[news] Escort Duty at an Abortion Clinic

[Resist!ca]

Escort Brigade by Steve Ammidown; July 16, 2004 Steve Ammidown is a 29 year old 
office worker for a publicly traded company just outside of Harrisburg, 
Pennsylvania (who is) getting active because (he's) tired of being fed up. I 
was at "the (pro-choice) March" on April 25th, 2004. On that particularly warm 
spring day, I remember yelling a lot, holding signs and how sore my feet were 
by the end.  But the thing that will stay with me always is that feeling- 
the feeling of being at a complete loss for words when I realized how many 
people were there. The feeling that, my god, maybe we young'uns weren't as 
apathetic as we had been so persistently painted. For a couple of hours that 
day, slogans were the only words that flowed easily out of my mouth. I just 
didn't have the vocabulary to express how I felt. As a guy, it's hard sometimes 
to have an opinion on women's health issues. I've never had an abortion, I have 
never had my insurance company decide to bill me more to see my gynecologist 
because he or she is considered a "specialist". I have never had to choose 
between birth control and food. All I could do was empathize, shake my head and 
donate what I could afford to organizations like Planned Parenthood. Anything 
else, I felt, would be viewed with suspicion or maybe even anger.

URL: http://resist.ca/story/2004/7/16/20388/0738