I love going to Planned Parenthood on protest days. Now, before you all peg me for someone who just likes to stir up trouble, as someone just looking for confrontation, let me explain myself.

I work nights. I usually get home around 2 in the morning, 1:30 if the public transit gods are working in my favor, but, since most transit systems seem to be designed by the minions of The Evil One, this rarely happens. Especially if I'm sick, if I know the dog desperately needs to go outside, if it's raining, snowing, or if there is a cute boy waiting for me at home. The minions know, and they laugh from their home in the tunnels of the subway, and in the folds of the accordion bus connecters.

Of course last night I was in no big hurry to get home, but I arrived rather quickly. But, I couldn't sleep. I usually go to bed around 3AM, but at 5, I was still rattling around the house, making to-do lists in my head, reflecting on the last six months of my life...?! Whatever. It began to stress me out though, as I had to get up and get to Planned Parenthood in the morning to pick up my birth control pills.

First, I know that I can go to a pharmacy and get this prescription. But, I believe in Planned Parenthood and want to support them. I used to work for them, don't have much money to donate to them, so I figure I might as well give them my money via Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

I dragged myself out of bed on very little sleep and realized, Shit, it's an AB day. An "AB Day" is a day on which the clinic, if it provides them at all at that location, performs abortion services. It doesn't usually produce longer wait times for supply pick-up as there is a separate waiting area and all, but to get into the facility, you have to cross a line of protesters. Flash forward about an hour and I am there, waiting to cross the street, seeing the protesters. I've been a clinic escort, a clinic assistant, an HIV test counselor, a sex educator. I know this scenario well. But something about it every time makes my heart race. There weren't many people today doing the Lord's work, just a few people praying, and a few people holding signs. There were the clinic escorts in their chartreuse vests to open the door for me, to shield me from the protesters. I felt safe.

I walk toward the door and there is a guy holding a sign that says, and I am not making this up, "What if YOU'RE mom was pro-choice" 1) Your, not "you're;" 2)if she was, she'd probably be attending pro-choice actions with me. A lot of pro-choice women are mothers. This just in!

Excuse me for fixating on the sign. It's just that it was the last thing I saw, this glaring grammar error, before it started flying toward my face, ending in a good smack. Right. I got smacked in the face with bad grammar and misguided information. It wasn't hard, or on purpose, Dude just turned and didn't see my tiny ass there.

As I reflected on this, I really have to say, it's good for me to go there on AB days. It's good to be reminded that while my generation takes for granted access to contraception and abortion, we shouldn't. I was going to pick up a prescribed medication, one that I take for two reasons: for a health concern, and for contraception. I am treating a condition and being responsible. You can't block my access to abortion, birth control, and accurate sex education. By blocking the latter two, you are helping to create more of the former. And, though it wasn't intentional, I still got hit in the face for trying to pick up a medication. That is ludicrous. And sure, I know I choose to go there instead of a pharmacy where it might not happen. But, there have been many reports of pharmacists refusing to fill a BC prescription for "moral" objections; I know that won't happen at Planned Parenthood. Also, it's a health center. I should not be confronted at a health center, no matter the services people seek there. It's a health center, and my health is not your business.

But, to end on a happy note, once I got into the center, they asked what I was there for and they comped my pills as "sample" packs because they felt so badly! :o) To quote the always hilarious and brilliant boyfriend, "Poor Jesus people. They wanted to stop sex and instead they gave it to you for three free months!"

Thank you, Jesus! :o)