Abortion: To Protest or Not to Protest

Abortion has become a metaphor for the new America produced by the 60's revolution. For 30 years we have been all about peace and love and human rights—and legally killing a million and a half babies a year. Most pro-life activists are content with appealing to the conscience of the mothers, reserving their harshest epithets for the physicians who betray their profession and murder children. However, the truth is uglier than we like to admit. These "doctors" are simply hired guns, hit men who take the money and asks no questions about the guilt of innocence of their victims. But the really horrifying part is not the hired killers but the mothers—the millions and millions of mothers, who choose to kill their own babies.

As much as any Christian in America, I earnestly hope and pray that some day we can stop the killing—or at least live under a political and legal system that shares our commitment to life. How to go about realizing that hope is no simple matter. Despite all the time and money that has been lavished on political, judicial, and propaganda battles, the pro-life movement has achieved next to nothing. And if the leaders of that movement think that the leaders of the Christian Coalition are going to talk the Republican Party into outlawing abortion, they should resign their positions and go back to minding their own children and their own businesses.

The only positive results of pro-life agitation have been achieved in places like Minnesota and the Dakotas, where local demonstrators have peacefully and legally made life difficult for abortionists and their families. Many of the demonstrators are affiliated with Operation Rescue, which has also staged less legal and less peaceful demonstrations in front of big-city abortuaries. This week, Operation Rescue and its head Joseph Scheidler, are back in front of the Supreme Court, which is hearing their appeal against convictions and fines ($275,000) imposed under RICO statutes designed to inhibit the activities of organized crime.

The case is trivial in itself. RICO laws, even when applied to the Mafia or the Teamsters Union, are a distortion of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Applied to pro-life activists, they are a monstrous travesty. A victory for Operation Rescue, however, would change nothing. Mothers and doctors will continue to murder babies, and deranged activists will continue to degrade human life by waving fetuses and graphic photographs and show their contempt for Christian moral teachings by breaking good property laws in the vain expectation that good will come of it. St. Paul answered that one nearly 2000 years ago.

But the pro-life movement likes to cast itself as just another civil rights movement, trotting out the entirely irrelevant and dangerous comparison of abortion with slavery, Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott. Their faith may be Christian, but their "rights-of-man" philosophy is the pure anti-Christian Jacobinism spouted by Rousseau and Tom Paine, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King. America, for them, is still a Christian country but America's Christian creed is summed up in Jefferson's "self-evident" truths and his deist trinity of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If Martin Luther King's followers broke the law in a good cause, why can't Operation Rescue?

The homicidal feminists and life-hating lesbians who sued Operation Rescue claim that Dr. King, unlike Joseph Scheidler, always told his followers not to block entries, but this is a distinction without a difference, because King, a practitioner of civil disobedience, was leading illegal demonstrations, and anyone who has followed the historical record knows that many of the demonstrations inspired by King turned into ugly riots in which neighborhoods were burned down and innocent people killed.

The problem is not that Operation Rescue's methods and tactics are worse than those of the civil rights movement, but that the two groups have the same principles. Joe Scheidler, good and brave man that he is, is dangerously wrong in his political and moral philosophy. His explanation of the case before the court is pure American Jacobinism: "One of the most beautiful things about this country is we can protest our grievances. That is a trademark of America."

The good old English right of petition is, in fact, contained within the Constitution, but protesting grievances is in the tradition of mob violence, labor agitation, illegal sit-ins, and anti-Christian groups like PETA, whose celebrity spokesman, Martin Sheen, is supporting Scheidler's right to protest. So murdered babies are now on par with minks raised for their pelts and the hens that are robbed of their infertile eggs by human exploiters.

But pro-life demonstrators who practice civil disobedience are making a fundamental mistake that is more grievous even than their ignorance of constitutional law and Christian morality and that is their persistent belief that America is a Christian country with a mistaken but basically Christian government that only needs a little adjustment.

