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Shana Broders has been an elementary school teacher for over two decades. For the last year and a half, she has spent her downtime as a clinic escort, helping patients at a nearby North Carolina abortion provider navigate their way past the protesters and into the building for services. For that, a group of extreme anti-abortion activists wants to get her fired from her job. As a new school year begins, they have escalated their efforts, harassing her school by phone and threatening to picket. Broders tells Cosmopolitan.com how her school has responded and why no threats will make her give up supporting a person's right to a legal, safe abortion procedure.

I live in Wake Forest, North Carolina. I'm starting my 23rd year of teaching. I did one year in high school, the rest elementary school. I love the smaller children. They love school. They aren't jaded. They're so honest. They still love you as a teacher. I hug my children and kiss them on the tops of their heads every single day, walking in and walking out. You can expose them to things, like they've never heard classical music and then I play it for them. They don't know who Norah Jones is. Watching the light come into their face when they get it, like, "Oh my god, I understand that. Oh, wow. That's awesome."

Wake Forest is a town, a little, tiny town, but it is like a suburb. There are no abortion clinics in our town. There is a CPC [crisis pregnancy center] in our town and there's a Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in my town. I've been escorting about a year and a half. I drive about 30 minutes, into Raleigh.

I have very strong and passionate beliefs and views on bodily autonomy and women's rights. I was following something on Twitter and I saw a video clip of protesters at a clinic in another city. I tweeted or made a comment, "Wow. That's so horrible. I'm so glad that doesn't happen where I live," in my ignorance. Then someone commented back, "Oh, yes it does, right down the road." I was like, "What? Where? Can I be an escort?" They said, "Yes and let me hook you up," so I got hooked up though Twitter with an escort group in Raleigh, North Carolina. That's how it started.

I'm not sure how I was targeted for this. All I can tell you is that I got [one activist] called out for trespass, me personally. It was July of 2014, and I was escorting, and he went behind our building and another building, and he hid in the bushes waiting for the doctor. I was afraid if he jumped out of the bushes at him, someone could get hurt. I called the police for that reason. I think that made it personal. He learned my name fairly early on and he calls me by name. "You know, Shana, you were nice when you first started." I have him on video saying, "You were nice. What you were doing was evil but you weren't a bad person when you first started this but the darkness is taking over you."

He called me out. He told me he would come to my school. He named my school. Another man who is in this group, AHA Abolish Human Abortion, who lives in my town — that scares me — he has told me he's going to come to my school and tell all the parents that I'm a baby murderer. Pure intimidation tactics. Nothing happened last year, which was nice, so I just guess I believed that they wouldn't do anything. They say those things to harass people and to scare them, and I didn't believe they would act upon it, honestly.

Obviously, I escorted this summer some, although not even as much as last summer. Just last week, I escorted and was threatened by one of the AHAers that they would be at my school. I again chalked it up to nothing.

Tuesday, I came to school for my first workday. I went to the office sometime after lunch and somebody said something about me starting trouble. I mean kidding — they were joking. "Oh, Broders is always starting trouble." I said, "What?" They said, "You don't know?" I said, "I don't know what?" Somebody had called my school and harassed our receptionist saying that I was a killer, I was a baby killer. They were going to get me fired. They were going to go to the media. They were going to go to the PTA. They were going to go to the county. My receptionist, lovely woman who is an extremely strong Christian, said, "What Mrs. Broders does in her private time has nothing to do with her job." Whoever was on the phone said, "Yes, it does. This is democracy." I don't even know what that means.

Well, I posted in a private group I'm in on Facebook, "Wow. First day of school and an anti calls and harasses my receptionist and says they're going to be out here protesting me. What jerks." People commented and someone said, "I hate to tell you this, but this is being posted around on people's pages." Then they shared the picture. That's how I found out. Wow. There's 50-some other [anti-abortion activists] all over the country who have shared it openly, publicly on their pages now, with tons of threads of really horrible things being said about me.

So my principal had to prepare us for if anyone followed through on their threat to show up on our open house night. She had to call the whole staff in and tell them we might have reporters show up, we might have protesters show up, there will be police officers in the building. [She said,] "If you see someone who does not look like a parent…," and I know that's crazy because we've never met these parents. It's meet-the-teacher night. [She said,] "If you see someone that just doesn't look right to you, you need to text and call us." She sent us an email with her personal text number and all the [faculty's] cell numbers. Then she's like, "If anyone is trying to distribute information anywhere around, you need to tell someone because the only information distributed is in the cafeteria, the library, and the gym." That stressed me out because my entire staff had to be made to feel afraid.

My personal worries were just about making sure parents and the children could get in and out safely and without being harassed. My school system was worried about my safety and they took care of it. I felt completely supported and safe in all manners. The main focus is children. We're here to educate children, not have that disrupted or not be distracted by that. Everything was fine. I honestly believe that the amount of support I have received absolutely made them not show up.

Last year, they threatened to be at school when school opened. I will tell you there was a group holding the signs and everything at Wake Forest, at the high school in my town last year, not the elementary school. It could have been them and they just went to the wrong school.

Some of the signs that the antis hold are gross, and I don't feel small children need to see that and have discussions like that with their teacher. Their parents can discuss that with them. I don't teach children about abortion. That's not a word that's ever even used in my classroom. My job is to teach math and science. And I would hate for any child to be upset coming to school.

My worries for me are none. I will come to work, I will do my job, I will be fine. My worries are that other people are having their lives disrupted because of my personal beliefs, because of something I do in my personal life, and that bothers me. I do feel bad that my staff that I work with — wonderful, wonderful people — had to be worried and are having to put up with something that shouldn't ever impact their life in any way.

I did have a lot of people say they would stand for me, but I said I felt a counter-protest would be negative. I would prefer not to have that because that's bringing attention we don't need. I don't want attention brought to my school. This is about having a personal attack on me, my privacy, my rights possibly being infringed upon, but it's not about my school.

I know I am just one person. But I am just one person who is an eternal optimist and completely believes that one person can effect change in the world. If they make me stop, will they make other people stop? Who will be there for the women who are walking into the clinics?

Correction: An earlier version of this article spelled Shana Broders' last name as Broder. This has been corrected.

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