NEWS
UPDATE
After a summer of cordial arrests, prolife activists faced new police tactics in Atlanta.
Gone are the days when Atlanta police used stretchers to transport prolife activists to nearby paddy wagons. Last month they dragged demonstrators along the pavement, in some cases causing injury. Police also bent fingers and arms, and applied pressure to the soft spot under the ear: “Physical incentives,” explained police Maj. Kenneth Burnette, “to move from point A to point B.”
Alleging excessive force, representatives from Operation Rescue countered with a lawsuit on behalf of an Indiana man who was injured. Clearly, the stakes are rising in the street fight to stop legalized abortion.
Galvanized By Force
Even representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports legalized abortion, expressed disapproval at the strong-arm tactics used by police during a weeklong series of demonstrations and rallies organized by the prolife group Operation Rescue. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported that three protesters requested medical treatment for scrapes, shortness of breath, or neck injuries. One of them was hospitalized overnight.
But Randall Terry, founder and leader of Operation Rescue, told reporters the harsh treatment would only galvanize the movement—a movement that proponents of legalized abortion are beginning to take seriously (see “Prochoice or No Choice?” p. 35).
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation’s largest prolife organization, continues to ignore the rescue movement in its newspaper, NRL News, which purports to be the prolife movement’s paper of record. But according to Terry, a growing number of national and local prolife organizations are warming up to the Operation Rescue approach.
Tom Glessner, executive director of Christian Action Council (CAC), said there is scriptural basis for what Operation Rescue is doing. He added that, while the CAC does not officially endorse Operation Rescue, it is “giving freedom to local people to be involved as individuals.” The rescue movement has also been endorsed by several Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson, James Kennedy, and Jerry Falwell.
Falwell said he supports any nonviolent effort to end the “biological holocaust” in this country. He compared the rescue movement to the Underground Railroad during the time of slavery in the U.S. and to the efforts of Corrie ten Boom to save Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis. “Randall Terry has moved out ahead of us in this effort,” said Falwell.
Atlanta: A Test Case
Operation Rescue has dug in its heels in Atlanta largely because the opposition has met it there. Terry said organizations such as the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League are trying “to write the book on how to curb the rescue movement” as it takes root in other cities, and are using Atlanta as a test case.
Recently Atlanta Roman Catholic Archbishop Eugene Marino called Operation Rescue “a courageous response to injustice,” stating that nonviolent resistance “has an honorable place in the history of this nation.”
Operation Rescue sought, without success, a similar endorsement from Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta, and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Several members of First Baptist have been arrested. But a two-page statement released by the First Baptist pastoral staff and deacons concluded that, despite the church’s opposition to abortion, Operation Rescue’s approach does not meet the biblical criteria for civil disobedience.
The statement describes women as “free moral agents responsible before Almighty God for their actions, including the excercise [sic] of the rights of their innocent, unborn child.” According to the statement, biblical civil disobedience is justified when man’s law “requires an act which is contrary to God’s Word” or “prohibits an act which is consistent with God’s Word.” If the law required abortion, according to the statement, civil disobedience would be justified.
In response, Operation Rescue spokesperson Juli Loesch said, “Our point is that the law does forbid what God requires, because God requires rescue.” James Wood, pastor of the Mount Vernon (Southern) Baptist Church in Atlanta, called Stanley’s statement “absolutely illogical and self-contradictory.” Said Wood, a trustee of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, “You cannot state that abortion is murder, as [Stanley] does, and then state that you can’t trespass to prevent it.”
Prochoice Or No Choice?
Abortion proponents’ growing concern about the rescue movement is evident. Full-page ads supporting abortion have appeared in some of the nation’s leading newspapers. And on the eve of Operation Rescue’s demonstrations in Atlanta last month, about 200 advocates of legalized abortion attended a rally at Atlanta’s Central Presbyterian Church “to celebrate the right to choose.”
Attorney Margie Pitts Hames, whose victory in Doe v. Bolton helped pave the way to legalized abortion, told the Atlanta audience, “We will meet Operation Rescue with resistance, and call ourselves Operation Resistance.”
Some speakers who addressed the rally, however, appeared to disagree on the rationale for this resistance. Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said that “honest people can differ on the issue of abortion” and that “nobody who opposes abortion should ever be pressed or coerced into having one.” She added that the “right to decide if and when to have children belongs to women and families, not to the government.”
