Publisher's blurb:
On a quiet day, an abortion clinic is indistinguishable from any medical building. Some are lone, freestanding buildings; others are just another office in a professional building or cluster of medical suites. Many abortion clinics are freestanding by necessity, because of the religious beliefs of potential landlords, or simply out of fear that having a clinic on the premise of a medical complex would put other patients at risk. It’s not an unreasonable fear: hundreds of abortion clinics have been vandalized or firebombed since the mid 1980s.On protest days, the clinic becomes a battlefield. Pro-life protesters ring the clinic, chanting prayers, singing psalms, holding grotesque signs depicting dismembered fetuses.
Tactics range from peaceful protest and passive resistance to mob violence. Parents bring their true-believing children to prayer vigils, while elderly Catholic ladies pray the Rosary for the unborn. Handsome college age pro-lifers stage die-ins, falling to the street and playing dead to draw media attention and block traffic. Haggard reformers hand out pamphlets and attempt to convert passerby, while ‘sidewalk consolers’ scream at the women walking into the clinic not to kill their babies. Pro-choice counter demonstrators add to the noise and chaos. Attempting to drown out the pro-lifer’s slogans with high volume feminist chants, the unruly DMZ established around the clinic quickly becomes too noisy to hear anything quieter or a bullhorn or a police siren. Pro-choice volunteers, easily recognizable in brightly colored safety vests escort patients and their families through the crush of protesters.