Arrested for Life

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:13] Things that people who get to know me might find surprising about my history is I've been arrested six times in my life, and for people who know me well, they know that's somewhat incongruous with my personality, with my reputation. [00:00:30] I mean, I make no claims to be some radical, some crazy or anything like that, but I have been arrested six times in my life, all within the span of about a year and a half in the early 1990s, and that was for participating in pro life rescues. And so what I wanted to do today is I want to talk a little bit about the history of Operation Rescue, of what we did during that time, because I think it's very important. I think it's an important history that a lot of people don't know. I was talking to somebody who's very involved with their pro life movement in college. This was probably about 15, 20 years ago. [00:01:08] And she really didn't know anything about rescue. And I thought that was kind of sad because it was a huge deal. It was a. People who aren't old enough don't know what a big deal rescue was and how crazy it was, what people were doing back then. [00:01:24] And so I just. On this podcast, I want to tell some stories of what I did, what I saw. I mean, there's somewhat crazy. I don't think I've told most these stories ever publicly. I've told friends and whatnot, but not publicly. There's some stories I can't tell and I'll just leave it at that. Now, I do want to make sure it's very clear at the beginning here. I was a very low level rescuer in the sense that I did not get arrested that much in comparison to others. [00:01:50] I did not spend very much time in jail in comparison to others. I know people who spent years in jail, literally years in jail. I have friends who. The priest who celebrated my wedding spent a year in jail. The best man at my wedding spent months in jail. [00:02:06] The godfather of one of my daughters spent a year in jail. The godmother of another one of my daughters spent a year in jail. I did nothing like that. [00:02:15] And so my wife actually spent spring break of her senior year in college in jail. [00:02:22] So I just want to make sure it's very clear here. Here. I, I was not, I was not one of the real hardcore heroes, in my opinion, of the rescue movement. I was. I came in a little bit late. I, I got involved a little bit, but not anywhere near as much as many people I know. I will say, though, in spite of that, I mean I was involved with it for about a year and a half and like I said, I got arrested six times. It was life changing to me. It very much was life changing to me. It changed the way I look at the world permanently. [00:02:57] I mean, I, one of the things that changed was the way I look at our government and our justice system. [00:03:04] I went through a week long trial for one of my rescues, a jury trial. I sat through was, I, I, it was kind of funny. We, we. There was about, I don't know, 15 or 20 of us on trial and they had to pick people, the two people who would, they wanted to pick who would sit at the actual desk, you know, with the, with our lawyer to, to present us where everybody else kind of sent off to the side. [00:03:29] And they, they chose this a girl who was, you know, one more are more attractive rescuers. And they chose me not because I was attractive, but because I looked respectable, much more respectable than a lot of the other rescuers who were involved. [00:03:43] But being in that trial, I, I kind of saw very clearly from the beginning we were guilty and it was just a matter of going through the motions to make sure we were found guilty. There was no, the judge made it clear from the beginning we were guilty and there's nothing we could do about it. And so that, that really did change and other events, other experiences during this time as well. But that in particular that, that week of that jury trial made me realize how corrupt our justice system can be. It also did taint my view of law enforcement because I saw cops who did some very unjust things. Now to be clear, I don't think all cops are bad, but I also don't think all cops are good. [00:04:33] I mean, I started to resist the kind of conservative knee jerk idea that all cops are good and they're just bastions of virtue. That's simply not true. Cops like everybody else, you have good ones, you have bad ones, you have ones that are good to have bad days. And so I saw a lot firsthand. And so it really did change, but also just, it really did radicalize me in a sense of just understanding what commitment to Christ is and how horrible abortion is and the lengths of our country will go to, to protect abortion and, and really how it's a sacrament of the left, of the demonic left abortionist. And frankly it's mostly acceptable to the right. I mean, you will hear them campaign against it politically, but nobody really does anything about it. [00:05:23] So let me just take a step back and let me talk a little Bit about the history of rescue. What is rescue? I mean, I think that's a question. [00:05:30] I just instinctively know what it is, and I feel like everybody should, but I don't think everybody does know what it is. Rescue is simply the term for people, pro lifers who directly intervene, intervene to try to rescue babies from being killed by abortion. And they would do this, typically by sitting in front of an abortion clinic door to block the doors so that women could not enter the abortion clinic so they could not have their babies killed. It was a nonviolent movement and it started in the 1970s, soon after Roe v. Wade, frankly. And it was, it was very small at first, mostly Catholics. St. Louis was one of the hotbeds of rescue at this time. And it was mostly, like I said, not really acceptable to most pro lifers to do this. [00:06:22] But it was just some people who said, listen, there are babies being aborted and being killed in that building, and I don't want that to happen. And so I'm going to kind of taking a page from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, I'm going to sit in front of this door to not let them in. It was a little bit different than the civil rights movement, to be clear. It was still nonviolent and it was a sit in, so to speak. But. But the point was to be physically blocking the entrances to the clinic so that women, pregnant women, mothers who were going in to have their babies killed could not do that. They couldn't access it. We just sit there. We just wouldn't move. [00:07:01] So when people showed up to go to the clinic, we would be maybe 20 people sitting in front of a door. They simply couldn't enter. We wouldn't move. And so the police, they'd call the police, the police would come and they'd remove us. So that essentially what rescue is. And, and so rescue, like I said, started in the 1970s. Very small, almost predominant, almost all Catholics, predominantly Catholics in places like St. Louis and some other places around the