by Jeff McMahon
"God will forgive you," she said, and I wondered if she spoke to me. Her eyes searched the sky. Her hand clutched a cross that hung around her neck. Her body leaned hard against a wide board--the kind police use to deflect the stones and bottles and bodies of rioters. On the other side of the board stood I, my hands in rough canvas loops riveted to the wood.
She pressed toward the clinic in Redwood City. I pushed her away from it.
Behind her pressed hundreds more like her--a thousand or more. They flowed across the street and filled the block, a thick surging mass of them. They clutched crumpled photos of bloody fetuses. They squeezed crosses. They muttered quiet prayers to themselves. They bellowed curses at us on behalf of God.
"How do you know that?" I asked her.
Behind me pressed hundreds, too, but not so much like me. They were mostly women--young women, wearing what they probably would wear at home this Saturday morning--blue jeans, T-shirts, sneakers. Some of the T-Shirts bore slogans--"Keep Abortion Safe and Legal," or "U.S. Out of My Uterus."
A minority of men peppered this crowd. Boyfriends and husbands, gay men and free thinkers welcoming a chance to put shoulder and fist to the elusive struggle against religious persecution.
To my left and right these women and men held boards like mine. Together we formed a wall. We pushed the praying throng away from the clinic. They pushed toward it.
Women dominated the crowd across the boards, as well. Operation Rescue--stung by the apt criticism that it consists of men trying to control women's bodies--told the men to stay home that day in 1989. Instead it called out the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters.
We pitched and hawed, and I mused on the stereotypes. Some of the anti-abortionists wore Victorian dresses and sensible shoes, like Dana Carvey's Church Lady. They were, as William S. Burroughs described them, "decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces."
The woman-generals of the pro-choice army fit a stereotype, too. Built like fireplugs, they barked orders and yelled on walkie-talkies to scouts beyond the mosh-pit. The muscles rippled in their necks. With their hair cropped close to their skulls, sometimes died pink or yellow, I'm sure they had the Church Ladies thinking of Satan.
These were the extremes. Most of the warriors that day could have been sisters in the average American family, divided now by a civil war. They shared more than they knew. Inherent beauty and gentle power. Devotion to babies. Devotion to freedom. Absolute Determination. Disdain. Each side saw the other as wrong. Just wrong. And evil. Just evil. This is one conflict with no compromise.
And the men? Men directed the anti-abortion assault from the flanks of the crowd across the street. The rest of us were irrelevant, save for the increment of force our muscles added to the balance. Our presence lent a weak statement to either side. "I'm a man for choice." Like that means anything.
This was a woman's war. I stood with the side I respected and loved most--the women I grew up with, studied with, worked with, the women who taught me bliss and pain. Women of spirit and intent, women of power. Women who love and fight with equal passion. The women who reversed a million years of hegemony and rewrote our society.
The calm, clear ones, well-possessed of themselves.
This remains a women's war. So much so that I waited for a woman to write this column. I sifted the mail daily. Someone has to tell it, I thought. Someone has to say what it means when a Planned Parenthood burns.
Yellow police tape told me the war had come to San Luis Obispo. The yellow letters "FBI" blazed on a blue wind breaker as I drove to my office next door. Nausea filled my gut, anger prickled my skin, and abortion had nothing to do with it.
Planned Parenthood respects lives. People go there to get inexpensive health care without being judged by someone else's idea of God. Women go there to get the most invasive medical procedures performed by other women. It makes a difference, I imagine, if your doctor knows first-hand the discomfort involved. Planned Parenthood is an option in a world where options are dear. It's a place designed by women for women.
Of course they burned it down.
I used that clinic, too. It helped me ensure I would not become a father before I felt I was solvent enough and mature enough to raise my child.
Not only did I pay half the price I'd pay at a pharmacy, but I got something else for my moneyóa sense that my lifestyle was accepted and my choices respected. I got help with the complex task of controlling my future. I saw progress being made, intelligence at work, a message being spread, a message that could eventually eliminate the need for abortion.
I chose Planned Parenthood because freedom and dignity packed its tiny offices. To me, that clinic stands for those principles as surely as the Bill of Rights that sits under armed guard behind shatterproof glass on the Capitol Mall in Washington D.C.
Burn that.
If a Planned Parenthood clinic means that much to me, imagine what it means to a woman who needs it.
Wars have been fought over less worthy causes. Most wars. So they push toward the clinic, we push them away, and together, we all stand still.
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This column was one in a package of three that won first place from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 1996.
"They are tanned in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right -- they are calm, clear, well-possessed of themselves."
-- Walt Whitman
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