Philadelphia PA – On April 18, an anti-abortion religious group called Mission Youth Philly planned to obstruct access to the Planned Parenthood at 12th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia’s gayborhood. In response, over 100 abortion rights activists and community members led by the Philly Abortion Rights Coalition gathered to prevent the anti-abortionists from intimidating patients accessing care and to show solidarity with the clinic-goers.

Mission Youth Philly is a Catholic organization that aims to involve mostly children and teenagers in public religious actions and other missionary work. They organize and lead a series of “missions” each year for the week leading up to Easter. The actions they performed on April 18 were for Good Friday. Their plan was to gather at the Planned Parenthood at 12th and Locust, to obstruct access to the clinic. Then, they would march to Rittenhouse Square to perform the stations of the cross and eventually regroup at the Philadelphia Women’s Center, a second clinic, to continue to harass patients accessing care.

Clinic defenders organized by the Philly Abortion Rights Coalition arrived with signs and banners highlighting the right to bodily autonomy for all, but especially women and LGBTQ people. Though a few people from Mission Youth Philly showed up at 8 a.m., the clinic defenders showed up earlier to prevent them from setting up directly in front of the clinic, forcing them across the street where they could not access clinic-goers.

Mission Youth Philly arrived with life-sized wooden crosses, flowers and various other symbolic props. Over 100 of them began gathering on the sidewalk opposite the clinic and its defenders but eventually crowded into the street to pray and sing as a group.In response, organizers from the Philly Abortion Rights Coalition formed a wall of bodies and led chants to drown them out such as, “Pro-life, that’s a lie. You don’t care if people die” and “Abortion is healthcare, healthcare is a human right.”

After several hours, Mission Youth Philly began the second phase of their “mission” and had their members march throughout Center City with large wooden crosses, a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus. Some anti-abortionists reconvened at the Philadelphia Women’s Center on Appletree Street, where more activists stood in defense of the clinic.

At the second clinic, an organizer from the Philly Abortion Rights Coalition initiated a speak-out and encouraged participants to share their personal experience with abortion and why the right to bodily autonomy was important to them. One participant shared that the lack of access to a medical abortion nearly cost her life and that those events have affected her fertility permanently. Another participant shared that even though they are trans-masculine, they have still needed to access abortion care.

The abortion rights activists successfully kept both clinics open and accessible for patients. Though the focus of the counter-protest was clinic defense, organizers, activists and passersby held broader conversations about bodily autonomy, child welfare, and access to healthcare, identifying the bigger enemy, not in fringe groups like Mission Youth Philly, but in the wealthy reactionaries in power who seek to strip away abortion rights for all.

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