A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021
the building. “We’re praying for you!”
Soon after the man left, a teen-
ager named Alejandra Dipp Gon-
zalez joined Nix. Dipp Gonzalez
wore a blue safety vest, four
friendship bracelets and a silver
piece with cross charms dangling
off her wrists.
Dipp Gonzalez is Catholic, and
she’d learned at church that abor-
tion was wrong, but she didn’t
spend her time protesting it be-
fore the coronavirus pandemic.
That changed when she stumbled
across the San Antonio Coalition
for Life’s Instagram page. She
thought its rosary events seemed
cool, and she liked that they con-
nected women to outside resourc-
es. Still, she didn’t think she could
join, because she was an introvert
who grew up speaking Spanish.
Sometimes she stuttered when
she used English. As the pandemic
wore on, though, Dipp Gonzalez
started watching YouTube debates
between abortion rights and anti-
abortion activists, and she made
up her mind: Abortion is murder.
This spring, she called Nix and
asked to join her.
The 18-year-old was nervous
the first day. What if she stuttered?
What if she said something so
wrong that it actually encouraged
a woman to have an abortion?
But four months in, Dipp Gon-
zalez had let go of those fears as
she realized she had two advan-
tages. Nix and many of the other
antiabortion activists were White
and middle-aged or older. But
most of Planned Parenthood’s pa-
tients looked a lot like Dipp Gon-
zalez — young and Hispanic.
“Most of them are people our
age,” she said, nodding to a young
woman walking toward her car.
“They’re from our schools. Know-
ing that there’s people on this side
helping them makes them kind of
open up. And then sometimes they
come up to us and they’re like, ‘Oh,
do you work for Planned Parent-
hood?’ And we go, ‘No, we’re a
different organization.’ They con-
fuse us because we don’t look like
the conventional pro-life person.”
The patient opened her car
door, and Dipp Gonzalez stepped
between the yuccas to offer a free
pregnancy test. The spiny plants
scratched at her jeans. The first
day Dipp Gonzalez worked, she’d
stepped into the plants so often,
she’d gone home with a rash
across her thigh. She’d mostly
learned to avoid the spikes since
then, but she hadn’t yet figured
out how to dodge the ants. San
Antonio’s dirt was full of them,
and they often crawled up her leg
as she stood near the barrier talk-
ing to patients. She used her left
foot to scratch at the ring of bites
the ants had left along her right
ankle earlier in the week.
The patient ducked into her car,
then drove off, so Dipp Gonzalez
sprinted to meet her at the exit.
Nix took over calling out to pa-
tients. A young man parked a gray-
and-black Mustang next to the
fence, and Nix figured he was ei-
ther there for physical therapy or
an STD test, so she grabbed a
different gift bag, one for men, and
dangled it in the air.
“Excuse me, sir, this is a gift bag
with information about getting a
free STD test,” she said.
The man headed inside without
taking one, but he returned a few
minutes later and asked for a bag.
Nix’s volunteers had packed trail
mix, fingernail clippers and handsanitizer inside. On the back,
they’d listed the phone number for
the Kind Clinic, a sexual wellness
clinic seven miles east.
“You said free?” the man asked.
Nix nodded.
“Well, cool, thanks,” he said.
He left without going back into
the clinic.
Nix said her group is most suc-
cessful when patients learn that
other places offer free versions of
tests they would have to pay for at
Planned Parenthood. Mara Posa-
da, a spokeswoman for Planned
Parenthood, declined to specify
how much it charges for STD tests,
but its clinics accept insurance
and offer sliding-scale prices for
patients without insurance. Posa-
da said in an email that Nix’s
group doesn’t understand how
much it costs to run a comprehen-
sive health-care operation with-
out government support. In 2011,
the Texas legislature cut the two-
year budget for family planning
from $111 million to $38 million in
an effort to defund Planned Par-
enthood, and earlier this year, a
judge ruled that Texas could bar
patients from using Medicaid at
Planned Parenthood, even if they
are receiving non-abortion care.
As the state has made those
cuts, it has invested increasingly
larger sums of money in a pro-
gram it calls Alternatives to Abor-tion. The Texas legislature created
it in 2005 using $5 million pulled
from the Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families fund. Every
year, the state has increased its
contribution. In 2021, it has bud-
geted $100 million for the pro-
gram. The money goes to nonprof-
it organizations that provide a va-
riety of services, but much of it is
set aside for pregnancy centers.
