We Engage exists because we believe we shouldn’t.

We - our culture - shouldn’t allow people, patients to be harassed and traumatized at clinics to the point where escorts are necessary, but here we are.

So we work to bring about the day that we aren’t needed because abortion stigma is corrected, and reproductive healthcare, including abortion is treated as the healthcare it is, just as other specialties like vasectomies and urology.

It should have never come to this, but here we are. Since the 1980’s there has been a coordinated campaign by anti-abortion groups to terrorize clinics and patients. In 1998, an anti-abortion terrorist bombed a clinic in Birmingham, AL, killing the security guard and severely injuring a nurse there. That clinic was owned by Diane Derzis, who owns Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

So, why should it be made easy for them to harass patients? What they do out here goes way beyond “protest”. “Sidewalk counseling” is a false narrative, a figment of the anti-abortion imagination, propaganda they push. There is no such thing as sidewalk counseling– that’s actually harassment of people seeking healthcare at a clinic.

When people stand on a public sidewalk screaming on bullhorns that people are committing murder, slandering, demonizing and vilifying others, they are participating in “stochastic terrorism”, which is defined by Dictionary.com as “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted”.

So, it could be said that ignoring them does us all a disservice. It allows them to spread their hate and lies unobstructed on the sidewalks as they have done for so many years. Responsible engagement can at least make it difficult for them to harass patients and spread their lies.

We Engage is working to “spread the gospel” of responsible engagement. Derenda and Kim recently spoke with Clare Busch about engagement at clinics for an article - At independent abortion clinics, escorts are protecting patients by getting loud - for Mic.com.

Check out our clinic escort page, Pink House Defenders , to see what happens at our clinic. And responsible engagement looks different, and takes many forms at different clinics, for instance, see Capital Care Clinic Escorts and Charlotte for Choice.

But we can’t be silent anymore.