“Don’t Walk in There”: The Challenges Birthing Persons Face at the Clinic

During the summer of 2021, the author spent a week at an abortion clinic in the southern United States with two of his undergraduate students. In this piece, he engages in autoethnography and writing as a therapeutic process to show how his experience with his students changed his outlook on what abortion clinic workers, volunteers, and birthing persons go through every day. What has been happening outside abortion clinics across the country for decades needs to stop, and as someone who was not well-informed or involved before his trip to the abortion clinic, the author encourages others like him to take action to support abortion clinics with their important mission to protect the healthcare rights of birthing persons.