Notes from the Front; In the Valley of the Shadow of Trump: Press Conference in Atlantic City

"Who are these people, these faces? Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas, and sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, still humping the American Dream, that vision of the big winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale... casino."

- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas


A vacation is never a vacation when you're a full-time pro-lifer.

We have just returned from Atlantic City, the "playground of the Atlantic," with beaches, boardwalks, resort hotels, and the occasional flurry of pro-life street-activism. Gambling is the main fix here, and the night skyline is full of red neon, usually spelling out TRUMP over the dark ocean surf. It is definitely a different scene from the Abortion Capital of America. For one thing, it's quiet at night, when the action has mainly moved indoors and no amount of spinning and flashing bulbs can drown out the overwhelming tide of Atlantic night.

We were quartered on the very edge of the shore, on the 19th floor of the elegant Atlantic Palace, smack in the middle of Casino Alley. The view was immense; at our height we could see the sand stretching away to both horizons, and the boardwalk following at a safe distance. And on the long highway far to the north, we could see the tour busses bringing new cash to the town. Outbound busses left by a different route, away to the south.

Chris had come to set up a press conference outside the heavily debated Alternatives clinic on Pacific Avenue, about three blocks away from the beaches. For the time being it is closed due to financial problems and health violations, and no abortions have been carried out there for months, but that could change in a hurry. The infamous Dr. Steven Chase Brigham is an abortionist with what might be politely termed a "checkered past," and impolitely termed "butchery." Brigham graduated from Columbia University with no special training in obstetrics or gynecology, but within five years had begun his career in the abortion industry. Since 1990, Brigham has been forced out of an office because of failure to disclose his intent to perform abortions there, received personal property as a fee for abortions, forced to leave another office after a judge ruled that "general medicine" does not include abortions, agreed to retire his medical license permanently in Pennsylvania after botching a procedure and injuring a patient, and injured a New York woman resulting in an emergency hysterectomy. In 1994 Brigham was forced to close another clinic because of alleged Medicaid fraud, and again failed to disclose the purpose of his clinic to his landlord at a site where seventeen fetuses were found stored illegally. He has been indicted on multiple counts of tax evasion and fraud, and had his medical license terminated in the states of New York and Florida.

That's one hell of a laundry list.

Now Brigham wants to buy the Alternatives clinic on Pacific Avenue. This is bad news, and because bad news sells, we thought a press conference would be just the thing to stir up awareness. If a veterinarian had that kind of record, the PETA would be after him with melon knives. Our press conference, we hoped, would be not just a witness against the atrocity of abortion, but an opportunity to bring to the public eye the kind of stooge that will stoop so low as to work in this business. This guy stands in the face of all the smiling rhetoric whooped up by the Planned Parenthood and NARAL types that claims abortion is a healthy choice for women. I wouldn’t let this guy check a rat for plague.

We spent the morning drafting signs and slogans. Chris had made his contacts with the Atlantic City pro-life groups, and we had about twenty people lined up to be a part of our conference. The night before I had walked about the city, trying to find an adequate soap box, but since there was none to be found I spent my time crafting white masking tape onto a deep blue posterboard - KEEP QUACK DOC OUT OF ATLANTIC CITY. I wanted to put ATLANTIC CITY ALREADY HAS ENOUGH OF A SLEAZY REPUTATION, BRIGHAM IS THE LAST THING YOU NEED HERE, but it wouldn’t fit on the sign.

We walked down the few blocks from the hotel to the clinic entrance. A crowd had already begun to form, and a reporter with a white paper pad had begun taking names while a photographer with a long-barreled camera was snapping from all angles. A few die-hard protesters from the local St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish had shown up to lend their support, as well as a few souls Chris had contacted the night before. Chris immediately zeroed in on the reporter, and we all took our places along the narrow sidewalk. It didn’t last very long - maybe half an hour - but it created some vital ripples across the press wires. The Press of Atlantic City had the story online with pictures within six hours, and the next morning we saw ourselves staring back at us from the front page. The bloggers started commenting next, and even the Associated Press picked up the story:

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - Anti-abortion protesters have begun picketing an abortion clinic that's currently closed.
They don't want the Alternatives clinic to be sold to a doctor who has had his license terminated in New York and Florida.
Dr. Steven Chase Brigham has said he intends to buy the clinic, which was closed due to health violations on June 22. He told The Press of Atlantic City that he began performing abortions at the center and paying its employees before the clinic was shuttered.
But a spokesman for its current owner, Dr. Alan Kline, said he's not selling to Brigham. And state officials say they have not received an application for a sale.
Still, the prospect of seeing Brigham run the clinic is particularly troubling for anti-abortion groups.
In 1994, New Jersey restricted him from performing second-trimester abortions after receiving allegations of gross negligence. That year, the state appointed Kline to monitor his work and the restrictions were overturned two years later.
"Our main focus is to block this Brigham sale," Chris Slattery, president of Expectant Mother Care, a New York-based group with pregnancy centers in New Jersey, told The Press for Tuesday's newspapers. "He has clearly shown a contempt for women's health."