country. [00:07:26] I'm going to mention some of the people here in a minute that were very responsible for rescue. For now, I'm just going to give an overview. In the 1980s, however, Rescue picked up as a real civil rights civil disobedience movement. [00:07:42] And this was because the Advent, the creation of what was an organization called Operation Rescue. People use the term Operation Rescue as an umbrella term often, but it was actually a specific organization. There were other pro life rescue organizations as well that would also do rescues all over the country that weren't actually Part of quote, unquote, Operation Rescue. Operation Rescue, however, was led by one of the most charismatic people I have ever met, and that is Randall Terry. [00:08:10] Randall Terry was an evangelical. I'm blanking now. I can't remember for sure if he was a pastor or not. I think he was a pastor, but he might not have been, but he's an evangelical who could just. [00:08:21] He could give a talk that would light up the room and get people to do whatever he wanted them to. I mean, essentially. And so Randall Terry. And by the way, just to get to the end of story a little bit, Randall Terry is now Catholic. He converted Catholicism a number of years ago. [00:08:36] But he, he's evangelical, and he really made rescue something that evangelical Christians got involved in to the point that thousands, thousands of people rescued in the 1980s, early 1990s. I mean, think it's. It's the largest civil disobedience movement ever in the history of this country. [00:09:00] It far outstripped the. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and other other civil disobedience movements. It just, like I said, thousand thousands of people. And it was, it was unbelievable the number of people that the types of people who would rescue be grandmas praying the rosary, it'd be teenagers, it would be Catholic bishops actually got arrested, it would be pastors, it would be men, women of all ages, all colors were rescuing, trying to prevent abortions from happening. And the. Another important thing to know about rescue is it wasn't primarily a political movement that this is very important, that was very much misunderstood at the time. [00:09:41] It wasn't a political movement in the sense that was trying to change laws. [00:09:45] It obviously wanted laws to change. People involved in rescue wanted laws to change to make abortion illegal. But the primary purpose of a rescue was not a political protest. It was not a political protest. It was to simply save lives that day. [00:10:01] Save lives that day. People are being killed, babies are being killed. We need to save them, we need to rescue them, and that's it. Now, of course, it had political consequences. I'm not trying to act like it didn't have political consequences, but that's not. Was not the purpose of a rescue. And so, simply put, when rescues happened, the more people you had doing the rescue, the better, because that means you could. You could. It would take longer. [00:10:25] The clinic would be. The. Would be closed long, longer. [00:10:30] So for example, let's say an abortion clinic had three. Three entrances. Well, you're going to need at least probably, I mean, at minimum, maybe 15, 12 to 15 people, because you need at least three or four, five people at each door to physically block it. And so the more people you have, let's say you had 100. Well, now you can put about 30 people at each door. That's going to block it a lot better. And it's going to take longer for the police to. To remove everybody. And also there was some debate in the rescue movement of whether or not you went limp, as we would say, whether or not you would not cooperate with the police when they came to rescue. Because some people would just get up. The police say, okay, you need to move. They get up and leave. [00:11:12] Others, we would just simply sit there and the police would have to pick us up and they'd have to remove us. [00:11:20] Now, there were ways in which, if you had fewer rescuers, you could really close down a clinic all day in a nonviolent way. And this would be by placing objects. And I'll talk about a couple of my experiences with this in a minute. Placing objects in front of the door and kind of locking yourself to them. So maybe a big block or a car or something like that you put in front of the door, and then that would block and it would take a lot longer for the police to remove those things. [00:11:48] So again, though, this. The simple goal was shut the clinic down for the day. [00:11:52] Shut the clinic down for the day. Again, this was all nonviolent. I'm going to talk a little bit about in a moment later about some violent actions that were done later. But the rescue movement itself was just a matter of you sit there in front of the clinic door and you block it and you don't push anybody. You don't do anything crazy. You don't, like, attack anybody. And the hope was that while the doors were blocked, the women who came to have abortions, we'd have sidewalk counselors always there who could talk to them to try to talk them out of their abortion. But we figured even if that didn't happen, it give an extra day for the Lord to work for them, hopefully be open to the Holy Spirit and realize they should not kill their babies. And that's really what we did. And also another thing to note is during the height of rescue, when thousands of people were doing it, there were a number of people, including primate people in the pro life movement, who were very opposed to rescue. [00:12:50] Some of them simply because they didn't believe in breaking the law, that you shouldn't break a law ever. [00:12:55] Others because they thought it was bad politically, that it gave us a black, gave the pro life movement a Black eye made us look less respectable and less able to maybe do things in Washington. [00:13:05] I mean, basically it was establishment pro lifers who just felt like it was, it was not something that pro lifers should do. So it was high, hotly debated during the days of rescue whether or not this was, this was a good idea or not. But again, thousands of people did it. [00:13:23] Now, some of the people, some of the highlights of Operation Rescue, of the rescue movement, more more accurately to say, I'd say the, the one person I already mentioned, Randall Terry, but I'd say the one person who's probably more influential than anybody else when it comes to rescue and making rescue a, a thing that lots of people did and, and an inspiration for many people is a woman named Joan Andrews. She's still alive today. Her name is Joan Andrews Bell. She got married later, Joan Bell. And she always, she always did not like, after she got married, after she had been rescuing for a while, everybody knew her as Joan Andrews. Of course she got married and she really didn't like when people call her Joan Andrews because she's like, no, I'm married. My name is Joan Bell now because she's a very humble woman. [00:14:12] Joan, Joan