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Home Action News Spring/Summer 2005 History, 1980-1987 (Part II)

Spring/Summer 2005 ACTION NEWS | VOL. XXIV No. 2

NOTE: This is the second installment in a four-part Twenty-Fifth Anniversary retrospective series on the Pro-Life Action League. Due to its length, this installment is broken into three parts.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Pro-Life Action on the March, cont.

International Travels

I was presented with an honorary professorship by the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara at an international pro-life conference in Guadalajara. And Ann was invited to return to Paris for a conference sponsored by Laissez Les Vivres, where she spoke on activism in the United States and inadvertently discovered that the French word for activism actually translated to "terrorism"!

While in Paris Ann met David Logan who asked the League to participate in an international appeal to the Catholic Cardinals meeting in Rome in April that they step up their efforts to restore protection to the unborn. The League received many positive responses from its mailing to the world's then 142 cardinals. The Cardinals requested that John Paul II issue a statement on abortion that would reaffirm the sacredness of human life. In 1995 the Pope issued his encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

[Joe meets John Paul II]

Joe meets Pope John Paul II at a 1991 meeting of pro-life leaders in Rome

In November 1991 I attended a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Council on the Family in Rome. During the course of the conference the attendees attended a Papal audience. Pope John Paul II welcomed the pro-life leaders and greeted them individually. I had the opportunity to present the Pope with a copy of my book CLOSED and to give him a petition asking for the public excommunication of public office holders who claim to be Catholic and yet support abortion. When I told the pope I was from Chicago, John Paul II remarked, "Chicago, a very pro-life city." The Pope asked the pro-life leaders for input on the document he was preparing on the value and dignity of human life.

While in Rome, Steve Wood, Bogomir Kuhar and I picketed a Rome hospital where abortions were performed, holding signs reading aborto no! vita si!

SpeakOut Illinois

The first SpeakOut Illinois breakfast and rally was coordinated by the League's Tommie Romano on January 22, 1992. Tommie organized the event with the cooperation and sponsorship of thirty-four Illinois pro-life organizations. Over five hundred guests attended a breakfast at the Bismarck Hotel.

Talk show host Jerry Rose served as master of ceremonies and Joseph Cardinal Bernardin was the main speaker. Cardinal Bernardin's appearance also drew the attention of the local media resulting in excellent news coverage of the memorial event.

I debated abortion advocate Bernie Koenig of the Canadian Abortion Rights League at the University of Western Ontario in London, ON on February 3. To the chagrin of the spokesman for the abortion side, the majority of the audience was pro-life, and the president of Ontario Students for Life explained that the audience was representative of the attitudes on campus. While in London, I also led an abortion protest and spoke to seminarians at St. Peter's Seminary.

In February, NOW v. Scheidler headed to the Federal Appellate Court in Chicago after being dismissed by Judge James Holderman in May, 1991.

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Joining Forces

Chicago pro-lifers joined in solidarity with their counterparts in Ireland on March 3 as they demonstrated outside the Irish Consulate in support of Ireland's ban on abortion. The international media had been pressuring Ireland to ease their restrictions on abortion, using a highly publicized story about a young Irish girl who they claimed was raped and wanted to travel to England for an abortion. It was widely believed among pro-lifers that the entire situation was a set-up to challenge Ireland's law.

The Pro-Life Action League joined forces with other pro-life organizations to defeat the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) supported by NARAL, NOW and Planned Parenthood. At Tommie Romano's suggestion, the League gathered hundreds of thousands of petitions asking Congress to oppose FOCA.

In April, 1992 the National Women's Coalition for Life, representing 1.5 million women, called a press conference in Washington, D.C. at which the petitions were presented. Participating groups included Concerned Women for America, Feminists for Life, the International Black Women's Network, the Life After Assault League, the National Association of Pro-Life Nurses, the National Council of Catholic Women, Victims of Choice and many others.

