The activists standing outside Albany Medical Surgical
Center, the Family Planning Associates Medical Group clinic on North
Elston Avenue often differ depending on the day of the week.
If it is a Thursday, Joe and Ann Scheidler, the
founding couple of Chicago’s pro-life movement, may be there with signs
and pleas to patients entering the doors. On Saturday, it is far more
likely to be Ryan Bouse, who cut his protest teeth in Joe Scheidler’s
office, but is now in the midst of writing his own script for ending
abortion in the city.
Bouse and the Scheidlers represent two schools of
tactics in the anti-abortion movement. While Bouse and his cohorts
counter what they see as today’s culture of biblical immorality with
narratives heavy on sin and redemption, the Scheidlers are focused on
the immediate “save” of pregnancies about to be ended.
Both, however, have made the clinic on Elston a regular stop when it comes to their mission.
“I need to come every Thursday to remember,” said
Joe Scheidler. “I need to come at least once a week to reaffirm the
reality of abortion. This is a place where a woman is going in with a
live child, and inside they will terminate that life.”
It’s hard to believe that Joe Scheidler, even at
87, is in danger of forgetting anything. When I visited his office at
the Pro-Life Action League in August, it was a shrine to his more than
40 years of trying to stop legal abortion.
One wall was covered in pictures of popes, bishops
and politicians supporting Scheidler’s crusade and letters of
commendation for his efforts in the pro-life movement. Directly behind
his desk chair hung a large portrait of a brightly haloed Jesus.
A curio cabinet was filled with memorabilia from
his decades palling around with and organizing the most notorious
anti-abortion activists in history. On one shelf rested a coffee cup
declaring “The World’s Best Dad.” Next to it: a copy of the infamous
“Have a Blast!” photo from a 1985 Pro-Life Action Network conference in
Appleton, Wisconsin, of which the Pro-Life Action League and Scheidler
was the key organizer.
That photo depicts group members holding signs
demanding the jailing of “baby-killers” while standing in front of a
kiosk that read “Welcome Pro-Life Activists, Have a Blast!” It was one
of many pieces of evidence in the landmark suit generally known as
National Organization for Women (NOW) v. Scheidler. In the case,
Scheidler and other anti-abortion activists were accused of racketeering
to intimidate and commit violence, including clinic bombings and arson,
against abortion providers. After being decided in favor of NOW in
1998, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 2006.
“We’ve had trouble with other pro-lifers,” Scheidler
said as we sat in his office and I looked through his extensive
collection. “We had those who went off the deep end, and then started
shooting and bombing and all that stuff. We knew these people, and we
had meetings with them. We even have met them after they get out of
prison, and so on. They’re still pro-life. They just went too far.”
In the corner stood a television and VCR and DVD
player at the ready. With it, Scheidler shows guests tutorials about the
“Chicago Style” of “sidewalk counseling,” the term abortion opponents
have given to their attempts to talk a patient out of an abortion just
before she enters a clinic. Other videos on his playlist include
interviews with former abortion providers who have changed their minds,
left their jobs and joined the pro-life movement. But Scheidler’s
favorite, “Holy Terror,” is a mid-’80s NOW documentary about him and
other Pro-Life Action Network members. He finds the film so enjoyable
that he urged me multiple times to sit down and watch the whole thing.
“See, I am the ‘Holy Terror,’” he joked.
Download the entire article here. For photos outside the Elston Clinic, click here.
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