43On a 92-degree morning in September, three clinic escorts
gathered in the meager shade of a tree outside the Ala-
bama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives.
They arrive here at 8:30 a.m. on the dot, regular as clock-
punchers, on the three days a week the Huntsville clinic
is open to perform abortions. The women and girls arrive
dressed for comfort in sweatpants and shower slides, carry-
ing pillows from home or holding the hand of a partner
or friend. The escorts, meanwhile, wear brightly colored
vests and wield giant umbrellas to block the incoming
patients from the sight, if not the sound, of the other
group that comes here like clockwork: the protesters.
Sometimes there are as many as a dozen. This day there were four:
one woman, three men, all white. Four doesn’t sound like that many
until you’re downwind of them maniacally hollering: Mommy, don’t
kill me! You’re lynching your black baby! They rip their arms and legs
off! They suffer! They torture them!
But escorts are made of stern stuff. Josie, with her short snow-
white ponytail and T-shirt spangled with buttons (fearless flaw-
less feminist, abortion is normal), doesn’t get paid to defend,
as she puts it, “these patients, these doctors, this staff.” Nevertheless,
that’s her job. Among those Josie has sworn to protect is Willie
Parker, an ob-gyn who has worked here for the past several years and
who, until recently, was a hero of the reproductive- rights movement.
Last fall, while trying to defend Parker—not in this park-
ing lot, but in the no-less-divisive wilds of Facebook message
boards—Josie got dragged into a dispute that has shaken the
reproductive-rights movement, from its uppermost reaches to
its grassroots volunteers. One of Josie’s fellow escorts was called
“trash” after she spoke up for Parker; others were told they didn’t
deserve to be escorts. The people hurling the insults were not pro-
lifers but fellow abortion-rights foot soldiers: How dare Josie—
how dare anyone—not believe Candice?
On March 25, 2019, the activist Candice Russell posted a
3,300-word essay on the website Medium titled “To All the Women
Whose Names I Don’t Know, About the Pain We Share, the Secrets