Andrews Bell. I'm sorry, Joan, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry if I keep calling you Joan Andrews. [00:14:18] She literally is one of my top heroes of, in my, in my world, in my life. [00:14:26] I, I, I just can, she's at, she's in the top five, if not the top hero of mine. She is a pro life heroine. She, I believe she is a saint. I've met her and she, I remember meeting her for the first time. She had, I mean, she was a rock star in the rescue movement because, and the reason is, I should probably tell this story first, that why she was, she was involved with rescue in the early days in the 1970s. She continued to rescue. She very much did not cooperate with the police in the sense that she would go limp and all that and she'd even do it when she went to jail. She spent, but the biggest thing was she spent two and a half years in mostly solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Florida from 1986 to 1988. [00:15:15] And it really galvanized the rescue movement. Here's this woman, this beautiful pro life hero, heroine, who is in jail in maximum security prison, solitary confinement, all for trying to rescue babies from abortion. [00:15:33] And I actually have two books about her. One is the Prison Letters of Joan Andrews. These are, I'm sure, out of print. I got them 30 years ago or something like. When was this one published? 1988 is this one was published so for almost 40 years. And these are letters she wrote while she was in jail. And then. I will never forget you. The rescue movement in the life of Joan Andrews. And this was written also in the late 80s, I think. Yeah, 1989, after she got a jail. [00:15:57] She co wrote with John Kavanaugh o'. Keefe. John Cavanaugh o'. Keefe. JC okay. We always called him also a pro life hero, one of the, the leaders of the pro life movement. A great man who did lots and lots of rescues. And he really. John Kevin o'. Keefe. JC okay. He was kind of the philosopher of the pro life movement in my, the rescue movement. He was the one who really did the best to express why we did what we did, why we would do this, why we'd risk imprisonment and things like that for the babies. And so JC okay. Helped write this. [00:16:30] So this is the history of the movement up till 1989. But Joan Andrews, she just, she was the, the, the, I don't want to say figurehead. She was never the leader. She never like organized things. She was never the one out front. But she was the heart of the pro life rescue movement by. No, anybody who was involved back then would tell you this. [00:16:52] Other people were great. I'm not trying to diminish the, the contribution of other people, but Joan Andrews was the, was the queen, she was the heart. The other person I've already mentioned who really did a lot to push rescue was Randall Terry. Like I already said, he was an evangelical who he brought in more numbers than anybody because like I said, he would get up there at some pro life event and he would, and he'd preach about rescue and everybody be like, okay, let's go do it, let's go do it. Where's the latest, where's the nearest clinic? Let's, I want to go put my body there. I want to go get arrested for life. I mean that, that was Randall Terry. He, he could get you to do that. [00:17:26] And he continued on, you know, for many years doing that. He's still, I think he's still, he's not very prominent anymore, but I think he still is fighting the good fight, so to speak. Like I said, he's Catholic. [00:17:38] Another thing I want to mention was kind of the, the high point of rescue when it comes to numbers and, and public perception and Persona and impact was what was called the Summer of Mercy. This was a six week campaign in Wichita, Kansas. Now Wichita Wichita, Kansas was the home of one of the most infamous abortion killers in the world, George Tiller. He was a, he was an abortionist who would do late term abortions all the way basically up to birth. He would kill your baby for pay. [00:18:10] And so Operation Rescue side for six weeks we're going to go Wichita, Kansas and we're going to rescue. I did not, I did not participate in this by the way. This is before I started myself my own direct participation. But this did inspire me. Reading about this and following this along with Joan Andrews, Randall Terry and Summer of Mercy. That's really got what got me inspired to do it. And I wasn't even Catholic at this point. This is summer 1991 and like I said, they targeted the clinic particularly of George Tiller. And it was, thousands of people think it was like 2600 people got arrested or something like that in six weeks. This was like unbelievable that it made the, the, the, the national news every night, pre Internet days of course, so news was very restricted on what they reported. But this was such a big deal. It made the news. It was a huge deal. This is the Summer of Mercy. But really during this time, late 80s, early 90s, through about 1993 or something like that, there were rescues everywhere in the country. Like every weekend there was an abortion clinic that was being blocked. I mean I can say that almost without exception there were abort. There were rescues going on all the time throughout the country. Small ones, big ones. I mean it was like thousands and thousands. [00:19:25] I don't know the exact number, but I know it's tens of thousands. Maybe over 100,000 people were arrested in this in just a few years. And it just spread. Like I already said, Catholic bishops were arrested, believe it or not. [00:19:37] I mean, try to picture that. This is the 19, late 80s, early 90s. This isn't exactly a high point for American bishops as far as their faithfulness to the church and to Christ and pro life and all that, but there were a few, there was, I think there's two or three. Bishop Vaughn is the one I remember most particularly who were arrested. The president of Franciscan University, Michael Scanlon. Father Michael Scanlon. He, he was arrested at, in a rescue at an abortion clinic. And they had a whole like tons and tons of, of students who got arrested. There's a story about, and I guess I won't name the names because I, I don't have permission, but there's a story about how one time the police came to the Franciscan looking for some student who had been arrested at A rescue. [00:20:27] And like a professor basically hid the, Hid the student out in his classroom so they. He. He wouldn't get arrested. [00:20:36] And so this was just. This is very much part of the DNA. I mean, this might sound crazy to people today, but this is what was happening at the time also. Did you know? I didn't know this, actually. I didn't realize this until I was kind of preparing for this podcast. [00:20:51] I don't know if, you know, Bishop Andrew Cousins is. He is the bishop of Crookston, Minnesota right now, currently, and he was the one who kind of led the Eucharistic revival. He was the board chair for the Eucharistic revival. So Bishop Andrew Cousins, he was actually arrested multiple