Yes, there are protestors who have declared that in permitting abortion, the United States is no lo longer a legal regime but a Nazi tyranny, but that is nonsense: Many legitimate, albeit non-Christian governments have tolerated both abortion and infanticide. The point to keep in mind, however, is that the hallmark of Christianity, from the beginning, has been a respect, bordering on reverence, for the life that our Father has given us and that Christ has redeemed. Any doubts a man may express about the sanctity of innocent life is a sure sign that he has no faith, and a great country in which the overwhelming majority of the population claim to be Christian but think that abortion is permissible in cases of rape, incest, birth defects—or potential low IQ or halitosis or who knows what other irrelevant reason—is not a Christian nation, and there is nothing that Joe Scheidler or a million Joe Scheidlers can do about it.

This is an anti-Christian country, and the honorable Christian has limited options. The law is the law, and abortion is legal, as the harpies and ghouls of Planned Parenthood and NOW insist. If the law told us to slaughter the innocent, we should be compelled by conscience to refuse, but there is no practical way, legal or illegal, that we can employ stop the anti-Christians from killing their babies. What we can do, however, is to keep the commandments of our faith, obey the laws that are made by Nero or the Supreme Court as "a terror for . . . the evil." However, we can, by our life and example, attempt to move the conscience of the anti-Christians and, above all, to bring them to the Christ who promised His followers that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

You use the tools of the leftists to debate which makes you a fanatic.

Yeah, when it comes to protecting innocent life and fundamental human rights, like freedom of speech, I'm a fanatic. There are some things I'm proud to be fanatical about. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," as Barry Goldwater said.

We need more people who are fanatical in the pursuit of truth, justice, and liberty.

So you support with your earnings a state that enforces these laws that protect abortionists?

I suggest you find yourself a competent moral theologian and ask him to define the term "remote material cooperation with evil," and whether it applies in this case. You might have a point if I didn't oppose those laws, but I do. That I pay my taxes despite their (partial) misuse by the state is remote material cooperation, and is not considered wrong.

So a greater fanatic than yourself might call you a 'Himmler', no?

He can call me a cooked rutabaga if he likes.

The fact remains that I'm not the one arguing that unconstitutional laws must be silently accepted. Fleming is. Do you often go off on tangents like this?

Fleming's article was about the Consitution and traditional interpretations of the First Amendment which is why he sided against the protestors-he was talking about not allowing activist judges step in because he sees the potential of reducing the pro-life postion to just another civil rights movement.

Property rights have been ignored in favor of the "rights" of the the tresspassers and the agressors since the discovery of the sit down strike, which overlooks Thoreau's thoughts, the American inventor of civil disobedience, that one must accept the consequences of disobeying the law.

I've been a pro-lifer from the beginning, but only recently went to stand in protest outside an abortion clinic.

Things that struck me...
- The building itself, with most of the windows shut, seemed to exude evil. That is obviously very subjective, but the clear feeling surprised me.
- The graphic pictures of the unborn. I won't carry them... I believe they do more harm than good. But, then again, I've sat out really doing anything about abortion for almost 30 years. The people with the signs come all the time, I can't criticize.
- The sincerity and warmth of the Christians I came with. We were there to pray, and be a witness against what was happening. We also had the small hope of talking people out of it.... that didn't happen and is unlikely to happen.
- Young college students acting as escorts. I understand they get college credit in a university women's health class for this. They wouldn't look me or the other protesters in the eye.
- The pitiful look on the faces of many of the young women coming out, many crying.

- I most definitely felt that, although I was mostly praying quietly, I did the right thing. I strongly encourage anyone else to do so, to stand as a witness against this abomination. The more people that do so, the better.

Best regards,
-- Joe

Have you read any material on the actual case? NOW, and the original trial judge, have defined "extortion" to mean actions which delay a woman seeking access to an abortion mill, even if that action is a peaceful protest conducted on public property, and also the increased cost for security incurred by the clinics because of their alleged fear of the protesters.

That's it. There is, after you wade through the mound of "evidence" bought and paid for by NOW (and yes, much of it is blatant perjury), no solid accusation that anyone committed acts of "trespass" or "aggression". A victory for NOW would mean that non-violent protest on public property was illegal "extortion," if it costs a business owner money. If that doesn't violate the First Amendment, what does?

