As some states move to crack down on abortion clinics, protests at some facilities are heating up. In North Carolina scores of activists descend every weekend on A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic in Charlotte. Calla Hales, the director of the clinic, says anti-abortion protestors have become increasingly aggressive, and local police navigate a gray-zone of enforcing city ordinances.
A new documentary “Care in Chaos” by Rewire, documents the tensions at the Charlotte clinic as well as at a clinic in Fargo, North Dakota. Host Anita Rao speaks with Hales, and documentary filmmaker Lindsay Beyerstein about the situation in Charlotte, and what needs to be done to ensure protesters, clinic workers and patients stay safe. Hales also describes her fear for her own safety, which is expanded upon in a conversation she had with Cosmopolitan magazine.
Rao also speaks with Karissa Haugeberg, assistant professor of history at Tulane University, about her new book “Women Against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century” (University of Illinois Press/ 2017) which documents the history of activism on different sides of the abortion debate.