Beautifying Abortion Clinics: An Architect's Folly

All the water features and paint in the world won't change the reality

Theresa Bonopartis  (Aleteia)
December 30, 2014

Bubbly water features, lush flora, verdant colors, and a sense of "humor" and "playfulness" designed to make women de-stress and relax. You'd be forgiven for thinking that's architect Lori Brown's description of a new salon or yoga studio, but Brown is talking about an abortion clinic. Brown, a feminist activist and associate professor at the University of Syracuse School of Architecture is leading an effort to transform abortion clinics into "beautiful," affirming and inviting spaces. In an article with a sympathetic Salon.com writer, Brown detailed how she teamed up with other activists to transform the look and feel of Mississippi's only abortion clinic.

Ms. Brown talks about her decision to collaborate with the owner of the only abortion clinic in Mississippi: “it was so glaringly obvious that an architect and artists needed to be involved” and yet —
 

it was the one clinic that I went to that you would swear you were not in a clinic. It was yellows and lavenders and red. It was so upbeat. All the way through, from the waiting room to the procedure room to the recovery room.

The problem is, of course, that this Jackson, MS clinic is still a place where innocent children are killed. Choose all the perky and soothing hues you like, there’s not enough paint in the world to make clients feel “upbeat” about why they’re there.

Changing the environment of clinics is just one of the latest strategies of abortion advocates to dispel the shame surrounding abortion and make it seem like a normal (and empowering!) event in the lives of women. In Brown’s quest to make that a reality, she seems to assume that making abortion clinics “beautiful” will alter the truth of what takes place inside them.

As a post abortive woman, and as someone who has worked with thousands of other women who have suffered as a consequence of abortion, I find this disingenuous. Brown plans, for example, an environment of “lush flora and vegetation and inflatable and interactive sound barriers that add an element of playfulness to an often tense and confrontational zone.”

The “tense” and “confrontational” part is right. Entrances to clinics are, ipso facto, tense places. Most clients are conflicted or grimly determined; no client I’ve seen has entered a clinic with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.

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