Philly Plain Dealer

A group of people belonging to the St. John The Evangelist Church led an anti-abortion protest and march that was disguised as a prayer vigil for John Stanton, a Catholic leader in Philadelphia and the founder of the Pro-Life Coalition of Southeastern Pennsylvania. He passed away ten years ago. However, the attitudes of the attendees as well as their willingness to abandon their prayer session early is far from what you’d expect at a public vigil.

The church members and affiliated supporters met at St. John’s at 7:30 AM Saturday, with a plan to proceed to the Philadelphia Women’s Center on Appletree Street. Considering the group’s history and its route for the day, multiple abortion advocacy organizations made a plan of action to defend the healthcare center. Upon arriving (a little late, shout-out to Septa) around 8:30, I was greeted by a kind woman who asked me if I was there for the clinic or the protest. She and seven others were wearing vests that said “Clinic Escort” on the front and back.

There were about five or six nuns attending the vigil, one man who was holding a large wooden cross, and approximately 30 other people gathered outside, facing the clinic when I arrived. They had used an amp and microphone to preach anti-abortion passages and urge women to not receive healthcare at the clinic, but by the time I arrived, the pro-choice counter protestors had connected to their sound system’s Bluetooth and successfully hijacked it to play Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga until it was turned off completely.

During the protest, one car had arrived at the clinic. Two men participating in the vigil tried to bombard the vehicle before it pulled into the clinic parking lot, waving religious pamphlets at the windows of the car and chasing it. Almost all of the clinic escorts aided the vehicle’s occupants in pulling into the parking lot and ensuring they made it inside safely. The group did not miss a single opportunity to interrupt movement of other vehicles in the street, even ones who were just trying to make it out of the PPA lot and pay for their parking.

The group’s vigil was scheduled to end at 9:00 AM and process back to St. John’s. After lighting a total of zero candles and engaging in brief prayer, by 8:45 the anti-abortion protestors had been outnumbered by pro-choice activists at about a 2-1 ratio and began leaving the premises of the clinic.

One of the abortion advocacy groups on site was the Masculinity Action Project. MAP is a Philly-based gender justice group focused on bringing men and masc folks out of the shadows and helping them become involved in gender equality efforts such as abortion access. “I think a key value of MAP is to protect and uplift, meaning getting involved in fights that may not directly affect us. There seems to be little to no sense of urgency amongst men when it comes to the fight for justice and reproductive healthcare” said Vee, a participating member of MAP. “Right now there are two ways to see things; one is a toxic and individualistic approach, ‘this sucks but it doesn’t change my life,’ and the other is feeling a moral and ethical obligation to use male privilege to combat patriarchal ideals which allow men to sit and do nothing when a horrible law gets passed.” Vee also noted that the group’s main focus is trying to change the way we define masculinity, by encouraging masculine people to be soft, help others without necessarily having a leadership role, and trashing the notion that men should only feel secure if they are threatened by women’s rights.

Hannah and Caroline are members of the Abortion Rights Working Group, another organization centered around clinic defence and accessibility. They explained that the St. John’s Evangelist Church holds vigils for their late leader almost yearly, and every time they will end up in front of an abortion clinic. The members of ARWG who participate in clinic defenses have seen anti-abortion protestors shove their way through barricades of people and scream in the faces of those defending bodily autonomy, in spite of Saturday’s event being fairly tame. “My mom has gotten pushed over. She’s a 75-year-old lady. There was a cop right down the street who didn’t witness the incident because he was chatting with Pat, the head of the Pro-Life Union of Philadelphia. We are the ones who are protecting each other at these clinics.”

The temperature was a brisk 29 degrees on Saturday morning. Everyone in attendance with the exception of the nuns was bundled up while defending their beliefs and values. The main difference in integrity between the two groups is that when one faced adversity and strength in their opponents, they abandoned their respective plans and left to go back to the church.

There seems to be a tendency to believe Philadelphia is an oasis for bodily autonomy, but anyone who receives healthcare at the Center City Planned Parenthood knows that anti-abortion groups are motivated and sometimes even paid to harass women. With the upcoming changes to our political landscape, we may find even more crawling out of the woodwork, feeling more emboldened than ever before.