Joe,

Bravo.
The first time was powerful for me, too.

As to the particular method of sidewalk witness you use: use the one comfortable for you. I admire your candor about not judging the method others choose to use (praphic signs). Depending on the situation, I may use them or I might not.

Sometimes I bring my wife and 5 young kids. But not too often - I don't want them to resent it. As it stands now, they feel good about going once in awhile and they know all about how violent, cruel, selfish, tragic and sad abortion is. They also know not to judge the mothers - and instead they know how much God loves the moms (and the babies and even the hired killers).

When I go I often think how insane it is. I am there standing calmly outside and the whole world carries on as if nothing is wrong; meanwhile a fellow human person is being brutally ripped apart just on the other side of the "clinic" wall. It is insanity - truly insanity.

But we go, with our witness and our hope and our prayers - and God is glad we are there in solidarity. It is sort of like going to the gallows to sorrowfully witness the unjust execution of loved one. What can we do but watch, and pray and perhaps beg the judge (mom) and the executioner(abortionist) for mercy?

Thank you for going.

Thank you.

To be honest, I have never personally participated in an abortion clinic protest.

I've chosen to concentrate on fighting the abortifacient contraceptives and pointing out the connection between contraception and abortion.

I fear I would not be able to overcome the powerful urge to physically enter the clinic and physically stop the murderer. This of course would not be prudent, as I cannot work to feed my family from inside a jail cell.

Maybe I'll have to more seriously consider driving the 2 hours to the nearest clinic and participating.

When I go I often think how insane it is. I am there standing calmly outside and the whole world carries on as if nothing is wrong; meanwhile a fellow human person is being brutally ripped apart just on the other side of the "clinic" wall. It is insanity - truly insanity.

That's a good description of the surrealistic feel of protesting.

Before we had children my wife and I used to go to the sidewalk protests outside Planned Parenthood in Brookline, MA. The weekly, Saturday protests were organized by Our Lady's Crusaders for Life. The protest began with Mass at a local Church. The congregants would then march to the abortuary and pray the Rosary.

One woman with a booming voice was designated as the person who would try to intercept the mothers-not-to-be who were usually being dragged in by their mothers, boyfriends or PP deathscorts.

A loud "Honey, don't kill your baby. We can help you!" could be heard over the solemn recitation of the Rosary. The warning usually went unheeded. It always sent a chill down my spine.

About half the time we would be met by "counterdemonstrators." Evil is irrational by nature, and the "counterdemonstrators" were living proof. Usually they wore black leather and various body piercings. They would swear, blaspheme and give priests and nuns the finger. Most times they would carry boomboxes playing what I can only term "death screech metal." This was their idea of "debate."

But these folks weren't the worst I ever saw at a pro-life gathering. The dregs of the dregs seemed to show up at the annual Boston pro-life march. I remember a group waving a 20-foot inflatable penis in front of a group of nuns. I also remember a group of what had to be satanists carrying signs that read "Kill Jesus," "Eat babies," and other bizarre perversities. They were also the dirtiest looking people I'd ever seen. They all looked like they hadn't bathed in a week and of course sported the usual goth garb.

I have to disagree with the article, though he makes a compelling argument. There may not be any moral or legal right to protest, but protest is as natural a human reaction as a cry for help. Even in countries where protest is forbidden and punishable by death, people pushed to the limit will risk it.

Human nature is such that a certain portion of any population, anywhere, anytime, over any number of issues .... cannot stand by silently and watch injustice and do nothing.

I think he misses that point.

In invite you to share your own experiences and views about your own visits to the killing factories.

I tend not to actually go there to protest. My life is such that the demonstrations conflict with mandatory other things. Plus, it's just too depressing and sad to think that so many people who would like to have children and can't or don't for whatever reason, and then women blithely throw such gifts in the trash.

There are two I pass regularly. Both usually have picketers. I always say a prayer as I drive by.

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