Illustration by Elian Retana.
The young woman pulls into the parking lot hard, slams her car door, and heads straight for the protestors. She cannot be more than twenty. The men filming her shout back, repeat her license plate number, and taunt her. She screams at them, tries to grab their signs, and knocks over a camera.
I stand frozen for a moment, then remember my role. As a Planned Parenthood Safety Aide, my job is to make sure people can enter a clinic without being harassed, frightened, or driven away. I step in, trying to calm her, trying to pull her back behind the fence. She is shaking with rage and grief, and I can only imagine what has brought her to this breaking point.
I understand her anger. I want to cheer her on. But escalation is what the protestors want. So, I tell her what I’ve learned: don’t engage, don’t give them what they’re looking for, protect yourself.
Eventually, she leaves. Still furious. Still unheard.
Scenes like this explain why volunteer training at Planned Parenthood includes instructions I never expected to learn. We are taught to run or hide, how to lock down a building, and how to respond if someone is trapped in a hallway. We learn what an abandoned package looks like, how to recognize suspicious behavior, when to pull an alarm, and who to call. We watch cameras. We learn how doors seal and alarms sound.
Illustrations by Elian Retana.
Why Planned Parenthood South Texas Matters
Planned Parenthood South Texas (PPST) provides cancer screenings, STI testing, contraception, and primary care to people who are uninsured or out of options. Many clinics no longer provide abortion care, yet the threats remain. The contradiction is hard to ignore: helping people access health care requires preparing for violence.
What I see outside clinics is not simply a protest. It is the result of a political environment that leaves many women without representation or recourse. When people are told they cannot make decisions about their own bodies, that their pain does not matter, that their futures are negotiable, pressure builds. Anger has to go somewhere.
The young woman that day was wrong to act out physically, but she was not wrong to be angry. She had nowhere to put it. Few leaders are listening. Few spaces exist where women can speak honestly about what is being taken from them.
Planned Parenthood remains one of the rare places where dignity, autonomy, and care are still centered. Volunteering here means standing at that intersection, between fear and compassion, anger and restraint, risk and care.
It means showing up quietly, consistently, and with resolve.
That is why I volunteer, and that is why PPST matters.
