy screaming at us now,” Crowe explained, and pointed at a man with glasses and a tucked-in shirt that read “Jesus.” He also wore a body camera. She continued, “I have a playlist for escorting. Mostly feminine-forward pop: Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Cardi B. I try to kinda sorta keep it on the clean side. But when they get nasty”—meaning the protesters—“the nastier it gets.”
An elderly woman on the sidewalk spoke up as another patient passed. “If you have your baby, I have a friend who’ll raise it for you,” she said. She repeated the offer to several more women over the next few hours.
Crowe went on, “We wear rainbow vests to differentiate ourselves from the crisis-pregnancy center.” She gestured across the street, where a group of people stood beside a van. “They try to trick patients with their orange vests—which we used to wear—and signs that say ‘Check in here,’ ” she said.
More patients arrived, some from other states. An escort masked the patients’ license plates with white paper. “The antis find any identifier on your car,” the escort said. “And they out you.”
Referring to a particular protester, Crowe said, “He finds you on Facebook and calls out your name.”
A volunteer named Travis Jackson directed cars. “No man has a right whatsoever to tell a woman what’s best for her body,” he said. A thirty-four-year-old Iraq War veteran, he has been escorting for three years. “I’ve got some scars,” he added. A protester once charged at him. “I call them Christian terrorists.” He wiped his face with a towel that was draped over his shoulder. “I never go nowhere without this towel,” he said. “That’s like Indiana Jones without his whip.”
“I brought a story to read today,” a bespectacled escort named Diane Weil announced.
“It’s not from the Bible, is it?” another escort asked.
It was John Oliver’s book about a gay rabbit. Weil had brought it in response to Alabama Public Television’s recent censorship of an episode of the animated children’s show “Arthur” that depicted a gay wedding.
“I am a bunny,” Weil began. “My Grampa is the Vice President. His name is Mike Pence.” A protester listened, confused.
Allie Curlette, a twenty-eight-year-old restaurant manager, approached Jackson, who was waiting behind the clinic for a doctor to arrive, and announced, “I’m your backup.” Curlette, as she has done a few times since the law passed, had driven an hour and a half, from Birmingham—where there’s no abortion provider. “I woke up at three,” she said.
“I protested the bill when it came out,” she said. “I got pushback at the polls, because I had my ‘Keep abortion legal’ pin on.” She said that she owns a “Handmaid’s Tale” costume. “Went to four different Party Citys before I pieced one together,” she added.
“When’s the wedding?” Jackson asked Curlette, who was newly engaged.
“Got bigger fish to fry,” she answered.
Jackson said, “They’ll try to film the doctor when she shows up. That’s why we need two back here.”
Soon, the doctor arrived, in a rented car. She hustled into the clinic. Inside the waiting room, you could hear a protester shouting into a bullhorn on the other side of the wall.
“One time, he was saying something about how God knows your baby’s name,” an escort said, of the man with the bullhorn. “I said, ‘Maybe her coming here is God’s plan.’ He was quiet for about thirty seconds. He wasn’t sure how to process that.” ♦
