“So America is just being America. This isn’t stopping.” “I’m not really that surprised.” “We have limited freedom. I’m getting depressed just talking about it.” “These changes so often —” “I was angry. They’re taking our power from us.” “When did the rule ever — when did it ever matter?” “It just felt like they have no —” “I’m just so angry.” “So walking from my car into the clinic was always my least favorite part of the day. It was the one time that I would feel my anxiety level go up. I’d have to take a deep breath, maybe even a few moments in the car, decide how I’m going to gather up my things so that I can get into the building, hopefully not having been seen, harassed, yelled at, picture taken, threat made, asked questions that don’t make sense, like how do I feel as a Black woman walking into an abortion clinic, which typically my response was, the same way I feel walking to any other building in the United States.” “Before I even parked, I would drive around the building just to see if there were any protesters already parked, how many, if I recognized any of the cars, if I recognized any of the protesters. They have body cameras on their vests, which they wear, as they have told us, for their protection. But those body cams conveniently record the make and model of vehicles and license plates and patients’ faces and companions’ faces. It’s not illegal to do that.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “They know you by name. They’re calling family members. They’re asking you about why you drive the vehicle you drive or why you wear the clothes that you wear. Clearly, you’re just doing this for profit. So your character gets attacked just going into the building to do your job. It’s the war every day.” “Hello. I am a volunteer with Planned Parenthood. We have protesters on the sidewalk today. I am here to get you into the building and back to your car without any problems. I also explained that I have my big, fabulous pink umbrella, and I’m going to use that to cover their faces so that if any of the protesters want to try and record them, they’re instead just going to get a camera full of my pink fabulous umbrella.” “What changed is that women in the state of Tennessee went back years in terms of us being able to care for the women in this state as equal, right, caring members of the state. If I can’t make the same medical decisions about my body with autonomy, I’m a second-class citizen. And you basically, as a physician, had to start counseling your patients from a legal perspective and not a medical perspective. In Tennessee, there is no exception for rape, and the exceptions for the life of the mother are so narrow, they may as well not exist. Doctors are afraid to perform these abortions. So that pregnancy is looked at as a happy, blissful ending for you. There’s no consideration given to Mom’s feelings, Mom’s emotions, her mental health. You will be pregnant. You will be a parent. You will be happy about this pregnancy. I don’t know if I see the patient anymore who openly discloses that she’s not excited about her pregnancy because she’s now in an environment where you’re expected to be excited. So it’s more about me reading her body language and giving her the floor. It’s OK if you’re not happy. It’s OK if you’re scared. It’s OK if you want to be a parent. It’s OK if you don’t.” “I began reaching out to people that I knew, and then they started reaching out to other people. And very slowly we built a group of drivers. What we do is take patients who are not able to get themselves to a clinic for medical abortions, and we drive them to the clinic in Carbondale, Ill., and then we bring them back. We never communicate with the patient from our personal cell phones, ever. We always pick them up at a public location. We never go to homes. I text them and say, I’ve parked. And I get out of my car while it’s running, and I just kind of look around so that they can see my face. Then usually they approach me. I had one patient, a young woman of color, and she said to me, “You know, this is really crazy. I kind of feel like I’m on the new Underground Railroad.” “Nobody gets to tell you what you’re going to do with your body but you.” “So many freedoms are being taken away every day.” “When you’re working in a pro-life system, what you find is a lot of people are like-minded behind closed doors, and they’ll come to you and be like, I’m glad you’re here, or I’m glad you’re working on behalf of the patients. And it’s a secret. So when Roe v. Wade went away, I will just let you know, I felt embattled. And quite honestly, I was tired. I lost a whole two years of my training. My educational training and expertise did not matter. I no longer matter as an expert specialist. I no longer matter.” “These changes, it’s really just about control.” “I have had patients tell me that their mom or their dad or their partner or their sister or their best friend doesn’t know that they’re there with me. I’ve done background acting for some of them. I remember one patient, she was talking to her mom. I was the lady in a fast-food checkout and after a couple of sentences into her call, she pointed at me, and I said, “Welcome to so-and-so. Are you going to be using the mobile app today?” And she said, “Hold on, sweetie,” and counted for a few beats. And then I said, “OK, your total is such and such. Please drive down to the first window.” And she said, “All right.” We’ve done those kinds of things.” “And I’m so, so exhausted. And I’m so furious and I’m so depressed. I was just so, so —” “This [expletive] is literally never-ending.” “— over these changes. They’re taking our power from us.” “It now becomes an everybody problem because if you are the oncologist and you have a patient who has cancer and she’s pregnant, before, you could just send her to me and I could help resolve that pregnancy and she could get the care she needs. Now you as the oncologist got to figure out what to do with her. If you were the emergency doctor and she came in from rape and had a untimed pregnancy from rape, you could refer her to me and I can handle that for you. But now you got to figure out what to do with her. You’re the pediatrician. You have a 13-year-old who was molested or had what she felt to be consensual sex and she was pregnant. You had options for her and you could refer her to me, and we could help you with getting her whatever options she needed. You’re now not going to have a physician with that skill set to do that for you.” “Why?” “I had one patient who told me that they went on Google to find out how to terminate a pregnancy with, and I quote, ‘[expletive] in your house.’ And she was saying things like she found combinations with cayenne pepper and honey. And then you add things like Mr. Clean Fresh Scent. And I honestly can’t even remember anything else because my brain just stopped working at that point.” “Women, they’re going to have to carry children —” “Back-alley doctors.” “Physicians are trained to think that they can change the world one patient at a time. How many lives does a politician change just by the stroke of a pen? So when we talk about maturity and decisions, it’s not just for that woman who’s making a decision about her own body. We need to think about the maturity of the decisions that our politicians will make because they change your life overnight. And that is what happened on June 24, 2022.” “These folks who are in power, they have no interest in solutions.” “No oppression.” “I was in shock.” “I’m so, so angry.” “And I’m going to continue to speak out.” “The war is here.” “But there’s a solution to this.” “Now, just — I’m just so —” “Why do we have to keep proving that we are humans?”