Do you feel like you need to have a personal connection to abortion to care about other
people's access to abortion?
You don't need to personally need to have an abortion
to understand that people should have a choice
and an ability to access such a health care necessity.
The fight over Roe v. Wade is quickly reaching a boiling point.
The abortion flashpoint.
All across the country, a wave of new restrictions.
Missouri could become the first state in the country without an abortion clinic.
In 2008, Missouri had five abortion clinics, now the state is down to one.
And soon that number might be zero.
This is the only clinic left in Missouri that provides abortions.
It's under constant threat from conservative lawmakers wanting to shut its doors.
The state of Missouri,
please keep your fingers out of our vaginas.
This sleepy Midwestern city may not look like a battleground, but war is being waged.
St. Louis, Missouri is home to one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in
the country, known as HB 126.
This law is among some of the biggest threats to women's reproductive rights in nearly 50 years.
Radicalism is what gets people to pay attention.
We don't necessarily need to get arrested but we need to show people that we're serious.
Millions of people are on the line.
Millions of women are on the line and radicalism is what it takes, radicalism is what we're gonna do.
One in four people who have a uterus will seek abortion care before the age of 45.
So it doesn't matter where you live or who you vote for or what religion you are.
You still might need an abortion someday.
Pregnancy is complicated, and it can be potentially really dangerous and catastrophic.
And so anytime that we're forcing anybody to continue a pregnancy means we're asking
them, we're forcing them to assume risk to their own health.
If you care about racial justice, you should care about abortion.
If you care about economic inequality, you should care about abortion.
It’s just something like that it was like a no-brainer.
Meet Farheen Khan, Claire Stolze, and Sunny Lu, organizers of St. Louis Pro-Choice Student Activists.
Do you have a galvanizing event in your life where it got you into activism?
Can you pinpoint one thing in your history?
My parents are very right wing.
They're evangelical Christians, and I grew up very immersed in religion.
When I was a lot younger, I think my parents were faced with a lot of that Islamophobia
and that racism.
I know we've had some incidents where people either spray-painted our house, or we were
targeted by white supremacist groups.
And we were actually at the church when Michael Brown was shot.
We heard the gunshot.
We drove past.
That was probably one of the more defining moments for me.
Missouri's restrictive abortion law HB 126 gave these teens a common cause.
We really started engaging with each other for this specific rally and this organization
through this giant GroupMe that happened in result of HB 126, the abortion ban bill getting passed.
Imagine a group chat of 300 people all fired up, pissed off but without an actual action plan.
That's when Claire, Farheen, and Sunny stepped in.
In a week, they had organized a protest.
I think our role is to push people to think bigger.
I think we need to start thinking about this movement as not just one that centers around
women, not just one that centers around white women.
Under a blazing Missouri sun, hundreds turned out.
School's over, but the pressure is on.
Jesse works out of the clinic.
One of the features of our neighborhood is we have these folks out here in vests on the sidewalk.
And these are protesters from the Coalition for Life.
It's a local organization, anti-choice organization.
Now they're part of an internship program.
They get paid eight, nine dollars an hour to stand out here.
And what they're basically trying to do is stop traffic on the way in.
He tells me that they use cameras to surveil the clinic staff and intimidate patients.
Their organization claims it's there for their own protection.
And what they want to do is they want to hand them pamphlets, hand them information about
services that they can get in other places.
So their goal is to get the cars to turn around and go somewhere else.
So it's an illusion of choice.
That's exactly right.
They will use the word choice very deliberately.
And what they say is they empower people to choose life.
I haven't really tried to do much direct confrontation because I think that the people that protest
in front of abortion clinics are just so set in their ways that they're just going to take
a defensive stance.
And not... like nothing you say is going to change their mind, I'm pretty convinced.
There are teens too on the other side.
Hi there.
Would you mind giving me another pamphlet?
Yeah, I'd love to.
Thank you.
Also I didn't get to give this to you earlier because I couldn't find it in my pocket.
Gotcha.
These are also coupons, there's a couple in here.
Yeah, here take three.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And let us know if you need help with anything, okay?
Okay.
Alright.
Have a great day.
You too.
Yikes.
It's surprisingly quiet and cordial but apparently that's part of the strategy.
These are free resources through Women's Care Connect.
This is a fake clinic.
This has religion in the name.
It's a fake clinic.
Oh my gosh.
These are all clinics that dissuade women from getting abortions.
For those stuck in abortion deserts, there’s organizations that bridge the line between
activists and clinics.
Gateway is the only organization of its kind in Missouri.
It helps women pay for and access abortions.
The first battle that I wake up to fight every single
day is to get people safe access to abortion care.
And whatever that looks like, that's what I want to do.
The terror of having no options
is something that every patient has felt.
And when it comes to abortion, that terror effects more people than you think.
I asked her, you know, where she where she came from, how far she had to drive.
Just kind of icebreaker questions.
And she mentioned that she lived very close to the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis.
And I asked her, well, can I ask you why you didn't choose to get an abortion there?
She said that she had been protesting outside of that Planned Parenthood but, you know,
just wanted to reassure me that the only reason she was here doing this was because it wasn't
the right time for her.
And I still supported her and I made that clear to her.
I supported her decision and I held her hand.
But I also just mentioned, that you know,
that everyone else in this waiting room and everyone else that seeks an abortion,
it's not the right time for them either.
What’s happening in St. Louis is happening all over the country.
But the doctors, the lawyers, and the activists they see a strategy within the mess.
Our role is to try and make sure that abortion is not only legal but accessible.
So in order for abortion to still be accessible, we definitely need those lawyers championing
the clinics in court.
We need the doctors and the activists.
Everyone’s voice is so important, and we’re all so intertwined.
The folks who are running the clinics, the people who are helping our patients get in
the front door, right?
Everybody is part of this and really everybody should pe part of this, right?
We thought Roe v. Wade was cemented.
But eventually things started changing, and Michael Brown happened, and all of a sudden
things that we thought were not problems were problems again.
Or maybe they just never stopped, but we stopped realizing it.
And I think that's what's up for grabs with everything.
I think that one issue leads to another issue.
We can't stop because if we stop what's going to happen to our world?
Somebody has to fight.