Adopt-a-Clinic Campaign:
A Step-by-Step Guide

Step-by-Step Guide | Clinic Violence Overview

Getting Started printable toolkit

STEP 1: Contact your National Choices Campus Organizer to locate the nearest women’s health clinic that needs assistance. Your National Choices Campus Organizer will coordinate with the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project to facilitate with the clinic and your adopt-a-clinic campaign.

STEP 2: Your National Choices Campus Organizer will assist your student group by:

• Calling the clinic and identifying your group as part of a pro-choice group on campus that is affiliated with the Feminist Majority Foundation.
• Asking if the clinic director or a representative could come to meet with your group to talk about the kinds of
  services they provide and the problems (if any) they have with anti-abortion protesters.
• Letting them know that your student group wants to show their support for the clinic, and ask what kind of help they need. Not all clinics will want or need community support, so we will ask them how your group can be of help.

STEP 3: Develop a Plan of Action:

Be sure to discuss what kind of support or assistance needed most with the clinic director or staff. They will have a very clear idea about what would help improve safety, security, and the morale of staff and patients. After talking to the clinic director, it should be clear
what type of support is needed, what the director wants, and what she does not want. Discuss the following types of support:

• Legal Observing: Experience shows that when protesters believe their activities are being systematically observed and recorded, they are more likely to tone down their actions. The clinic may need your help videotaping, documenting, and photographing anti-abortion protesters and their activities.
• Escorting: The clinic may need you to help facilitate the safe passage of patients and staff/doctors into the clinic. The clinic may already have a volunteer escort program which you can join.
• Mobilizing Public Opinion against Protesters: The clinic may need you to help call press attention to the problems the clinic faces. They may want you to meet with the local newspaper, circulate campus petitions in support of the clinic and strong law enforcement action,
  organize community events such as rallies, or help build community support for the clinic.
• General Volunteer Work: The clinic may not be under any severe or constant threat, but may still very much need your help inside the clinic, or with activities including community or campus outreach.

STEP 4: Connect clinics to the services of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project.

If the clinic would like additional assistance, contact a Choices Campus Organizer right away at 866-444-3652 (East Coast) or 866-471-3652 (West Coast). We will put the clinic in touch with the FMF’s National Clinic Access Project directly.