Following the National Women's Coalition for Life press conference, the Pro-Life Action League held another press conference at the Rayburn House Office Building where the quarter-of-a-million signatures were presented as evidence to the members of Congress that the Freedom of Choice Act must be defeated.

"The Zeal of Ahab"

While in Washington the pro-life contingent countered a NOW rally at Union Station. I joined a rescue at the Hillcrest Clinic, Tim Murphy helped set up the Cemetery of the Innocents— including symbolic tombstones representing women who have died from legal abortion—and several of us cut across the NOW "We Won't Go Back" march carrying Stop Abortion Now signs.

The pro-lifers sensed an attitude of defeat among the pro-abortion marchers, some of whom resorted to vicious attacks. A group of clinic escorts began beating up on me, but I was fortunately rescued by Bobby Sullivan, a young man I had met at a pro-life breakfast that morning.

The April 27 issue of Newsweek magazine singled me out among pro-life activists whom Newsweek credits with the anticipated downfall of Roe v. Wade. Newsweek's John McCormick wrote that "the people who fought abortion in this country fought it with a holy fervor, in the spirit of Joseph Scheidler, a former Benedictine monk who persecutes abortionists with the righteous zeal of Ahab."

The Newsweek article unwittingly brought out the fact that activists, led by the Pro-Life Action League, have kept the abortion issue in the forefront, generating the controversy that merits media coverage and drawing public attention to the abortion debate.

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Pro-Abort Vandalism

Pro-abortion extremists vandalized the Chicago office building where the Pro-Life Action League is headquartered in mid-June 1992, repeating an incident sixth months previous when unidentified persons spray-painted graffiti on the windows and parking lot of the building.

Various anarchist groups picketed our home in Chicago in the summer of 1992. I learned of plans for the first picket on June 29 while listening to the radio. I was interviewed by several Chicago reporters and then notified the Chicago police that pro-aborts planned to picket my home on June 30. I went to 7:30 Mass as usual and arrived home shortly after 8:00 to find the members of the Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition shouting in front of my home.

One demonstrator lay on the sidewalk pretending to be a woman who died because she could not get an abortion. The lawn sprinkler happened to be in place on the front lawn and my daughter Annie, then 17 years old, decided it was a good time to water the lawn. (The woman on the sidewalk just happened to be in the path of the water.)

In July someone left a stack of bibles on the front step of our home, all of them marked with obscenities or nonsense phrases. In September our home was vandalized by members of Refuse and Resist who painted slogans and taped posters all over the front and back of the house while we were out of town. We returned to discover that local television stations had filmed the vandalism, but police had not been called.

These attacks were a sign of the desperate measures the abortion forces were willing to take to stop our life-saving work. We were soon to see how far they were willing to go in court.

Creative Tactics

When Faye Wattleton announced her resignation as head of Planned Parenthood in early 1992, she planned to take a position as host of a talk show produced by Tribune Entertainment. The Pro-Life Action League launched a campaign to block the production and keep Wattleton off the air. We contacted forty pro-life organizations nationwide to join in the campaign. When Wattleton came to Chicago on August 28 to film the pilot program, we were there to protest, with placards identifying Wattleton with abortion and featuring photos of aborted babies. No more was heard about the potential talk show.

[History 8]

League pickets CBS over proposed Fay Wattleton talk show Aug. 28, 1992

The primary election season of 1992 saw a new approach to campaigning as Mike Bailey of southern Indiana won a landslide victory for his district's seat in Congress. Bailey decided to run for Congress on a strictly pro-life platform. A former advertising consultant, Bailey learned that federal law requires that television stations provide airtime at their lowest rate for congressional candidates. He contacted the Pro-Life Action League to get graphic video clips for his television ads. The tactic was so unusual that just a week before the May 5 primary, Bailey and I were featured on the Jerry Springer Show. Once the ads began running, Bailey received dozens of calls from other pro-life politicians eager to expose abortion.