(Nix’s group is a go-between, not a
service provider, and does not
qualify to receive state funding.)‘This is my job’
The woman in the car didn’t
want a gift bag, but Dipp Gonzalez
was still smiling when she re-
turned to the fence. Both the side-
walk and the parking lot went
quiet for a while. Around 2 p.m., a
driver honked, then rolled down
his window and yelled, “Get a job.”
Dipp Gonzalez waved.
“This is my job,” she said.
The San Antonio Coalition for
Life pays interns $10 an hour to
stand outside Planned Parent-
hood. Dipp Gonzalez usually
works 15 hours a week and spends
most of the $150 she earns on
classes at the University of Texas at
San Antonio, where she’s a fresh-
man majoring in civil engineering.
The car disappeared down the
street, and Dipp Gonzalez shrugged,
then looked back at the empty lot.After S.B. 8 took effect, three of
the seven Planned Parenthood clin-
ics in Texas stopped offering abor-
tions. Jeffrey Hons, the president
and chief executive of Planned Par-
enthood South Texas, which over-
sees six centers in San Antonio, said
he decided to temporarily stop pro-
viding abortions, because he want-
ed to see how the law might play
out. Last year, the South Texas clin-
ics saw nearly 25,000 patients, most
seeking non-abortion services such
as Pap smears or birth control.
Hons worried that a lawsuit might
jeopardize those other services.
“We have people all around us
who would like nothing more than
to see us make a mistake,” he said.
So far, the only provider who has
been sued is Alan Braid, a physician
who provides abortions and prac-
tices down the street, and who an-
nounced that he had broken the law.
Hons recently decided to resume
offering the procedure to women
under the legal limit. The caseload
has remained light, Hons said, be-
cause many women don’t know
that they’re pregnant at six weeks.
“Very, very few people are actu-
ally going to get abortion care,”
Hons said.
On the sidewalk, Nix fanned her-
self with a brochure as the afternoon
heated up to a humid 81 degrees. An
hour went by, and only a few cars
pulled in. Nix and Dipp GonzalezBY CASEY PARKSsan a ntonio — Seven weeks had
passed since Texas enacted the
most restrictive abortion law in
the country. Doctors no longer
could legally perform the pro-
cedure on patients who had been
pregnant more than six weeks,
and the Planned Parenthood on
Babcock Road had stopped offer-
ing abortions entirely. It was the
kind of victory that antiabortion
activists had long dreamed of, and
yet, Cathy Nix was not satisfied.
By late October, the parking lot
she spent her days outside was less
busy than it used to be, but it
wasn’t empty. Nix held a clipboard
close to her face and wrote notes
about the cars that remained. A
silver Hyundai pulled in at noon. A
white Subaru arrived 20 minutes
later. Nix offered both drivers a gift
bag filled with fingernail polish,
paraben-free shampoo and bro-
chures referring them to pregnan-
cy centers, antiabortion facilities
that try to dissuade women from
terminating their pregnancies,
but neither driver accepted one.
At 12:24 p.m., a white Toyota
SUV slipped into a parking spot
near the building. A woman
stepped out, and Nix greeted her
in a loud but genial tone.
“Hi, can I offer you any help?”
she asked. “Free pregnancy tests
or ultrasounds? We’re here to help
you.”
The woman didn’t turn her
head, but Nix appeared unfazed.
The work she described as “a call-
ing” wasn’t easy. Nix wasn’t al-
lowed on the Planned Parenthood
parking lot, and a stone-and-metal
fence divides the public sidewalk
from the clinic’s property. The
fence is lined with yucca and other
spiny plants, and every time Nix
approached the barrier, she had to
step into a bed of prickly fronds.
“If you need help, let me know,
okay?” she called as the woman
opened the clinic door. “God bless
you, sweetie.”
Historically, the fight over abor-
tion has been waged on sidewalks
like this one. That’s still happening
in Texas, even after state Senate
Bill 8 effectively prohibited most
abortions. In early November, the
Supreme Court heard arguments
on whether to leave the law in
place. In December, the court will
hear a case from Mississippi that
could overturn Roe v. Wade entire-
ly. Antiabortion activists are opti-
mistic — the court is the most
conservative it has been in genera-
tions — but for Nix and her cadre of
young interns who spend their
weekdays outside this San Antonio
Planned Parenthood, no law or
court ruling is victory enough.
“We get a lot of people who say,
‘Why are you even here if they’re
not doing abortions?’ ” Nix said.