times before, before he's bishop, before he's even a priest, before he's in the seminary. He's about the same age as me, and he was arrested about the same time, about the same. Many times as I have. I did not know that until recently. [00:21:18] So Bishop Cousins was actually very involved in the rescue movement. He spent 10 days in jail at one point, and he was arrested multiple times. [00:21:25] And other people involved. I mean, just some people who are great. Monica Miller has always been a hardcore rescuer. She writes for Crisis magazine sometimes. Just a great woman. Pat Mahoney, just a great guy. He's. He's a prize and pastor, still is. Joe Scheidler, a Catholic giant of, of rescue. He was always known for his bullhorn. He would go to rescues, he'd have a bullhorn, and he'd be shouting out orders and directing things and asking women not to kill their babies. I mean, Joe Scheidler was just, Just, just a great man. [00:21:56] Joseph Foreman, he was a Protestant pastor. Very involved, like I already mentioned, jc, okay. John Cavanaugh, o', Keefe, many others. And I, I'm not trying to leave out anybody. My memories always what isn't what it used to be as far as remembering all this stuff. [00:22:12] So this was the rescue movement. This is what it was like. And so I went to a couple stories of my involvement in the rescue movement just to give you a taste of it, because I can only, you know, give my own experiences. [00:22:23] I, I did my first rescue in Chicago in fall of 1992. That's when I did my first. And this, this was just a few months after I decided to become Catholic, but I had actually been, had not been received in the church. And this was a pretty standard rescue where we just had maybe 50, 60 people who would go in, we'd sit in front of the abortion clinic. And we would just block the doors. And we. We did not cooperate with the police. You know, they had to drag us away, pick us up, drag us away. And that was. [00:22:59] And it was a successful rescue as far as it goes. I think the clinic was shut down most of the day, but that was my first experience. And so it's kind of tame. Was very easy. I was not in jail very long. They. They throw you in the drunk tank. You're. You process a little bit and then you get out. [00:23:15] Actually, I don't even know if I went in the junk tank there. The junk tank is what you call the room. When they first arrest people, they throw them in everybody who comes in before they actually process you and things like that. I'm sure I was in a drunk tank. You had to put them somewhere. But I don't. I actually don't remember that one very well. [00:23:29] But that was fall of 1992. [00:23:32] And then, however, I did my first, what we call lock and block, first during spring. [00:23:40] When was that? Yeah, that was during spring break. It's when. [00:23:44] Now. Why was that? It was when my fiance. [00:23:49] No, she wasn't my fiance yet. My girlfriend, who's now my wife, was in jail. That's right. We did a rescue in Gary, Indiana. And it's called Lock and Black. Because what you do this is this. Okay, this is going to sound crazy to people. And it was crazy, and it is crazy. [00:24:06] And we didn't have. When we didn't have a lot of people, we still wanted to shut down the clinic for as long as possible. [00:24:11] So what we did this time was there was this big block, like concrete. I think it was a barrel of concrete. And I can't remember exactly what it was. I don't think it was. It was some big, very heavy thing and pipes were put into it. And then what would happen is I would. People, including myself, would put our arm into the pipe and we'd lock ourself in it. [00:24:36] And so what would happen? And we just sit there and we put the. And we put this whole contraption front of the door of the clinic so it would block the door. So what would happen is the police would have to come and they'd have to disconnect us, some unlock us from this. And then they would have to. And they'd remove. [00:24:52] They'd have to remove the object, whatever it was, a barrel, whatever it is that we had there. This would take a very long time because they need to get like cutters and all this stuff to get us out of there. [00:25:02] They thought we were crazy for locking ourselves to this thing. But I'm. Should I tell the secret? I'm going to tell the secret. [00:25:10] When we reached in there, our arm was truly locked. It was, it was, it was like the contraption was. We had some very creative people who could figure this, engineer types who figured this out, where if you pulled as hard as you could, if somebody pulled at me and they did, I couldn't move. It wouldn't, it wouldn't unlock. And they thought I was just crazy for doing this. [00:25:29] However, in there, there was like a little belt, like a seatbelt clip. I could just press a button and it would unlock if I wanted to get out. Because I'm not stupid. I'm not gonna lock myself permanently, something like this. [00:25:41] So at the end of the day, if the abortion clinic, once it's closed for the day, once the day is over, and if they haven't gotten me out of there, I would just click it and be up and be gone. [00:25:50] But what they ended up doing, not knowing that they would cut the whole thing apart and it would take forever. [00:25:55] So that's what we did. We did that in Gary. And, and so that. And the beautiful thing about that one is out of six rescues I did, it's the one where I know for a fact that a baby was saved. I, I willing to bet babies were saved, maybe the other ones. But I know for a fact CYWA counselors were there. [00:26:15] There's this woman, African American woman, who was ready to abort her baby and she, she changed her mind. She decided not to praise God. [00:26:24] And honestly, that is something I am probably the proudest thing I've ever done is I know there's somebody out there alive because of doing that that day. [00:26:34] And like the people who rescued. That's why we did it. We didn't care about the optics. I mean, this looks like we're a bunch of crazy people. This does not help our political movement necessarily. But a baby was saved. So I don't care. I just didn't care about the optics. [00:26:48] I'm not, I'm not even trying to criticize the people who criticize rescue. I understand the arguments. I just saying though, at the time, especially as a young person, I didn't care. I was 21 or something like that at the time. All I cared about was a baby was saved. [00:27:02] And then. Okay, now this is the craziest. I want to tell another story of another rescue I did in Milwaukee. This is the craziest one I ever did, definitely. [00:27:11] So what we did was we had an old beat up van that was on its last legs and we cleared out the whole van. We, we. And we drove the van and parked it right in front of the door, like basically where you couldn't get by. You couldn't get through the door. You just parked in front of the door. [00:27:31] But then what we did was we had this contraption welded into the