The May issue of Time magazine labeled the Spring of Life Rescue in Buffalo “Operation Fizzle.” Time called it “a symbolic contest” and asserted that Operation Rescue had failed, and that “the clinics were not closed down.”

Why the arrests?

If the clinics were not closed down, why did the Buffalo Chief of Police feel it necessary to arrest hundreds of pro-lifers for “blocking the entrance to a health care facility”?

Was it a purely “symbolic contest” that resulted in four of Buffalo’s abortionists joining and moving together to an unknown location to kill children? Try telling Canadians Vladimir Hirko, Anne Marie Tomlins, Bill De Marois, Peter Hendricks, Jeannie Arcand, Beth Tell or Linda Gross (just some of the Canadians arrested) that their personal sacrifice and stay in jail on behalf of the preborn was a failure. Each of them, I’m sure, has a personal story of how the Spring of Life was a success in their own lives.

What a story the Time reporter would have had if she had turned her Walkman into WDCX, the Christian radio station that provided live coverage of the Spring of Life. There she would have heard hundreds tell how the “Spring of Life” Rescue jolted them out of comfortable Christianity into transforming pro-life activism. As one first-time rescuer, a Protestant Pastor, who spent nine days in jail put it: “The Spring of Life radically confronted me with the truth of this holocaust. Last year, I walked in Halton Pro-Life’s Annual Mother’s Day Vigil. I participated in the Life Chain, but it took the Spring of Life to jar my heart into sacrificial involvement. I’m now totally indebted to the cause of saving lives.”

Time coverage

The Time reporter witnessed “some abortion-rights advocates” spitting, punching, dropping cigarette ashes on their opponents and screaming “unprintable things,” but failed to mention that in return pro-lifers extended their hands in friendship, and offered up prayers and sandwiches to their opponents.

Was her coverage of the violence on the streets of Buffalo the whole story? I think not. What a story she would have had, if she had followed the army of pro-lifers out of the muddy gutters into any one of Buffalo’s jails.

There she would have seen an angry pro-abortionist confined in a 12×8 holding cell with two praying pro-lifers. Amidst the stench of the excrement-smeared cell, she would have heard a conversation begin. The pro-abort, abandoned by her movement and by her friends after being arrested and charged with dislocating the shoulder of a female police officer, finally broke and accepted the listening ears of the two pro-lifers. She began to tell them about her life. About the physical and emotional abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband and the resulting man-hating philosophy that drover her to radical feminism. About the anger and rage that controlled her life. About her several attempts at suicide.

The reporter would have heard one of the pro-lifers share her own abortion experience and the other, he new-found hope in God. She would have seen the three of them reach an understanding of each other as women and as human beings. She would have seen the (now ex) pro-abort wipe a tear from her eye and promise the others that they wouldn’t see her “at one of these things again.”

Ultimate visual ammunition

The Time newswoman reported that during the first week, “the abortion rights contingent of 500 matched Operation Rescue’s body for body.” She neglected to mention that this “contingent” was primarily made up of spring-breakers who, instead of heading for Daytona, decided that there was more excitement to be had in Buffalo and that during the second week, pro-lifers outnumbered pro-abortionists two to one.

The Time correspondent ended her account by labeling “Baby Tia” (the 20-week-old aborted baby given to Rev. Rob Schenck by a pathology lab) the “ultimate visual ammunition” and discounted the impact by stating that the county medical examiner had determined that she was stillborn, not aborted.

This flies in the face of a statement made by Dr. Bruce Rogers, a Maternal/Fetal Specialist at Buffalo Children’s Hospital, who said that “a child stillborn by natural causes or aborted by a prostaglandins abortion are virtually indistinguishable.”

Was her coverage of the Baby Tia affair the whole story? I think not. What a story she would have had if she had followed the evening news into the living room of a young pregnant woman in Amherst, New York.

There she would have witnessed the woman gazing intently at the image of Baby Tia on the television screen. She would have seen her pick up the phone and dial the number of a local church, where she attended Sunday School as a child. She would have heard her say, “Please help me. I don’t want to kill my baby.”

In spite of several harassing phone calls from the abortion clinic staff, she did not keep her appointment the next day. And neither did another 16 confirmed women during the Spring of Life Rescue.

Operation fizzle? Why not attend the high school graduation of any one of the 17 children who were saved during the Spring of Life? I’m sure they’d tell you it was more like Operation Sizzle.