Hey there Planned Parenthood Protester.

When I see you standing outside of the clinic with your poster or your informational packet, I wonder what exactly you think your role is in helping or hindering a Planned Parenthood patient in seeking health care. On different occasions I have seen you or spoken to you, and these interactions have prompted me to let you know a few things about how you change a woman’s experience when she encounters you on her way to the clinic.

First of all, not every woman going to a Planned Parenthood is going there because she is pregnant, and not every pregnant woman going into a Planned Parenthood is scheduled for an abortion.

To you more zealous protesters who scream things like “Abortion is murder, don’t kill your child, you're going to hell!” as patients make their way inside of a Planned Parenthood facility, you are doing very little to change the minds or the intentions of the women heading inside, or to help them with their healthcare needs. There isn’t much more that I can really say to you, because unlike some of the other protesters outside of Planned Parenthood, you don’t really have a higher purpose in being there except to voice your opinion and make woman feel ashamed of their choice to seek out care. Please, just go home.

For those of you who are simply there to tell a woman she has other options, be aware that there is a very likely chance that the woman already knows this, or that the Planned Parenthood health professional she is about to consult with will tell her. Contrary to what you may believe, Planned Parenthood does not pressure a woman to choose abortion when she enters with an unplanned pregnancy. Planned Parenthood offers prenatal services and pregnancy tests to women and can help them find affordable healthcare plans and providers so that they can carry a pregnancy to term should they choose. I get it, you want to help, and I assure you that I respect your intentions far more than I respect those of the bellowing anti-choice activists who offer no real help to the women on their way to the clinic. I know you may be thinking that you are not doing a woman any harm by standing there and letting her know that she can come to you for help, but the truth is that no matter how friendly you are, having a stranger start trying to tell you what the best reproductive health choice is for you in the middle of the sidewalk is awkward and embarrassing for most women.

I know what you may be thinking, “but I just wanna help these women.” Well, while helping woman may be part of your intention, we both know that you are standing outside of a Planned Parenthood facility for another reason: You are against Planned Parenthood and abortion. If your sole purpose was to simply help women, you would be out looking for women who had not found a place to get healthcare and were in need of healthcare assistance, not trying to drag patients off of Planned Parenthood's doorstep. Just because you have a clinic that offers some of the same services as Planned Parenthood, doesn’t give you the right to assume that this would be a good fit for a patient who has already found the services she needs at Planned Parenthood, nor does this mean that a Planned Parenthood parking lot is the right place for you to advertise what your clinic offers. Just because Walmart sells some of the same groceries as Target doesn’t mean that Walmart workers stand outside Target passing out flyers saying that shoppers should drop everything and leave Target to get their groceries at Walmart, that would be awkward.

Additionally, I have read many of your "informational" flyers which tell women not to use birth control or condoms because they are “dangerous” and which preach abstinence and fertility awareness based (FAB) methods as the only right way to prevent pregnancy. These scientifically unsupported statements are not meant to help women to make informed choices on what if best for them, but to further your own agenda. You may respond by saying, “but Planned Parenthood has an agenda to force women onto birth control pills and they don’t tell her all of her options either.” However, this is not true, a quick trip to the Planned Parenthood website will show you that every scientifically sound form of pregnancy prevention is listed, including abstinence and FAB methods.

To sum up what I am trying to say here, you too, like the zealous protester, should probably just go home or find some other corner to hand out your pamphlet. Outside of a Planned Parenthood is no place to further your abstinence only agenda or to advertise your clinic's limited serves. If you really wanna help women, then get off of Planned Parenthood’s doorstep and go assist the countless woman who have not yet found a place to get the health care services you provide. You make Planned Parenthood patients feel indifferent at best, and more often awkward, ashamed and judged. I can respect those of you with good intentions, but I can tell you now that if you want to accomplish the goal of helping women, it is time to get off the sidewalk and leave Planned Parenthood patients alone.