bottom of the van. [00:27:41] And I got under the van, lied down on my back under the van, put my leg up into this contraption in the bot in the, the, the. Like there was a hole in the, the bottom of the van. I put my leg through, locked it into this contraption that was welded into the van. In other words, they couldn't just tow the van away because I'm connected to it. We were trusting they wouldn't tow it away with me connected to it. [00:28:08] But I mean, and that was pretty. We knew the standard way things were done back then is you wouldn't do. The police would not do that. So what they had to do was they had to get like firemen and everything and they had to spend all this time to disconnect me from the van. And other doors were blocked by other ways. We actually did two rescues that day and we were doing similar type things in another one. [00:28:30] But they had to disconnect me from the van, which was a pain in the rear for them to do. It took them hours to do while I was connected. Finally they did disconnect me through, you know, welding and all this stuff, and they removed me and everything like that. But it took them so long. And so the abortion clinic was shut down that day. That is probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my life is being you know, welded, you know, to a van, connected to it, locked to a. Underneath a van in front of an abortion clinic. [00:29:01] And that was that. I do remember my time in the drunk tank there because we got there and it was a relatively large room. There's probably 40 or 50 men in it. And it was always. We were always the funny ones because we show up, we're the pro lifers who got arrested this. And you can imagine the typical people, what they were in there for. The drunk tank. It's called the drunk tank for a reason. [00:29:20] Just the conversation you would have. And I usually kept very quiet when I would go in. I wouldn't try to start up conversations with other people. Other pro lifers were much more outgoing. And I'm an introvert, I'm not gonna, it's not Easy for me to just go into a prison drunk tank and start talking to people, you know, let's be honest. [00:29:37] But like other people did. And I just remember, like people would just be like, you guys are crazy. This is all, this is amazing. [00:29:44] We got more support, by the way, from other people in jail than anybody else. They often would be supportive of what we did. And they kind of looked as funny, but they were like, okay, you guys are crazy. But kind of a good crazy. So I also got arrested a number of other, three other times, but they were kind of nothing too fancy about. We got arrested in Washington D.C. philadelphia, Delaware. I think that's right. I was trying to remember all of. I knew I got arrested six times. I think that was all six of them. Remember this is 30 years ago. 30 plus 35 years ago. So I don't remember all the details, but I also, I mean I also saw things and have friends who experienced things that were crazy. I have a good friend who she was, she's not a large woman at all. She's actually a very petite woman and she was run over by a abortive dad, a dad who was trying to get his baby killed, bringing his wife, his, his girlfriend, whatever, pregnant girlfriend. And she was lying there and he ran her over her ankle, ran over her ankle with a truck. [00:30:46] And she wasn't injured at all. She didn't even get hurt. [00:30:50] And it just, it was a miracle. I mean it was definitely a miracle. [00:30:54] Oh, another good story I forgot, I forgot about is one time I was at a rescue that I was not planning to get arrested that day. I was just kind of there for support and help. [00:31:03] This was in Cincinnati. And those of you who listenings who know the abortion clinic, the planned parent in Cincinnati, you'll know what I'm talking about. Cincinnati's abortion clinic is like it's the classic abortion mill. Like looks like a concentration camp. It's this huge building and it has this large metal fence surrounding it. And the fence is probably maybe six feet high. Is that right? Probably something like that. I was, I'm not, I've been there not that long ago, but you know, probably six feet high, something like that. [00:31:31] And there was a rescue. But like the, the pro abortion people found out about it. [00:31:37] So what they did was they linked their arms, lining the fence, facing outwards towards us to keep us from jumping the fence and rescuing stuff like that. And if you ever were involved with things back then, it was always. The demographics were hilarious because the pro aborts were almost always crazy. [00:31:58] Crazy College student age, college age or college students who were just like freaks and they, you know, the crazy hair and all that stuff, you know, the, the nose rings and everything like that. And they'd scream blasphemies and all that. [00:32:11] And the, the pro lifers were typically grandmothers or, or you know, just people like me or just like, you know, women, just different, normal, soul of the earth people. [00:32:23] So we were, we were before the rescue, you know, we couldn't get to the doors. This is before the clinic open. [00:32:29] We were there. The pro lifers were on the sidewalk in front of this fence. We're kind of just praying, kind of walking in circles, praying the rosary and whatnot. And the, and like I said, the, the pro boards were connected, were right in front of the, the fence. A six foot high fence with their arms light. [00:32:48] But then at a signal we stormed it. We just stormed it and it freaked the pro aborts out. It shocked them to no end because what we did was we just went right next to them and I, like, I was one of the people who was not going in. So what I did was I just stood there, put my arms out, put my hands out and then I would just. People put their legs in and I throw them over and over the fence and over the pro boards. So they would just fall. I mean, I'm talking about grandmothers would be doing this, would be going over and just climb over the fence and run to the doors and block it. [00:33:22] So all their effort to keep us away just fail miserably. Just fail miserably. And it was just, it was the best thing to see their face because here it is. I mean these are like college age people. A lot of them are big and strong, stuff like that. And then it's like grandmothers and you know, people like me weren't very big and not very threatening looking. [00:33:40] And we didn't of course touch them. We didn't like, you know, no violence. We just jumped the fence and went in, went to the doors. [00:33:48] Another, another story is one time at that same clinic, we didn't have the numbers to do a rescue. We knew we couldn't do one that were willing to be arrested. So. But we noticed that at these rescues because of all the craziness, all the pro boards would come out, all the pro lifers there, all the police presence there. [00:34:08] A lot women would tend to like drive up to get their babies killed and