Op-Ed: Out of the Dark and Onto the Streets
Photos
There was once an abortion clinic on Ponce de Leon at Juniper Street. I remember learning about it in 1979. Behind it were the offices of the Council on Battered Women. With its secret, cramped offices and counselors with limited resources, but good hearts and good intentions, the Council and its attached shelter offered hidden bedrooms weighed down by waiting lists filled with the names of desperate women and children needing protection from horrific lives.
The abortion clinic and the shelter anchored a block of quiet, intense sadness at the end (or beginning, perhaps) of a 2½ mile trail of despair that defined Ponce de Leon in those day. It was a quiet corner. A dark corner. The irony of the two facilities huddled so close together was lost on no one.
The unassuming Midtown Hospital was housed in a once grand, brick home with towering white columns on a large corner lot facing onto Ponce. No signs in the yard announced what went on behind the grand entrance. No advertisements in the newspaper solicited the unfortunate business. Nevertheless, it was always busy and the license plates on the cars in the small parking lot hidden in the back were not all from Georgia.
A plain, unmarked door at the rear of the building led to a waiting room that looked less like a hospital and more like a DMV waiting room. The staff had kind eyes that had simply seen too much. They had strong and authoritative voices dulled by the repetition. The clients waited mostly quiet and lost in their own thoughts, accompanied by a spouse, a boyfriend, or a family member. Or they sat alone, each contemplating the numb reality of that very moment in their lives.
Oregon 1976 was the first clinic bombing; then another in Ohio in 1978. By 1983, there were hundreds of incidents of vandalism and threats on clinics and doctors. The staff knew it. The clients knew it. The City’s leaders knew it. Everyone just stood still, held their breath, and hoped it all would pass.
Then “street interventions” began and clinics across the country, including Midtown Hospital, hired armed protection and welcomed volunteers who took shifts escorting clients safely through the onslaught of pamphlets and hateful messages from their cars to the plain door. I did not tell my family I had volunteered. They would have understood and even supported me, but they would have worried and I didn’t want them to worry.
The media got wind. The public became aware. The intensely private actions taking place inside those walls were rattled by radicals with an agenda but no compassion or comprehension. Staff’s eyes saw things very differently now. Bomb threats emptied the hospital of everyone except the doctor and one nurse caring for the woman still on a table in the middle of taking back her life.
Then, overnight, the hospital and the women’s shelter were gone from Ponce de Leon. The light had become too bright on that corner. Women’s shame is best left in darker, quieter spaces. Downtown expansion into Midtown, and a lot of developer money, made the decision easy, quick, and painless for public officials and proper society.
As recently at 2009, Dr. Tiller was shot and killed in Kansas because he offered women in his care a choice. In January of THIS year (2012), a family planning clinic in Florida was bombed with a Molotov cocktail. Legislation is on the docket in almost every state, including Georgia, proposing to limit a woman’s right to control her own body and her own life; legislation to keep women under control and in the dark.
This ATLGal believes the struggle to protect a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body and how to care for her children ebbs and flows in and out of the light, but the reality of women’s lives continues to be kept dark and violently controlled. The recent throw down between the Susan G Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood shed some light and I cannot help but delight in the lesson learned: if you bring the fight onto the open streets, then good women and men are prepared to go to battle. That is so cool. Let’s take it to the street, not just onto Ponce de Leon.
Marc
8:59 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Interesting article. I would like to respectfully offer some comments. I believe that the reason the abortion issue is so heated is because both sides have strong cases, yet neither side will acknowledge any validity to the other side. You have taken the pro-choice position and I believe there are good arguments to support that position. However, where I will likely disagree with you is revealed by such wording as "radicals with an agenda but no compassion or comprehension". Certainly the tactics of bombing or threatening are completely unacceptable. But, the reality is that most pro-life (or as you would likely spin, anti-choice) folks do comprehend and are very compassionate. They simply believe that human life begins a few months earlier than you do. Once that belief is held, their position becomes very understandable and is not one of hate or oppression of women. Phrases such as "reproductive rights" or "limit a woman's right to control her own body" are deceptive and dismissive of the truth of the pro-life position. Likewise, rhetoric and some actions of the pro-life folks are equally misrepresentative of the pro-choice side. I'm not taking a position on either side. All I am suggesting here is that both sides should try not to dehumanize the other side as some anonymous heartless enemy, but rather recognize that there are intelligent compassionate folks on both sides of this issue.
Tammy
10:01 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
So if we limit abortions and force women to have these babies, who is going to take care of them? With cuts to programs like TANF and Medicaid, the government certainly isn't in any position to do this.
Sharon
10:21 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
This past year I did quite a bit of research on the old Midtown Hospital in writing a history book of Ponce de Leon, including the family that built the white-columned house. I am pro-choice, but I was still shocked to learn about the atrocities that went on in that place. It was closed by the state because of major health code violations. Seven thousand abortions a year were being performed in horrendous conditions, and some of the fetuses were almost full term. It was a gross and dangerous place.There are court records you can read that describe this in detail. Like I said, I'm all for a woman's choice and safe abortion procedures, but you are painting a different picture of the Midtown Hospital than what it really was. Your heart was in the right place though. ~ Sharon Foster Jones
Marc
10:44 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Sharon, thanks for that supplemental info. It has made me refine my perspective on the original, interesting story.
ATLGal
11:12 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Sharon - I was not intending to glamorize the Hospital - quite the opposite, I was trying to convey the darkness and sadness of that corner. The hospital and the shelter represented the limited options given women (especially poor women). Women will get abortions whether they are legal or not. Whether they can afford a sanitary Buckhead clinic or not, women will seek to control their own lives.
I suspect you never saw the shelter, but I can tell you equally horrifying stories of shattered lives that lead women to huddle with desperately sad children on old beds and tattered blankets.
Don't judge the Hospital too harshly - I saw it, you did not. It was heartbreaking beyond words, beyond the code violations, beyond your ability to completely comprehend. There were TWO options before the leadership of Atlanta and Fulton County - fund it and improve the conditions or paint a story so horrific that it justified tearing it down. Out of site, out of mind....back into the dark.
ATLGal
11:13 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Marc- thank you for the civil discourse - I appreciate your opinion and thank you for posting here in such a respectful way.
Kit Sutherland
11:40 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Thanks to my friends Anna and Sharon for their respective insights, thoughts, and memories re the nuances of this very complex story. I definitely remember the building (and the protests and controversy), but I think I'm glad I never went in there.
ATLGal
11:45 am on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Kit (and Sharon) I am thrilled that Sharon has chimed in - I respect her work and focus on Atlanta's history. I look forward to many more conversations with you both about Ponce and the communities we love.
Drew Plant
7:18 pm on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Wow - great writing, reflection and quiet call to action, ATLGal. You left me with a lot to think about AND wanting to read more of your writings.
ATLGal
7:28 pm on Sunday, February 19, 2012
Thank you, Drew. More to come!