Service learning log #2 - week of 4/5/2012

40 Days for Life is over as of April 1st, so I've probably done my last Wednesday escorting at the West Side Clinic. (Cristina sent out an e-mail looking for escorts on Saturday the 6th as well, but I will be out of town that weekend.) That should satisfy my hours, so all that should be left for service learning for me is getting Cristina's sign-off on my hours log.

Last Thursday, there were a couple of men at the clinic with their partners—apparently there for abortion services—who came out and asked the escorts for advice and support. That was interesting and unexpected. One of them wanted to know how exactly the pill-based abortion manifests, ostensibly because he wanted to give his partner advice about how traumatic that experience would be versus a surgical abortion. While escorts clearly aren't trained to give medical advice and shouldn't be doing so, I felt bad that I didn't actually know the answer to his question and couldn't honestly give him even a vague, non-medical reassurance. It dovetailed interestingly with the protestors' ongoing insistence that we should "Get the facts!!" about abortion.

Another male patient went out and talked to the protestors' for ten minutes or so. I don't know what they talked about, but he did ask us to throw away their literature when he came back to the clinic entrance. He may have been challenging them; it's hard to say. If nothing else, he kept them distracted from shouting at patients for a little while.

This does sort of drive home the idea that access to reproductive health care—like women's health in general; like women's sexuality; like violence against women—is not a "women's issue." Men have an emotional investment in women's lives as well, and therefore feminism is highly relevant to men too.

It's still hard to say that I've gotten anything dramatic or major out of this experience personally, other than a lot less sleep on Wednesdays. I did learn a bit more about abortion and reproductive health than I knew previously from conversations with other escorts, and was reminded that there's still a lot I don't know. I suppose that's something.