they just drive away because they didn't want to deal with it. So what we did was we advertised at the Local campus, University of Cincinnati. We advertised like we were going to have a rescue. We use the language we knew that the pro boards knew was rescue type language, you know, like we're going to take direct action, put your bodies, you know, in front of, you know, to protect babies from abortion, stuff like that. But we had no plans to rescue because like I said, we didn't have the numbers willing to get arrested that day that would block the doors. I mean we. And so we just like, well, we made it like that. So what happens? They all came out, all the pro boards came out and we just didn't rescue. But it caused so much. And all the police came, but nothing happened. Nobody got arrested because. But there was so much chaos and confusion and just spectacle there. And it was such a circus that our hope was, and our prayer was that some women who were there to abort their babies going there would turn around and just go home. Because we know that happens sometimes. We don't know if it happened for sure that day, but we know it has happened in the past. So that was another one. And then another one. I might have told this story before. This would be like my last personal story here. It's like the old time story time. Now that I'm a grandfather, this is what I do. I just sit around, you know, I'll sit around, tell stories. [00:35:24] I might have told this story in the. I know I've told this story, I think in the podcast, but this was the time when I was still Protestant and we went to an abortion clinic. This wasn't a rescue, but it kind of is the feel of the times. [00:35:39] We went to an abortion clinic to pray. It was a Friday afternoon evening and the pro aborts were there and they were quite the crew of just evil looking people. And we prayed and the police were there because it was around January 22, you know, the Drove v. Wade anniversary. The police were there just in case something was going to happen. And the abortion clinics closed at 6 o' clock that night. Friday evening. We decide the pro life or say we're just going to stay and keep praying for a little while. We just felt like we wanted to. [00:36:08] The police left though, because they're like, okay, the abortion clinics closed, we can leave. Well, the pro boats decide to stay. Some of the pro boards at least died to stay. [00:36:15] So we were praying kind of together and they started to circle us. The pro boards did and they started chanting, killed. You know, bring the, bring in the lions. Kill the Christians. Kill the Christians. [00:36:28] Send them to the lions. I Mean like pagan stuff like that. And they started chanting and saying some things that I cannot repeat and I will not repeat on this podcast or ever blasphemous things about our Lord and our Lady. And I did think as a process it was odd that they would say these, I mean, I understood they're saying these things against our Lord, but I didn't understand why they say things against Mary. At the time I was like, what? Who cares? I was a prostitute, remember? I did not, I did not know, but it was evil stuff. And I remember looking in the eyes of a couple of these people and I am 100% percent convinced this day they were, some of them were possessed. I, I, I know they were possessed by, by demons. I, I have no question in my mind about that. It just was very obvious. Looking in their eyes, they were possessed. And the things they were saying were things a possessed person was saying. And so it was possible it could have gotten really ugly. It didn't in the end, it did not. I mean, it was ugly in that way, but it didn't get physical or violent or anything like that. But, but we just kept praying. And I remember being very frustrated because I didn't know what to do because I was a Protestant, but the Catholics seemed to know what to do instinctively. And I've told the story, I know before, of a young woman in our group, Catholic, who was kneeling in prayer, praying the rosary. And she had this look of peace on her face while this pro bork guy was screaming blasphemies in her face while she's praying that rosary. And of course that woman, for those who don't know, ended up becoming my wife. [00:37:51] And just, I seeing that was a big deal to me because I saw, I saw the power of the rosary that day. But this was not atypical of that time when you went to an abortion clinic because of the heightened, you know, what we were doing as rescuers and the heightened pro abortion presence. That was very demonic. I mean, it's still demonic, don't get me wrong. But it was, it was much more in your face than it is, I think typically today. [00:38:17] But that was really interesting. So what happened? [00:38:20] So what happened? How is it that people were, thousands of people were doing this? We were saving babies. I know this for a fact. We're saving many baby babies. We were effective in so many ways. What happened? Why aren't we doing this anymore? [00:38:34] Well, a number of things happened. I'd say one thing is that in 1993, it was March of 1993, I remember hearing this news very well because I was just about to graduate from college and, and I was planning to do full time rescue activities. A man shot and killed an abortionist in Pensacola. His name was Michael Griffin. Was the man who. The. The anti abortionist who shot the, the, the. The abortion. Abortionist. [00:39:03] And then that summer, I think, was that some. Yeah, August of 1993, I wrote down Shelly Shannon, another pro life rescuer. She attempted to kill George Tiller, that, that abortionist I told you about in Witchita, Kansas, and she shot him, but she was unsuccessful in killing him. [00:39:20] He was later assassinated, by the way, In I think 2009, 2010, something like that. But 1993 he was shot, but he was not killed. [00:39:28] And then Paul Hill, a. A Presbyterian pastor, I believe, who was excommunicated from his church, he shot and killed and abortion also abortionist also in Pensacola. And I think the abortionist bodyguard, he shot both of them and he basically shot them, put his gun down and waited to be arrested. And then eventually he was executed for that. I think about 10 years later he was executed. [00:39:53] But that really, of course, the public, any public support for rescue beyond rescuers and even Berlin pro lifers really disintegrated very quickly. [00:40:05] And it became, and I'm not even here to debate the morality of shooting an abortionist. I, I would say there's no question it was very imprudent. It was very imprudent to do because, and I'm not saying it was moral to do either, I'm just simply stating that it's almost irrelevant for the per my purposes. What I'm talking about here for the rescue movement, whether or not it was moral, because it was, it was condemned by everybody. It was. And it led to a political movement to shut down rescue because in the eyes of the world, the nonviolent rescue, they never thought