Human Shields: A look at the escorts who aid those seeking abortions and women’s health

Editor’s note: This article won first place (Division C) and Best of Show overall in the General News Story category, as well as second place (Division C) in the Medical/Science Reporting category, of the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association’s 2023 Contest. Read our other award-winning pieces here.

On many Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, Bob can be found outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on North Howard Street in Baltimore, ready for double duty. He is the kind, gentle escort who shepherds patients into the clinic for health care, and he also is a formidable foe to anti-abortion protesters who refer to him as the “Director of Evil,” and want to shut him and Planned Parenthood down.

Bob, who does not want his legal name publicized out of safety and privacy concerns, has served as a human shield at Planned Parenthood for four years, prompted, he said, by friends who have had abortions or needed affordable health care. He and other escorts are dispatched by the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force, an all-volunteer group founded in the 1980s to promote access to reproductive health clinics in the DC-metropolitan area. Bob is one of a handful of volunteers who faithfully stand guard at Planned Parenthood on shifts that run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., when the center is the busiest.

“This work isn’t for everyone because [the protesters] don’t leave us alone,” Bob said. “Antis,” as escorts call them, line the street outside of Planned Parenthood, waving pictures of fetuses and signs that accuse the clinic of killing babies even though patients also are there for routine screenings and treatment of gynecological conditions.

The ongoing confrontations at Baltimore’s Planned Parenthood gained wider attention in May, when an unidentified man tackled an 80-year-old anti-abortion rights protestor and pummeled and kicked another 73-year-old demonstrator, sending him to University of Maryland Shock Trauma hospital. No arrests have been made in the attack, which comes as the nation grapples with the aftermath of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson ruling which overturned Roe v. Wade and sent abortion rights decisions to the states.

The recent experiences at Baltimore’s Planned Parenthood shows that the issue fuels tension and violence in a state considered among the most protective of abortion rights in the nation, but one with a deep religious heritage.

“The protesters don’t care about the people who come here or why they are here,” Bob said, recounting some of the stressful encounters he has seen. In one case, a young girl and her mother tried to get into the clinic, but the girl was so frightened that she refused to get out of her car and the two had to be escorted by clinic security through an undisclosed entrance. Another episode, Bob said, will haunt him forever: a couple who had come to the clinic for care. “The woman was visibly pregnant,” he said. “Protesters told the woman she was going in to kill her baby. She responded that her baby was already dead.” What he later learned was that the mother suffered an incomplete miscarriage and had come to Planned Parenthood for the treatment she needed.

Escort encounters with patients are relatively short, usually about 15 to 20 seconds, just long enough to reassure the patients and get them in the door past the sign-waving protesters – mostly Catholic – who often invoke God but also hurl expletives and accuse patients, volunteers and Planned Parenthood staff of being murderers and baby killers, while also telling those same people to kill themselves.

Many escorts, who wear vests with rainbow colors so patients can easily identify them, choose aliases or go by a first name because protesters research their backgrounds in an attempt to rattle them. In addition to calling Bob the “Director of Evil,” some of the protesters have named him “King of AIDS,” assuming he is gay. A Jewish escort has been accused of contributing to another Holocaust or committing genocide.

While escorts are trained in de-escalation and take a non-violent approach to their work, the assignment has grown increasingly perilous as protesters elbow and shove escorts out of the way, trying to come between patients and the clinic’s doors. Although the protesters are barred from entering the center as part of a 1994 federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, protestors still get as close as they can to the center.

The potential for danger makes recruiting new escorts in Baltimore challenging, said Vanessa, Baltimore recruiter and volunteer for Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force. “We have 88 volunteers on our listserv, but only a dozen regulars. It’s a struggle to fill shifts,” she said. “Baltimore is more confrontational. Because of how Planned Parenthood is situated, right on the sidewalk, there is more exposure and no real protection.”

There is little protection for escorts or protesters. Planned Parenthood would not say if or how security has been altered after May’s attack, with a spokesman saying that the organization “is committed to providing a safe environment for our patients and our staff.”

The attack, which injured Dick Schafer, 80, a long-time protester and Mark Crosby, 73, who sustained the most serious injury, has not been solved. Baltimore police recently released footage of the attack and are seeking tips at the Metro Crime Stoppers line. “I was knocked out. The devil or evil had a plan. Mark almost died for me,” Schafer said of the incident. A week after the confrontation with the passerby, the two were back at Planned Parenthood.

On a July day, Schafer and another protester, Mark Des Marais, were on their post handing out what Schafer called “blessing bags,” containing a hodgepodge of items including a yellow foam pot scrubber, tissues, sandwich cookies, bubblegum, balloon, peppermint, nail file and anti-abortion literature. Des Marais said his wife worries about him and doesn’t see the point of him protesting outside Planned Parenthood. “She says ‘Do you have to go there?’ I say, ‘Are you aware these babies have no voice?” he said. Two years ago, Des Marais was found guilty of assaulting an escort and was ordered to pay a $500 fine and sentenced to probation. Also in 2021, escort Amanda was on the receiving end of Des Marais’ anger, and it was caught on camera.

Undeterred by the threats, Amanda said she believes that Planned Parenthood patients need support for whatever reasons they are there. With two children and four miscarriages behind her, she said she decided to become an escort because of Planned Parenthood’s mission to provide quality, affordable health care to women when they need it most. Amanda said she has been shoved while on the line. “I was a college rugby player, so I can take it,” she joked. Raised Catholic, Amanda said she is most bothered by what she calls the hypocrisy of the protesters who use religion and God as motivation for their actions, but ignore tenets in other areas. “They say they are there to save lives, but they totally ignore the unhoused people who come up to them while they are there. And there is one man who talks about saving lives, but he has a swastika on a posterboard,” Amanda said.

“It is very rewarding and stressful, but worth all the stress it causes when we get ‘thank yous’ from the patients,” Amanda said. Similarly, the appreciation from patients and belief in doing the right thing drives escort Bob. “Everybody gets yelled at,” he said, “but in the end, we are here to get you where you need to go.”

“Clinic escorts have put their bodies on the line for other people, for other people’s choices, their bodies, their lives,” wrote Lauren Rankin, author of Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America. “They have shown up despite bombs, bans, shootings, and a global pandemic to support patients and providers, to keep safe abortion accessible. At its core, volunteering as a clinic escort is about responding, as a human being, to another human being’s needs. It’s about dignity, compassion, and kindness.”