Ellen’s Story

I am an escort at the Robbinsdale Clinic right now, but started escorting years ago at Whole Women’s Health in downtown Minneapolis.  I stayed with WWH when they moved to Bloomington, and then moved to the Robbinsdale Clinic three years ago.

How it started:

Shortly after Roe allowed abortion clinics to open across the nation in 1973, I was hired to work at the front desk at Meadowbrook Women’s Clinic to make appointments and greet patients. 

I met all of my best friends there…these women are still my best friends 50 years later.  It was a coming-of-age experience that we all shared.

These women were all abortion counselors and I always say they invented abortion counseling.  They all had college degrees in social work, psych, and the liberal arts and were trained in how to listen and guide but never direct or control a decision.  They were brilliant.  They are brilliant.  Here’s to you Ruth, Susan, Susan, Margi, and Randi.

I moved into a bigger role of running the business office. 

We all worked at Meadowbrook for seven years or so and we all retired from MWC somewhere in our late twenties/early thirties to continue working in fields touching women’s lives, doing good work.

At Meadowbrook, we saw patients six days a week, with the first appointment at 7 a.m., and there were days when we had as many as thirty women coming through the door.  Medical first trimester procedures… incredible lab and nursing staff and the five docs were angels.  I currently see the daughter of one of them as my OB-GYN and I’m in touch with her dad too.  Second-trimester abortions were done at a local hospital with a specialized medical and counseling staff.

Meadowbrook was located on the sixth floor of a medical building and there were very few protesters early on… Later, we had protesters come up to the door of the clinic rather than standing outdoors.  One day we had a big bomb scare when one fellow entered the clinic with a briefcase locked to his wrist.  The police, hospital, and clinic collaborated and came in as if to deliver lab results and arrested him.  Quite the memory.

I had two abortions… one in my twenties while married and working at MWC, due to a diaphragm failure.  Incredible support, concern, medical care.  After I left MWC in my early thirties, I’d return to MWC when I was between jobs and work the front desk again.  Late in my thirties, after a divorce I remarried.  And yup, got pregnant again at age 40. Just so happened I was working there again… same incredible support, concern, and medical care. Same doctor, by the way.

I think you get why I am as passionate as I am about repro health care and repro choice.

Ellen, Pro-Choice Minnesota Volunteer Clinic Escort