was nonviolent. [00:40:42] They tried to make it like it was violent. I remember one time I was at a rescue and the local media was there and the next day in the paper there was a picture of a pro abortion person just screaming at the top of their lungs at a woman who's praying a rosary, not saying anything. [00:40:58] And it, and the caption was anti abortionists and pro choicers debate abortion from an abortion clinic. [00:41:06] But it was always presented as violent, even though it wasn't. But then once violence actually happened, then it was very difficult to not be associated with those who killed the abortionist. And so the political movement, the political drive to shut down rescue became very fierce. Now one thing that happened was the RICO suits. The racketeering suits began under Attorney general Janet Reno, the Clinton administrator. Clinton had been elected in 92. Bill Clinton, and they were extremely pro abortion, Extremely pro abortion. Janet Reno, the Butcher of Waco, she was the attorney general and she very much wanted to crack down on rescuers. Whether they were violent or not. She did not care. [00:41:52] And so the, the RICO statue was using like laws that were against racketeering, that were intended against mafia like conspiracies and things like that they wanted to use against rescuers and pro lifers, which I always thought was a joke simply because being involved in it, I knew there's no way we were coordinated pro lifers. You had 10 pro life or 10 rescuers in a room and you ask them what we should do Next, you'd have 10 different opinions on what the best thing to do is. We could not. It was like herding cats to get us to agree to anything. [00:42:22] So I always thought that was somewhat of a joke. I mean it was effective. But what it did was it was a way to dry up the funds, the money you needed to support rescue by basically going after the organizations and accusing them of racketeering and taking their funds and things like that. But then the biggest thing was what was called the FACE act, which is federal access to clinics and something. I can't remember, but it was a law. It was a bill that was passed in 1994. [00:42:49] And I, I often claim face is the most effective law ever enacted in American history. What I mean by that was it was effective. That's what I'm trying to say is once it went to effect, rescue stopped. I think there was literally one rescue that happened like a month later. And then they got sentenced to a lot. I got a buddy who actually did it, he's a priest now and he was sentenced to, I think a year in jail as a federal offense. Because what it did was it, it ramped up the punishment for blocking an abortion clinic. It's highly unconstitutional. Don't get me wrong, faces 100 unconstitutional because it basically picked a specific. You know, you couldn't, you, you could do sit ins other places, you could block other doors, but you couldn't block abortion clinic doors. And they threw in there something about also you couldn't block like church doors and places of worship because they wanted to try to make it seem a little bit more fair. Completely, totally unconstitutional. But that being said, most places they, you didn't get long sentences for rescue. Like I said, I got arrested six times and I Spent very little time in jail. But there were people who got, the people who got arrested and spent long times in jail. There was always reasons for that, like they continue to rescue over and over again. [00:44:02] They, so they had multiple offenses or they, they refused to cooperate even in jail, like Joan and things like that. [00:44:09] But Face, what it did was it made it basically a federal offense with I think a year in jail minimum for the first time, and then it would ramp up from there. And essentially what happened was, is most rescuers, including myself, just decided it wasn't worth it to do anymore. Now I had gotten engaged also at this, in 1994, I think I got engaged like a month before Face passed. I was getting married the next year. And so I, my, my life was changing and I had to decide was it worth it to have a federal offense, which is much different than just getting some local misdemeanor, having a federal offense felony, and, and being in jail for at least a year and potentially the first time, the second time, a few years. [00:44:49] And I just decided, and so did everybody else, apparently, it just wasn't worth it. Now I'm not even saying I actually feel to this day, I don't, I don't know if the word is guilt or shame or something like that. I didn't, that I didn't continue to rescue even in the, in the face of face, because I feel like if, if many of us did, maybe we would gotten Face overturned. And I wasn't willing though, to make the sacrifice. I mean, that's just what it comes down to. I wasn't personally willing to make sacrifice and apparently nobody else was either, because rescue just stopped, just stopped cold turkey from, from then. And so, and so what is the impact now? It was like that was 1994. So really the high point of rescue was the late 80s, early 90s, from about 1988 through about 1993 is when you had thousands of people being arrested. Like I said, mine was 92 and 93 is really when I was doing most of my rescues myself. [00:45:48] So what was the impact? Was it worth it? I mean, I, I would say absolutely, because I know lives were saved. Again, that was the purpose of rescue. It wasn't a political movement. It wasn't trying to make a statement. It wasn't a protest. It was simply to rescue babies being killed by abortion. [00:46:03] If you saw a person about to pull the trigger and kill somebody, would you try to stop them? And we said, yes, we would try to stop them. [00:46:12] And so I, I would say it. It had a Great impact, I think. [00:46:18] I think it did actually help the pro life movement overall because it really made it clear this isn't just one, one, one political issue out of many. I think we've lost that some today, but at least for a while that was the case. I know for me, for example, in high school, I just thought abortion was one of many conservative political issues. Sure, I'm pro life, but I don't really care that much. It was rescue that made me realize, it made me directly realize, okay, there are babies being killed, there are babies being killed, what am I going to do about it? [00:46:49] And so I think that was a, that, that was an impact of, of kind of raising the stakes. I also think it had a real ecumenical impact. I became Catholic because of being involved in rescue because I was hanging out with a bunch of, of Catholic, a bunch of Catholics. As a Protestant, I still remember one time I was at a rescue and it was me, another Catholic friend of mine. I was. Had I be, I'd either come to the church or I was getting. Or I was a catechumen. I can't remember now, you know, in, in or say. [00:47:16] But I was with a Protestant minister and an orthodox Christian and the Protestant in the orthodox were arguing theologically, they