The Sonic Politics of the US Abortion Wars

A Dispatch from the Abortion Wars

On a rainy Saturday in May 2018, I visited an independent abortion clinic in the Southeast.¹ Known as a “destination clinic” within the antiabortion movement, this abortion clinic gets bombarded by the sounds of hundreds of antiabortion protesters from multiple protest groups every weekend. In this city, a local noise ordinance permits amplified sound up to 75 decibels starting at 8:00 a.m., as long as the assembled faction applies for a sound permit up to a week before. According to volunteers and a clinic administrator, every week protesters from the same prayer ministries successfully apply for the permit. On Saturday mornings the protesters assemble on the sidewalk, road, and grassy area across the street from the clinic. As patients drive up the winding road toward the clinic, they become confused by the obstacle course they must navigate. The road is lined with groups of shouting protesters, police cars, and RVs offering “crisis pregnancy” care and free pregnancy tests. Individual protesters sometimes run out in front of the approaching vehicles, waving their hands and shouting, “No!,” “Stop!,” and “Don’t go in there!”

When I visited, the first wave of protesters arrived and started setting up before the clinic opened at 7:30 a.m. A handful of protesters, the majority of whom were white men, gathered on the sidewalk under a tent they had brought to protect their sound equipment from the rain.² They set up a sound system and multiple speakers, which they arranged along the sidewalk and aimed directly at the clinic. Starting promptly at 8:00, the amplified sounds of preacher Matthew were broadcast toward the clinic. Even though the clinic had recently been allowed to erect a privacy hedge between the building and the sidewalk, Matthew’s preaching could be heard clearly inside the waiting room, which I discovered when I went inside and sat with the patients. From the waiting room, parking lot, and driveway, I listened to Matthew and a few other protesters from the prayer ministry taking turns at the microphone. Their sermonizing was interspersed with recordings of evangelical Christian rock songs, which also played through the speakers.

Around 8:30, these protesters were overpowered by another church group that had obtained a parade permit, which was separate from the sound permit and created further obstruction for patients. The group of approximately 250 protesters processed down the sidewalk and assembled directly across the street from the smaller protest group. A volunteer informed me that this was a “light” week at the clinic, probably because of the rainy weather, and a clinic administrator told me that she has counted as many as two thousand protesters outside the clinic. The parade lasted about an hour and included vocal music led by the pastor, accompanied by acoustic guitars and a violin. The music was interspersed with amplified sermonizing by the pastor and testimony from guest speakers. All of these sounds clashed with the hollering of the smaller protest group lining the sidewalk next to the privacy hedge. The resulting clamor created a sonic obstacle course that patients were forced to navigate in addition to the literal, physical obstructions.

Figure 1.

Two hundred and fifty antiabortion protesters outside an abortion clinic in the Southeast. Photo by the author.

This description is one example of what pregnant people must navigate when seeking abortion care in the United States.³ Abortion clinics have been the site of protests for decades; music and sound have been crucial components of these protests. Antiabortion protests besiege patients at 88 percent of abortion clinics across the United States, many of them on a daily or weekly basis.⁴ The weaponization of sound outside abortion clinics is an example of what I have elsewhere termed “gendered sonic violence.”⁵ The protesters’ shouting, singing, and sermonizing serve to intimidate, shock, and traumatize patients arriving for their appointments. Police presence generally has not caused perceptible shifts in protester behavior and instead serves as a possible deterrent for undocumented patients and patients of...