Standing up to terrorism

By Bella English, 12/2/2001

or Carol Belding, it was personal. Her great-aunt Constance, a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies, killed herself when she learned she was pregnant. It was 1918, she was 18 years old, and abortion was illegal. ''I don't want that ever to be part of any teen's world,'' says Belding.

For Jane Cerilli, it was political. Too many poor women were falling through the cracks. Those who could afford a safe, legal abortion got one.

Those who couldn't, didn't.

For both women it is a calling: to provide women's health care, including abortions. Each is the mother of three children, and they stress that ''being loving mothers and abortion providers goes hand in hand.''

Each has a teenage daughter, which sets the standard in the clinic: Would they want their daughters to be treated here? Would this doctor be sensitive to their daughters? Would their daughters get the best counseling and care possible?

''The decision to have an abortion is a parenting decision,'' says Cerilli.

Adds Belding: ''Most women make the choice to have an abortion to protect the children they already have. Or they want very much to have children, but they're 17 and they want to finish school.''

''There's not a person here who doesn't love kids,'' says Cerilli.

''Here'' is Four Women Inc., the women's health clinic they opened in Attleboro three years ago. It serves many women from the area south of Boston who are unwilling or unable to get into the big centers in the city. The clinic, a small, independent place, has been in the news lately following an anthrax scare. On Nov. 8, Four Women, along with two other Boston-area clinics, received a letter containing a powdery substance along with the message: ''You have been exposed to the real thing and now your children can die, too.'' Belding says it was signed by the Army of God, a radical antiabortion group.

Anthrax threats may be new to most Americans, but not to abortion clinics, which have received them for years. As clinic director, Belding is the only person authorized to open mail. This time, the senders were shrewd: they sent a Federal Express package bearing the name and return address of a staff member at the National Abortion Federation. They also used the federation's FedEx account number.

That day Belding was sick at home, and another staff member opened the package. The local police and FBI were called in, along with local and state health officials. The entire medical complex where they work was taped off as a crime scene. Those inside the clinic, as well as patients - including a pregnant woman - in another office that shares ventilation had to take off their clothes and don paper scrubs to be decontaminated. When initial tests came back positive, they were immediately put on the antibiotic Cipro. The next day, further tests proved negative and they stopped taking the drug.

They know they are doing dangerous work, giving women - many of them poor, many of them young - access to safe, legal abortions. There are the couples who are heartbroken at finding out the fetus is not viable. The woman with three children who had to undergo an abortion on her fourth pregnancy because she had cancer and needed chemotherapy. The young teenagers who are still children themselves. Some of the women got pregnant despite taking the birth control pill, or a husband's having had a vasectomy, or themselves having a tubal ligation.

The threats bother the staff at Four Women, but will not deter them from what they see as their mission. ''The patients were furious on our behalf,'' says Belding. ''The calls we got supporting us were amazing.''

Journals placed in the waiting room contain raw entries. ''Like many, I was antiabortion until `it' happened to me,''' wrote one young woman.

''People make mistakes all the time. I am living proof of that,'' wrote another. ''I'm 15 and the father is 27 years old. I'm not ready to be a mommy yet!'' said another.

The clinic has had threats; it hires armed guards because of sidewalk protesters. One of its doctors is picked up and dropped off by clinic staff at the local police station to ensure his safety.

When the women first came to town, no one would rent them an office. So they bought space in a medical complex. Now they are expanding, moving next door, to take Mass. Health patients - the poor and uninsured. State regulations require more space. ''We wanted to remain a small center, but now we have to build a surgery center,'' says Belding. The women have borrowed money. Belding has stopped taking a salary. Cerilli, a widow, has taken a pay cut.

They have also started the Women's Health and Education Fund of Southeastern Massachusetts to help with costs, including free care for poor women, and training for doctors in a state where abortion instruction is scarce. Their favorite donors are the people who send in $5. ''They want to make a statement, but they don't have much money,'' Cerilli says.

Attleboro is not known as a progressive place; it's hardly a Brookline or a Cambridge. ''But it's very much a mind-your-own business town, very New England,'' says Cerilli. Town officials - police, fire - have been supportive, as have neighbors. The protesters often hold up huge, graphic billboards of ''aborted fetuses.'' The neighbors will get out there, too: ''If you don't like these signs, honk.''

One woman, a nun, actually ripped a sign out of a protester's hand. ''She's not comfortable with abortion, but she's pro-choice,'' Cerilli says.

In a recent letter to the citizens of Attleboro in a local newspaper, the staff of Four Women thanked everyone who responded to the anthrax scare. ''They never asked to be placed in the middle of a jihad,'' the letter states. ''When they were, however, they showed courage, kindness, warmth, and worked to preserve the safety and dignity of all involved.''

In a day when we are fighting terrorism abroad, it would be good to remember the terrorists in our own backyard. The Taliban may be the most obvious misogynists trying to dictate women's lives today, but they aren't the only ones.

As Cerilli says, ''If these acts of terrorism were happening at banks, people would notice.'' Why should women's health clinics be any different?

Bella English writes from Milton. She can be reached at 617-929-8770 or via e-mail at english@globe.com.

This story ran on page 2 of the Boston Globe's South Weekly section on 12/2/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.