The protesters find it so easy to insult the women who…

““The protesters find it so easy to insult the women who come to me seeking care—as if rationally deciding to terminate a pregnancy makes a woman heedless and irresponsible like a child. In my experience, the opposite is true: By the time a woman finds herself in my waiting room she has already walked a long, introspective road. She has had to take a good, hard look at her life. She has taken a world of contradictory and sometimes difficult factors into account. Whatever sex act got her here – an intercourse lit by love, passion, lust, hope, indifference, and yes, sometimes incest or rape – is long past and obliterated now by more pressing, pragmatic concerns.The protesters find it so easy to insult the women who come to me seeking care—as if rationally deciding to terminate a pregnancy makes a woman heedless and irresponsible like a child. In my experience, the opposite is true: By the time a woman finds herself in my waiting room she has already walked a long, introspective road. She has had to take a good, hard look at her life. She has taken a world of contradictory and sometimes difficult factors into account. Whatever sex act got her here – an intercourse lit by love, passion, lust, hope, indifference, and yes, sometimes incest or rape – is long past and obliterated now by more pressing, pragmatic concerns.””

— Willie Parker