The annual Walk for Life West Coast rally is set to descend on San Francisco on Jan. 25 for the 21st time, bringing an anticipated tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists from around the country.
The Walk for Life website urges participants to avoid opponents and keep to themselves, and past protests have been peaceful. That contrasts with increasingly aggressive anti-abortion activities seen in San Francisco since the fall of Roe v. Wade, which have ignored protective zones around clinics and even threatened violence.
In response, community groups, nonprofits and local government have stepped up efforts to ensure access to abortions and reproductive health support in San Francisco — both for people who live in the city and for those who travel here seeking help.
This episode of “Civic” examines San Francisco’s 60-year history in the fight for abortion access, a new increasingly aggressive anti-abortion movement, and how reproductive health advocates are responding.
Kimberly Ellis, director of the city Department on the Status of Women, urged San Francisco lawmakers to take a stand at a Board of Supervisors meeting last October.
“Ultimately, what this is about is the anti-choice extremists pushing the envelope, testing our mettle to see where San Francisco will stand as it relates to increased hostility, aggression and intimidation toward women,” Ellis said.
City officials subsequently expanded protections for reproductive care access through new legislation and with Proposition O — a November ballot measure that passed with 84% of the vote.
Reproductive Justice San Francisco, a local advocacy group, is holding a counterprotest to Walk for Life to ensure abortion opponents do not go unchallenged, said event organizer Merideth Hartsell-Cooper.
“It’s important to talk about how big the response is to a call for reproductive justice. We’re talking about a huge impact,” Hartsell-Cooper said.
Supreme Court decision leads to dire outcomes
Since the June 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn the case that ensured a constitutional right to privacy and bodily autonomy, several states have imposed extreme limits on reproductive healthcare.
Thousands of women are traveling far from home to seek abortions. More than 3,300 from Texas alone came to California in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That compares to 170 women in 2019.
Dr. Malini Nijagal, an obstetrician and gynecologist at UCSF Health and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, said she has treated patients with heartbreaking stories, including a 12-year-old victim of incest.
“When the pregnancy has resulted from a very traumatic experience and assault, those cases have really stuck with me,” Nijagal said. “The idea that they’re having to travel out of state, and understanding the kind of challenges that they and their family had to go through just to get to the point to meet us and get what they needed, feels awful.”
The situation proved even more dire for some women who sought help dealing with pregnancy complications in restrictive states. Two women in Georgia and three women in Texas have died as doctors delayed treating their life-threatening conditions to avoid coming up against laws prohibiting abortions.
Local support for reproductive health
Black women are especially vulnerable as one-third of pregnancies end in induced abortion, compared to one in every 10 pregnancies for white women, according to the National Institutes of Health. Black women are also three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, due to factors like socioeconomic status, racial discrimination, disproportionate lack of access to health care, and rapid physical and hormonal changes.
To help mitigate these threats locally, Nijagal and a San Francisco alliance of more than 17 government agencies, healthcare organizations and community-based nonprofits have launched the San Francisco Pregnancy Family Village.
Sylvie Sturm / San Francisco Public Press
Alyssa Jones and her daughter Isabel have accessed goods and services offered by more than a dozen organizations at the San Francisco Pregnancy and Family Village monthly pop-up event in the Bayview.For three years, the monthly pop-up village in the Bayview has provided predominantly women of color an array of services at a mobile clinical unit, including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and information on all pregnancy options. Organizations also offer free maternity clothing, massages, a fatherhood lounge and fatherhood group, and help with healthcare appointments, finding doulas (people trained to help women through childbirth), nutrition supplemental programs and employment services.
Alyssa Jones said she never misses an opportunity to drop by with her baby girl, Isabel.
“I had a very high-risk pregnancy, and because I was here, I was able to get the support that I needed, and not just from the medical team, but from everyone here,” Jones said.
“It’s just so much community that’s welcoming when I was going through a difficult time. We were homeless for a short period of time — just being able to access resources that would literally have taken me months to get appointments for, it’s been a godsend, really. And now I have my beautiful, healthy little baby girl, and I credit the pop-up village for that.”
New aggressive anti-abortion movement was born in SF
In October, San Francisco supervisors unanimously passed legislation to extend protective zones around health care facilities to 100 feet; protesters must stay outside that boundary. The intent is to defend against increasingly aggressive anti-abortion efforts like those initiated by the #bringbackrescue campaign on various social media platforms.
Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a group formed by San Francisco resident Terrisa Bukovinac in 2021, launched the campaign as a revival of a decades-old tactic that involved blocking access to abortion clinics, and intimidating and harassing women seeking abortion care.
In the 1980s and ’90s, what was known as Operation Rescue grew into a massive movement that shut down clinics and led to more than 70,000 arrests. The New York Times compared the campaign’s protests to sieges.
The modern version takes a different approach with so-called clinic invasions. In 2022, Alissa Perucci, counseling and administrative manager at the Women’s Options Center at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, provided a firsthand account of a clinic invasion for the National Abortion Federation.
“One posed as a patient, and once our door was open, three other ones rushed in past staff,” Perucci said. “It was terrifying, because at first, you’re trying to figure out, are there weapons? What is going to take place here? Is it going to be speech, or is it going to be physical violence? It was the most disturbing anti-abortion incident that we have had in our clinic’s history.”
Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising positions itself as a Gen Z movement. The group aims to attract young members who might be deterred by religious messaging that lacks inclusivity. So it appeals to secular sensibilities by espousing pro-LGBTQ and pro-trans slogans like “Be Gay, Oppose Abortion,” which members encourage each other to spread via “culture jamming” or graffiti.
Hartsell-Cooper said she believes the group is co-opting the language of the left to subvert its principles.
“They’re just trying to slap this value onto something that is actually just abominable and abhorrent,” Hartsell-Cooper said. “Just by virtue of wanting to remove one aspect of bodily autonomy, all the others are at risk. You have to have all of them, all the time, everywhere in order for any of them to be safe.”
Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising also reaches Gen Z through TikTok posts of clinic invasions, which have gone viral. One video shows communications director Kristin Turner knocking at a closed exam room door, urging reconsideration of the presumed abortion care happening inside.
Turner, who is also a member of Pro Life San Francisco, threatened future actions at a UC Board of Regents meeting in March 2022.
“I sat on the floor of that facility, holding roses as a sign of peace until I was dragged away by the police in handcuffs,” Turner said. “Pro Life San Francisco will not stop until you end dismemberment and implement ethical research practices.”
Pro Life San Francisco did not agree to an interview. Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising did not respond to an interview request by press time.
