A young mother visiting our WIC clinic at Family Planning Health Services in Wassau, Wis., was frightened by a male picketer as she came into our clinic a few weeks ago. Other women, sometimes our patients, sometimes our employees, have felt threatened by the anti birth-control demonstrators who protest in front of our building on a regular basis. Many of us worry that these self-described "prayer warriors" are distracting drivers and obscuring driver visibility on our very busy street. We fear that someone, maybe even one of the picketers or their children, will be hurt as a driver pulls out of our drive-through and into oncoming traffic.

Sometimes drivers back away from the demonstrators. Parents coming to WIC with strollers don't expect a vehicle to back out of the drive-through and they have enough to pay attention to already.

I haven't asked these women if they are visiting our clinic to get food for their infants or prenatal nutritional education. I haven't asked whether they use natural family planning, or condoms, or hormonal birth control pills, or the patch, or an IUD. I don't ask whether they are married or faithful or abstinent. I don't ask whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist or non-believers. Neither do the demonstrators who intimidate them.

FPHS is a non-sectarian health care provider with a mission to prevent unintended pregnancies. More than 95 percent of all American women use modern contraceptive methods. We're proud to support access to safe, legal voluntary reproductive health care as a human right. The women who come to our clinic do not come to get an abortion or an abortion referral. We prevent abortions, we do not provide them.

The "prayer warriors" know that women and men come to us for birth control. Aspirus and Marshfield Clinics also provide confidential birth control. Unlike us, they probably make medical referrals for pregnancy termination when necessary. Walgreens and Wal-Mart deliver hormonal birth control pills and every hospital emergency room now gives out emergency contraception to rape victims.

No theological or political issue is going to be resolved by frightening the women who come to us for health care. We have been providing high-quality, affordable and confidential health care for 36 years and we will continue to provide that care as long as there are women who choose to come to us to receive it.