That‘s an understatement. In the earliest days of the pro-life movement, there was such shock over the treatment of the fetus - the first images of the broken bodies were just coming out - that a great deal of energy was focused on the protection of the fetus. We got over our collective shock pretty quickly, and dodgy unprofessionals like Brigham have alerted us to the fact that abortion is mentally and physically dangerous, and that the abortion industry draws the scum of the medical world.

After our closing prayer, the group went its own ways, and Chris gave the interns the rest of the day off to see the sights and relax on the shore. I had no interest in shopping, and the heat of the afternoon was prohibitive to wandering through the circus attractions on the boardwalk pier. I waited until the sun was just beginning to set behind the tall resort skyline before heading out to do some quiet thinking, and to get to know the city.
Atlantic City is a city of extremes. There is no middle class to be found anywhere, save for the tourists, who are housed at upwards of $200+ per night in the moderate shoreline suites. The only residents of Atlantic City are the uber-rich, who have the means to shell out $44,000 every year in property taxes, and the poorest of the poor, who stare out of dirty windows in the permanent shade of a massive hotel, and who line the boardwalk after dark, hoping for a handout. There is a total lack of middle ground; dingy pizza joints and ninety-nine cent stores fill the toothless gaps along the boardwalk between Bally's, Caesar's, and the Tropicana. Half a mile from the shore, moving west into the city, the money disappears, leaving blocks of dilapidated shacks, sullen convenience stores, and a scattered chain of adult theaters offering 25-cent peep shows in private booths. Charles Darrow wouldn't even stop for gas in this town.

After all, who could blame him? Certainly not me... His idea of hotels on Boardwalk are an idyllic archaic non sequitur in the Atlantic City of today. If you walk in the right places you suddenly find yourself stumbling down the corridors of a dream - not in the Disney rabbit-hole sense, but something bordering on the grotesque. Sometime around midnight I decided to go over to Caesar's, away from the late-night-carnival disconsolate atmosphere of the boardwalk and into the hazy cool of the casino. I wandered for a while along the avenues that wind between the rows of slot machines, watching the faces and the hair and the shoes of the people feeding the shiny silver coins into the clicking machines.

There are two kinds of faces in these casinos. The first looks like a grim interest, a sort of blend of disillusionment and fascination, sagging heavily at the corners of the lips and the nose, hair in a tight mushroom. It is intent, intense, almost a meditation. Perhaps it is what C.S. Lewis was talking about when he wrote that thing about Temptation - the best demons are the ones who can lure you into a sin you don't even enjoy. The other kind of face is a lost virginity, eyes darting about madly in search of promised happiness foundering in a sea of garish lights, while the alcohol fills out the corners of the face so that if you look long enough the edges seem disproportionate, bloated. Maybe the two kinds of faces are related; an effect-and-cause thing. I don't much feel like finding out, and I avoid their eyes.

It was the lights that finally drove me to seek shelter. There is something eerily disturbing about the blinking and the wheeling and the flashing, because your brain expects a corresponding level of noise. But late at night, when people start to drift away from the slot machines and congregate at the tables, a hush settles on the ranks upon ranks of slots, and the creeping silence over the constantly-shifting artificial lights stirs up a horrible urge to bolt screaming, if only to reassure yourself that you are not going deaf.

I did not scream. That would have led to a lot of interesting questions behind a locked door guarded by a thick bald suit named Boris. Instead I found a stairway and walked slowly up it, out of the surreal buzz of the Caesar's main floor, towards the top tier, and the Bacchanal.

The Bacchanal is a large restaurant on the third level of the casino. For a $65 flat rate you are admitted into a long room done up in the style of Rome as it was teetering on the fall of its Empire. The walls are covered in plants and deep-hued hangings, and the marble tables are long and thin. There is a fountain in the center of the hall with a slender statue rising out of it, staring about with sightless eyes. Musicians wander between the tables, and women with tall thin flagons wait to refill your glass. It is almost cheesy in its opulence, but the Bacchanal actually seems to believe its own weird pitch, and the result is decidedly unique to the East Coast, but I wouldn't want to be in there alone.

I slipped out of the hallway and located the men's room. Drinking clean water seemed particularly important in Atlantic City for some reason, and it produced the expected results. I noticed nothing unusual until I went to wash my hands. There were three choices of soap, two choices of lotion, a small bottle of mouthwash, a tube of toothpicks, a toll of dental floss, shoe shine, and a fingernail trimmer, all lying neatly on a swivel tray near the sink. I turned to look for some paper towels, or at least a air dryer, but there was nothing mounted on the marble walls. I turned back toward the stalls, and almost bumped into a sober man in a tuxedo, who was holding out a linen finger towel for my use. I was so unbalanced that I even forgot to tip him. It was time to leave. I walked quickly to the gold tube-elevator and back out onto the boardwalk, into the thick night air.


Dr. Brigham’s offenses are a matter of public record, but a concise list can be found at http://www.constitutional.net/Luksik/abortion.html