“We want to help the women. That’s
our main goal. It’s not only abor-
tion. It’s about trying to change the
culture of ‘this is the only place that
can help you.’ We want to show
them that there’s other resources
for them. We’re trying to get them
out of the abortion industry and
into this culture of life.”
Not protesters
Nix is the director of the San
Antonio Coalition for Life, a Catho-
lic organization created 14 years
ago. It is one of several groups that
stand outside this Planned Parent-
hood. Members of some groups
carry signs and megaphones. Oth-
ers sit in red camping chairs and
pray the rosary silently to them-
selves. A spokesperson for Planned
Parenthood said neither the staff-
ers nor the patients can differenti-
ate one group from another, but
Nix and the young people who ac-
company her as “sidewalk interns”
don’t think of themselves as pro-
testers. They’re “referral agents.”
The distinction means Nix’s
group doesn’t carry graphic signs
or use loudspeakers, even though
the traffic on Babcock Road is
noisy and persistent. Everything a
person says sounds angry when
amplified through a megaphone,
Nix said, and using one would
scare patients away.
Soon after the woman from the
white SUV disappeared inside the
clinic, Nix spotted a slight, dark-
haired man leaving the building.
“That’s the abortionist,” Nix
said.
She suspected the clinic might
have started offering abortions
again but wasn’t sure. People go to
Planned Parenthood for a variety
of reasons, and a physical therapy
center rents the space on the
ground floor. She wasn’t certain
the man could hear her over the
traffic, but Nix teaches voice les-
sons and knew how to project
without sounding as if she were
yelling. She stood on her tip toes
and kicked her voice up an octave.
“God bless you, sir,” she called as
the man turned toward the back of
The abortions stopped. The antiabortion activists stayed.
Even after new Tex. law,
they maintain vigil near
San Antonio clinicPHOTOS BY KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POSThad learned to distinguish the regu-
lars from the patients in crisis.
When Nix spotted a woman she’d
seen leaving around noon every day,
Nix moved toward the fence. The
woman was probably an employee.
“I hope you had a great lunch,”
Nix said. “Abortionworker.com.
God bless you today!”
Nix bellows out that Web address
several times a day. It’s a site that
encourages people who work at
Planned Parenthood or other clinics
to leave their jobs “and rediscover the
peace and joy they’ve been missing.”
Nix waved at the woman she
thought was a clinic employee, but
the woman pressed forward.
Eventually, protesters from oth-
er groups arrived. A woman driv-
ing a car with a “Jesus fish” decal
stopped to ask how she could vol-
unteer. Her four children were
grown, she explained, and she was
ready to “do something good.”
“Not that I haven’t been doing
good raising four kids,” she said.
Later, a car slowed and a wom-
an leaned out the passenger-side
window and screamed something
unintelligible.
“When they start yelling, 99
percent of the time they’re going
to tell you that they had an abor-
tion,” Nix said. “Because we know
there’s hurt, we’re not going to yell
back at them. We haven’t walked a
mile in their moccasins. We don’t
know where she’s coming from or
what happened to her, so all we
want to do is be peaceful with her.”
As Nix turned back to her clip-
board, a young Latin woman
edged up to the fence and waved
over Dipp Gonzalez.
“Do you have any information
about Plan B?” the young woman
asked.
“I sure do,” Dipp Gonzalez said.
She pulled a brochure out of her
left breast pocket, then handed it
over the fence. The young woman
turned the brochure over in her
hands. The front was nondescript
— it said “Morning After Pill” — but
the back described what it called
“the beginning of a human being.”
“Some people think of this small
human being as just a lump of cells
and not a person,” it read. “We must
remember, though, what the baby
is, not what he or she looks like.
Many people look different than we
expect them to, but we still would
say they are human beings. This is
true with an unborn baby, too. It
does not matter what the newly fer-
tilized egg looks like; it matters what
it is. What is it? It is a human being
waiting to grow up and be born.”
The woman said thank you. She
took the brochure, then she drove
away. Dipp Gonzalez’s shift was
almost over, so she stood quiet for a
while, watching as an elderly wom-
an from a nearby Catholic church
sprayed holy water on the yucca
plants. When she’d finished, the
woman looked up at Planned Par-
enthood, then sprayed one final
stream of holy water, j ust in case.
[email protected]Caroline Kitchener in Washington
contributed to this report.ABOVE: Cathy Nix of the San
Antonio Coalition for Life
outside a Planned Parenthood
clinic in the Texas city last
month. LEFT: Nix, holding a
model of an 11-week-old fetus.
BELOW: Coalition intern
Alejandra Dipp Gonzales, 18.