Gruesome props for pavement battles

It is still dark outside Brooklyn's Ambulatory Surgery Centre when Rose arrives in front of its pink awning every morning. She carries with her an assortment of placards and photographs, mostly pictures of bloody pieces of human flesh that only slightly resemble a human baby. Alongside these are portraits of the Holy Family and a black-and-white poster of a muscled young man with no shirt cradling a baby. The picture is entitled A Father's Touch, and is startling beside the gory images and plastic foetuses that Rose and her companions set up for display.

The building they congregate outside is large and windowless, almost resembling a pink bunker - appropriately enough, since it sits on the front line of America's bitter and sometimes bloody abortion war. The sight of Rose, a well-preserved, middle-aged Hispanic woman, and her supporters, all instantly visible from quite a distance away, has become a permanent fixture outside the Ambulatory Surgery Centre, which for the past five years has been the target of protest from a group called the Helpers of God's Precious Infants, a Catholic anti-abortion group supported by New York's Bishop Daly. Their photographs and tactics are resonant of those of their SPUC counterparts in O'Connell Street, and some show an Irish affiliation. One morning recently, a woman protester wearing an Aran cap greeted another with a "Top of the morning to you!" The recent, forced entry of Youth Defence and the Washington-based Christian Defence Coalition into Dublin's Irish Family Planning Centre proved this affiliation is more than merely sentimental.

As Rose and her "helpers" arrive in the dawn light, so do two clinic escorts, who stand from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. every day on the windy corner outside the centre. These men and women don luminous-coloured vests proclaiming their affiliation to the clinic in English and Spanish, and take their places beside the protesters, with a policeman between them. The first day I escorted, my partner explained our role was to reach women attending the clinic and tell them they are assured access to the building and do not have to talk, listen to or take information from anyone.

Through this little gathering, everyone walking down the street must pass, and it is here the war on abortion is fought quietly, escorts and protesters vying for the attention of the women walking by. Each one, to the protesters, is an individual target in their daily battle to save souls. This is the largest state-licensed minor-surgery centre in the borough of Brooklyn (population two million), providing cosmetic, chiropody, urological, and gynaecological surgical services, including abortion. It was here that HOGPI and Bishop Daly organised a "prayer meeting" in October last year, the morning after the murder of a gynaecologist and abortion provider, Dr Barnett Slepian, in Buffalo, New York state. He was shot in the back by a sniper while talking to his wife and sons in his kitchen.

The director of the Ambulatorys clinic, Frank Monck, says the timing was "coincidental" but ominous nonetheless. Some 150 protesters descended on the clinic, seriously disrupting services and attracting the attention of the local press, resulting in added distress for the patients. Here in the US, the line between harmless dissent and sinister threats is often blurred, and staff at the clinic have reported protesters taking down licence-plate details, photographing people entering the building, and phoning staff members at home.

The effect the protesters have on the women entering the clinic is patently visible, as they try to ignore the attention they attract. Monck says the protesters' actions are tantamount to an "open season on women as they attempt to access healthcare", and that women are left feeling "victimised and humiliated". One woman I saw recently was on the verge of tears.

Some women appear hostile to both escort and protester, and demand to be left alone. Some women appear to be confused and intimidated by the approach of two total strangers, as often they are either very young or non-English-speaking (a fact not lost on the Helpers, who have been known to tell non-Americans that abortion is illegal in the United States and if they attempt to enter the building they will be arrested by the policeman standing at the door). Most visitors, however, look profoundly relieved to have the escort to walk beside, often keeping their eyes off the protesters and their violent images by looking straight at the escort until they are through the doors.

The atmosphere inside the waiting room is "extremely tense and sad", according to Monck, and security at the clinic is constantly an issue.

All too frequently here, the war on abortion has turned into just that, with anti-abortion extremists resorting to murder. Seven people have been killed by anti-abortion assassins since 1993, 12 clinics have been bombed. Yet, despite these acts of violence, there remains a strong and active pro-choice movement. In the New York subways and buses, posters by group called The Pro-Choice Public Education Project warn of a turning back to the dark days of the 1970s when abortion remained illegal, and pointing out such statistics as "77 per cent of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100 per cent of them will never be pregnant".

On March 10th, there was a National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers, which was initiated in 1996 by a group called Refuse and Resist! to commemorate the third anniversary of the murder of Dr David Gunn, the first abortion provider murdered. This year, the co-sponsors included names as varied as the National Organisation for Women, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Catholics for a Free Choice, National Council of Jewish Women, and Gloria Steinem.

Together they highlighted the working conditions in many clinics throughout the country, and encouraged the public through press conferences and a rally to support their local providers. A sermon written expressly for the day of appreciation by a multi-denominational group called the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice stated: "We honour the dedicated, embattled health professionals who provide abortion services and other reproductive health care to women despite violent anti-abortion politics and terrorism. These care-givers risk their lives daily not for ideological reasons but because they are conscientious professionals committed to ensuring the full range of gynaecological medicine is available to women."

Despite these efforts, the debate surrounding abortion remains shrouded in the rhetoric of violence, and clearly more than just the life of the "unborn" is at stake. Last Saturday morning, exactly one week after Patrick Mahoney and Youth Defence paralysed the IFPA in Dublin, a large bomb partially exploded beside a North Carolina abortion clinic, the only one in its area, 30 minutes before it was to open. No warning had been given. The American Life League, which Monck says is "clearly linked" to the Helpers (they share space on a website), pledges: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that this nation will pay with the blood of its citizens for every drop of blood drawn by the curette". Evidently, for as long as groups such as these remain, women in New York and across the nation will continue to be held to ransom by a moral minority.