A Florida abortion clinic escort has captured widespread attention with a TikTok video that showed her humorously addressing Canadian anti-abortion protesters suffering from severe sunburns. The video, shared by the TikTok account Stand With Abortion Now (SWAN) of Central Florida, quickly went viral.
The worker noted from the top:
“This is what it’s like when Canadians show up to harass people outside of a Florida abortion clinic. Not one of them knows what sunscreen is. You can tell that you have never been this close to the equator before, darling.”
The group of clinic escorts, part of SWAN, is dedicated to shielding patients from the harassment of protesters as they seek family planning services with their doctors' support.
You can watch the video below.
In the video, one of the escorts humorously mocked the sunburned protesters, even zooming in on one person's sunburned feet clad in Birkenstocks:
“You’re going to end up with sun poisoning. I know that hurts, sweetheart. You might want to save your friend from the sun of Florida."
"Y’all are worried about the fires of hell and the sun of Florida is literally cooking your friend’s feet down there.”
When some of the protesters appeared to apply sunscreen, the worker said:
“You’re not even gonna put sunscreen on your friend’s feet. What the f**k kind of Christian are you?”
Highlighting multiple people with noticeable sunburns, she said:
“They are gonna wind up with sun poisoning and heat stroke. You might want to give your friend the sweater cause it’s her shoulders that are violently f**king burned right now."
After noting that someone else's sunburned scalp was "going to hurt later," she turned back to the person wearing Birkenstocks and said:
“And your feet are going to be sunburned. Do you guys not f**king clean your toes?”
The video also went viral on X, formerly Twitter.
People loved it.
The video is the latest act of defiance as the United States continues to contend with the consequences of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Clinics like the one shown in the video are often the only way many pregnant women can receive compassionate care.
A recent Associated Press article detailed cases of pregnant women suffering due to hospitals refusing to treat them. These instances include a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room after being denied care and another woman in North Carolina who gave birth in her car to a baby who did not survive after the hospital couldn't offer her an ultrasound.
Federal law mandates that emergency rooms must treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor or transfer them to another hospital if the facility is unable to provide the necessary care. Medical facilities accepting Medicare funding are required to comply with this law.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) noted in a report last year that by the 100th day after Roe was overturned, "nearly 22 million women of reproductive age—almost 1 in 3 women—found themselves living in states where abortion was unavailable or severely restricted."
The "overall trend" in red states since the decision has been to ban abortion "almost entirely," the organization elaborated. It said that the "vague nature" of many of these anti-choice statutes "has caused women to receive delayed care, putting their lives in danger and resulting in near-death experiences."