I was invited to testify May 6 before the U. S. House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice regarding the proposed Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). I reminded the committee members that there were already ample laws against trespass in every state and that purveyors of abortion had used anti-trust laws and the RICO law against pro-lifers, so there was no need for another federal law simply to protect the abortionists and restrict the rights of pro-lifers. FACE was ultimately signed into law by President Bill Clinton on May 26, 1994.

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Bringing Activism to Russia

As 1993 dawned, I accompanied Bill Grutzmacher to Moscow. Bill had overcome the city of Chicago's roadblocks to erect a Nativity scene in Daley Plaza and decided he would do the same in Red Square now that the Iron Curtain had been raised in Russia. I went along in order to meet with pro-life activists in Russia.

Dr. Igor Ivanovich Guzov, head of Moscow's Support for Motherhood, was eager to learn everything he could about pro-life activism in the United States. He gathered the Moscow activists together to meet with me and compare notes. Abortion has been legal in Russia since 1920 and serves as the principal method of birth control. According to Dr. Guzov the average Russian woman had had six abortions, and that it was not uncommon to have had thirty.

The second annual SpeakOut Illinois was held at the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago on January 21. The League distributed 25,000 copies of a newspaper insert, "America Must Decide," for attendees to take to their own neighborhoods to deliver door to door. The League sponsored a bus trip directly from SpeakOut to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. The bus trip itself was fraught with mishaps, late arrivals and missing passengers, but the Illinois pro-lifers marched with hundreds of thousands of fellow supporters of life and met with their elected representatives during the whirlwind three-day trip.

More Testimony from Abortion Insiders

[History 12]

Former abortion providiers (from left) Marian Johnston-Loehner, Luhra Tivis, Judith Feltrow and Joan Appleton with Joe at Providers III

We continued our Meet the Abortion Providers series with conference III on April 3, 1993. Marian Johnston-Loehner, Luhra Tivis, Judith Fetrow and Joan Appleton testified about their roles in the abortion industry and their motivation for getting out of it.

Tivis worked for the notorious late-term abortionist in Wichita, KS, George Tiller. She revealed that Tiller regularly made substantial contributions to the campaign funds of local politicians. Appleton worked as a nurse and administrator at the Commonwealth Women's Clinic in Falls Church, VA. As a result of a friendship she developed with Debra Braun of Pro-Life Action Ministries, Joan left the abortion industry. When she announced at a meeting of the National Organization for Women that she could no longer support abortion, she was asked to leave the organization.

Judith Fetrow worked for a Planned Parenthood clinic in the San Fransico Bay area. She compared her past support for abortion to a religious commitment and admitted to being pro-lifers' "worst nightmare." She said witchcraft was common in the abortion industry, and she lashed out at Planned Parenthood for its deceptive practices.

Marian Johnston-Loehner, who was herself a victim of abortion, founded a chapter of NOW in Florida and soon learned that the organization mandated support for abortion from all members. After years of buying into the NOW rhetoric, Marian received a copy of Dr. Jean Garton's book, Who Broke the Baby, which destroyed the euphemisms she had relied on and helped her turn away from abortion and feminism.

Protesters Confront President Clinton

In July President Bill Clinton visited Chicago. Tim Murphy and I, along with forty pro-lifers, greeted the president at Midway Airport with large clinton=abortion signs. Later, outside a $1000-a-plate dinner at the Chicago Historical Society, pro-lifers held graphic abortion signs and stop clinton now signs. Clinton snuck into the building via a side entrance, but when he left the event his motorcade had to pass right by the graphic pro-life display.

[Clinton=]

Part I of the Clinton protest display, July 1993

[Abortion]

Part II of the Clinton protest display completes the message

Tim Murphy and I attended the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN) conference in Denver in August. The conference coincided with World Youth Day. Bill Clinton was scheduled to meet with the pope so the pro-life activists took advantage of the opportunity to greet Clinton with Stop Clinton Now and Stop Abortion Now signs.

One of the PLAN activities was a protest at Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood. The clinic was closed due to the presence of a hundred pro-lifers, a hundred pro-aborts and a large contingent of police.

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