But Molly Yard, president of the National Organization for Women, implied that government ought to take a more active role in limiting childbirths. She said, “We are going to have to face, as China has faced, the policy of controlling the size of families.” (According to the Chinese government’s one-child policy, couples may have only one child. Women pregnant with a second child are pressured to have an abortion.)
A common theme of the rally was that recriminalizing abortion would not cause abortions to stop, but would instead lead desperate women to seek illegal, medically unsafe procedures. Alice Kirkman, director of public affairs for the National Abortion Federation, contended that recriminalizing abortion would produce an “increased maternal and infant death rate resulting from forced childbearing.” She said there would also be an “explosion” in the ranks of unwed mothers, citing statistics that over one-fourth of those who have abortions are between the ages of 15 and 19.
Rally participants did not try to disguise their contempt for Republican presidential candidate George Bush and their support for the candidacy of Democrat Michael Dukakis, two of whose campaign representatives were in the audience. Michelman accused Bush and the “religious extremists” of Operation Rescue of a “striking lack of concern for the lives and dignity of women.”
Though they disagree, Falwell said Stanley’s “heart is right in this.” He added, “Right now popular opinion inside the family of God is not with Operation Rescue.” Falwell said he would be teaching the “biblical correctness of Operation Rescue’s philosophy” and that he was “sensitive to the Lord’s leading” as to when he himself would be arrested. “In due time,” said Falwell, “if it is necessary in order to bring an end to abortion in this country, you will find the Pat Robertsons, Jim Kennedys, and Jerry Falwells—and I predict one day the Charles Stanleys—willing to go to jail to save unborn babies.”
Civil Disobedience?
Despite the debate over tactics, the leaders of Operation Rescue say civil disobedience is not what the movement is about. Terry said that Stanley, in issuing the statement against Operation Rescue, “framed the wrong question.”
Civil disobedience is defined generally as breaking laws regarded as immoral or unjust in order to effect social or political change (see “Is It Justified” below). Joseph Foreman, regional director for Operation Rescue, said the movement does not fit this definition. “We haven’t broken any laws,” he said. “There’s no law that says you can’t trespass if human life is at stake.” Leaders of the movement stress also that the main purpose of Operation Rescue is not to change public policy, but, in Terry’s words, “to save children from death and mothers from exploitation.” He said, “There is no other remedy for the babies who are about to die today.” (The NRLC claims such activity detracts from their goal of electing a President who will be in a position to make abortions illegal, thus saving millions of babies rather than a few.)
Is It Justified?
Civil disobedience is commonly defined as public, nonviolent violation of the law for the purpose of protesting some actual or proposed law, policy, or practice. The goal of civil disobedience is to bring about social or political change.
The moral justification for civil disobedience is similar to moral justification for war. Those considering civil disobedience must determine: (1) if the end is just, (2) whether other channels have been tried without success, (3) whether the disobedience will be effective, and (4) whether the probable negative consequences of civil disobedience, including possibly the threat to law and order, outweigh the evil of the unjust law or policy.
Some Christians categorically oppose civil disobedience in relatively just democratic states, arguing that preserving law and order should be the prime concern. Others hold that, regardless of the nature of the government, there are times when civil disobedience is not only morally justified, but morally obligated.
Adapted from: The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Westminster Press, 1986).
Foreman said there is no doubt rescuers are preventing women from following through on their appointments for abortions. He added that, according to Planned Parenthood, which favors legalized abortion, two of ten women who do not meet their appointment for an abortion will carry the baby to full term.
But despite the emphasis on saving lives, the Operation Rescue strategy does not ignore the movement’s image in the public mind. Foreman acknowledges that “saving lives of babies is not the only issue,” adding that it is “important to do it in such a way today that draws out more people to save more babies tomorrow.”
Thus, the leaders recommend nonviolent strategies, such as going limp when being arrested, apparently to achieve sympathy from the media and the public. Foreman said that when demonstrators suffer for their beliefs, they choose the “way of the cross” in an act of repentance for the church’s “sin” of allowing a moral climate tolerant of abortion. Foreman also said that violence against an abortion clinic “is not an immoral solution” since abortion is murder. But he does not espouse violence because “it does not cut to the heart of the issue.”
Even as the debate over the wisdom of rescue demonstrations continues, it has caused many Christians to consider seriously the implications of their faith. As one pastor put it, “I’m tired of making my life count for cars and houses and land.”
By Randy Frame in Atlanta.