were just like yelling each other. They both were outsized personalities who love to like, you know, yell and stuff like that. They were yelling at each other, they were arguing about this. And me and my Catholic blade were just sitting there listening to them. We were in a car, we actually drive them to rescue. That's what it was. And they're in the back seat, we're in the front seat and they're arguing this theological stuff. We're just sitting there and at one point the Protestant minister goes, you know, the Catholics up there in the front seat, they're staying quiet because they just know they're right. [00:47:50] I thought that was pretty funny. And it was kind of like, yeah, you guys can argue. I'm not saying obviously we should argue at times on Catholic points, but it was just a, it was a funny story. [00:48:00] I also would say one of kind of, I would say the negative impacts of rescue was it led to a woman led pro life movement. [00:48:09] I've talked about this a little bit before. [00:48:11] Before, during rescue and before, almost all the pro life leaders of organizations and just de facto leaders were men. Like I said, Joan Andrews, she was the heart, she was the inspiration, but she actually wasn't the leader. She didn't organize things, she didn't get up. I mean, she'd Give talks a little bit after she got a jail. But it wasn't like she's not the Randall Terry, you know her. It was her example that was that letter by not. She didn't actually organize things and it was all men who organized and ran all the organizations, stuff like that. And the focus was on the aborted babies, babies being killed by abortion. [00:48:46] And so yeah, we have signs of aborted babies, you know, disgusting signs. Yes, to get the truth out there. That's what we did. [00:48:53] But then after rescue there was kind of a response, a reaction to it where we wanted to make things softer because you know, with the killings, with the, you know, the murders, I'm not going to deny that that was a huge blow. [00:49:06] And you know, even all us rescuers who were non violent had no desire or support for the violent action we were thrown in with them. We just, you know, that's just the way it was. [00:49:16] And so there was this movement pro lifer, especially the more political ones that oh, we need to folk, we need to have a softer touch. And so we need to put women out as our leaders. And so that's when you started to see more and more women being appointed to lead pro life organizations. And the focus shifted, the focus shifted from babies being killed to women mothers being victims. Before is the babies were the victims and that was the focus. [00:49:44] Then it became the women. The, the, the, the, the, the mothers were the victims. Now I want to be clear about something. [00:49:50] Many women who abort their babies are victims. [00:49:55] They are women who did not truly have free total choice of what they did. They were pressured into it. Especially I'm talking about teenagers, you know, with boyfriend, overbearing boyfriends, with parents, whatever, who kind of almost forced them to get abortion. I, they are victims. I'm not trying to claim there aren't any. However, I think a large percentage, and I think the studies show this a large percentage of these women who kill their babies, they're not victims at all. They're doing this for, for selfish reasons. And, and they should be condemned for their actions. They should be condemned for their actions and in just world they would even face jail time. Yes. I'm not saying every woman who gets an abortion should face jail time, but I am saying there would be situations. So a woman just going in and aborting her 36 year old baby because. 36 week old baby because she realized it has down syndrome or something like that. [00:50:44] Yeah, she should go to jail for that. Absolutely. But that was, that became no longer, you could no longer talk like that. And the movement became very much women led. And I think that was a net negative. [00:50:55] I, I, I'm not saying every pro life woman leader is bad. Like Monica Miller leads pro life stuff now and she's wonderful because she's not like that. She's not like she, she puts up pictures of babies with abortion aborted and stuff like that. She doesn't fall for that stuff. [00:51:12] So anyway, this the, I think, I think it's sad that the rescue died, that the rescue movement wasn't able to inspire the nation to condemn abortion, to make abortion unthinkable. But I think it was very beautiful. I think the rescue movement was a very beautiful thing. I'm very happy that I was part of it. It's funny, even to this day when you meet a fellow rescuer, you just have a bond that you just can't really explain. And you know, here's one thing I would say I doubt there was a single rescuer like a true rescuer who went along with the COVID crap, who went along with all the COVID regime stuff. I'm willing to bet every single person who was really involved in rescue back in the day also was against the whole Covid regime stuff just because it changes how you look at things and your willingness and what your willingness to do, to skirt the law if the law is unjust. [00:52:07] And so I think, like I said, rescue is a very beautiful thing. Thing. So I, I just, I want, in this episode, I want to talk about this some. I, it's always funny. I, on X recently I mentioned something about being arrested and people were kind of shocked by it. And I know it is kind of shocking today. At the time though, it just seemed very normal and very normal. I was a very normal person. I still am. I was normal then. [00:52:28] Normal people rescued, they got arrested for, for pro life stuff. And I think it's sad that, that we've forgotten that. I wish somebody right like this book was written in 89, Rescue Movement in the Life of Joan Andrews. I wish somebody would write a full history of the rescue movement that included everything from the 70s through 1994, kind of the impact and everything like that. I know one time somebody asked me if I would be willing to write that and it would take a lot of research. [00:52:54] I would love to do something like that, but it would take a lot of research and I don't really have the time, the resources to do that type of research. But maybe, maybe somebody will do that and we got to do it soon because the people who were involved were getting older, we're not getting younger. And so the, the heroes, some, I mean, Joe Scheidler's passed away, for example. Some of the heroes have already passed on. [00:53:12] So anyway, I will leave it there. [00:53:15] Pray for the end of abortion. Pray and ask what the Lord is asking you, do you to do to end abortion? Obviously, we only do moral things to end abortion. But moral things, sometimes legal and moral, aren't always the exact same thing, is what I'll say. Okay, everybody, until next time, God love you. And remember the poor, including the, the poor souls, babies who are in danger of being aborted.