Pro-Life activists in the U.S. have long believed that it’s important to know the strategies and attitudes of the other side. Joe Scheidler, director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League and Andrew Scholberg, editor of Life and Family News of Collegeville, Minn., have attended the annual meetings of the National Abortion Federation (NAF) since 1979.
In previous years, the two non-members of the Federation simply registered as guests and paid the fee. This year, the abortionists changed the rules and any non-member wishing to attend had to be sponsored in writing by a member. Not surprisingly, Scholberg’s request for sponsorship to the American Civil Liberties Union and to other NAF members as not successful.
Scheidler and Scholberg did, however, “infiltrate” the meeting, obtaining tapes of the talks, hand-outs and exhibitors’ promotional material. They’re not saying how they managed this, since they may need the strategy again. Scholberg figures that “the abortionists are still scratching their heads, trying to figure out how we breached their “iron-clad” security system.
The following is Andrew Scholberg’s account of the 1985 NAF annual meeting, held in June in Boston. The theme of the conference was “Abortion: A Moral Choice.” The following article originally appeared in Life and Family News, August/September edition, and has been edited for length:
The meeting was opened by NAF president Glenna Halvorson-Boyd, the wife of the notorious abortionist Curtis Boyd of the Fairmount Center in Dallas. Glenna, like many of the abortion people, is an enigma. An attractive woman with a pleasant smile, she has the remarkable ability to captivate her audience with intense, dramatic and emotional rhetoric. Her opening remarks provide a glimpse inside the abortion mentality.
“This past year has been an odd and difficult one,” said Glenna. “For me, it’s been over-full of personal and professional challenges. And I know that it has been such for many of you. I’ve come to this meeting because I need the support, the comfort of your fellowship, a renewal of my spirit.
“…As we begin, I want to reflect out loud on two important current trends which test our beliefs, our values, and our commitment. First, medical science is raising powerful questions in which there are not simple answers. As medical technology reveals more about the developing fetus and the gray area of viability becomes larger and grayer, I realize that I feel as strongly as ever and with far greater clarity that the development of the human fetus is a wondrous and compelling mystery. The development of the human being – woman, man, child – is more wonderful and compelling, and far more mysterious. [Applause]
“It [abortion] is a moral choice. I am clear, if in personal and painful ways, that life, at all costs, under any circumstances, is not what I value. The quality of my life, of our collective life, the lives of my children and their children – yet unborn in my case – are what I care about. Concern for the unborn is not the exclusive territory of the anti-abortionists. I am both fortunate and proud to work for what I believe.”
Muddled theology
The opening session concentrated on the morality and theology of abortion. Moderator Tom Webber, who runs the Planned Parenthood abortion mill at St. Paul, was introduced as having been “picketed daily since 1976,” a tribute to anti-abortion activism in St. Paul.
Webber told his colleagues: “We have found ourselves trying to defend ourselves against the allegation that we are the killers.” That seems to be the abortionists’ sore spot.
The next speaker, sociologist Kristin Luker of the University of San Diego, addressed the “spirituality” of abortion: “Yes, there’s spiritual issue involved. I take the idea of ending the life of the fetus very, very gravely. That doesn’t in any way diminish my conviction that a woman has a right to do it, but I do become distressed when people regard pregnancy lightly and ignore the spiritual significance of pregnancy.” This kind of double-talk is characteristic of the abortionists’ forays into theology and morality.
Some of the abortionists appear to be ignorant of even the most basic facts of human reproduction. For example, Luker said: “Most people who get pregnant forget contraceptive.” Right-to-life people generally understand that pregnancy is failing to use a contraceptive.
“Rev. E. Spencer Parsons of Chicago, a long-time abortion activist who has made countless abortion referrals, spoke on the possibility of finding common ground with right-to-lifers, especially the right-to-lifers who use methods of birth control that actually work by causing early unnoticed abortions:
“I know many people who are strongly anti-abortion who use the Pill, and have no problem with the third function of the Pill, which is to alter the lining of the endometrium (and cause an early abortion). They don’t have any problem with that. They are absolutely astounded and amazed that you would begin to call the Pill both a true contraceptive and a true abortifacient.
“Women who use the IUD normally do not think of themselves as having a monthly abortion, but when they being to understand how the IUD works, they begin to say, “Well, that does raise a question, doesn’t it.” “No true right-to-lifer would knowingly use a method of birth control that potentially or actually causes early abortion. Make no mistake the Pill and IUD are abortive.
Abortion is sacred
Perhaps the top prize for theological caricature should go to the “feminist” abortion theologian Carter Hayward, who called both sodomy and abortion “sacramental.” Hayward was one of the women ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1974, two years before women’s ordination was officially allowed by that denomination.
Hayward describes herself as a “feminist liberation theologian” who looks “to earth rather than to heaven for the actions of the Divine among us.” She told the abortionists that “the seeds of goodness and truth and beauty, even as we gather here, are being sown.”
Hayward also made a caricature of the motives of right-to-lifers, saying that they believe “if a woman’s going to screw around, she should take the consequences.”
“Does the fetus have a right to life?” asked Hayward. She answered her own question: “If human life is sacred, as I believe it is and as I have attempted to convey, then the fetus does have its own sacred character as the beginnings of human life. But I do not believe that prenatal life should be accorded a full range of human rights.”
She then disparagingly spoke of “10-week-old fetus tissue.” One wonders where she acquired such curious and contradictory ideas.
Hayward concluded her speech with these remarks about abortion and sodomy: “If women had made the rules, if women had written the sacred texts, if women had been the architects of religion and state, sexuality would be understood as sacraments, so too would the act of love-making – whether heterosexual or homosexual – so too would conception, miscarrying, and birth.
“Abortion would be a sacrament if women were in charge. Abortion should be a sacrament even today. I suspect that for many women today, and for their spouses, lovers, families, and communities, abortion is celebrated as such, an occasion of deep and serious and sacred meaning. Thank you. “The abortionists responded with thunderous, prolonged applause.
The pits of despair
The abortionists frequently brought up the subject of the powerful film The Silent Scream. At the workshop on the “Psychological Impact of Pregnancy Termination on Staff and Clients,” moderator Frances Schepp called the film “false, full of disinformation and distortion and lies” But later she admitted: “The more the fetus looks like a human infant, the more the whole question of the rights of the fetus becomes apparent.” She added: “When a fetus begins to look like a baby, the feeling of shame and of making serious mistakes comes up.”
Several members of the audience discussed their own abortions, apparently without the slightest trace of guilt. But the director of an abortion mill in Florida said: The Silent Scream [had] all of us feeling in the pits of despair. What I’m seeing in my counseling is guilt. ‘I want to see my products of conception..’ ‘Does this fetus feel anything? I’m afraid that we’re not giving them enough [information.]
An abortionist from Minneapolis made this comment about The Silent Scream: “Of course with this trickery charge I think Dr. Nathanson is now at work on a much more graphic movie to be out quite soon which I presume, would show the limbs and heads being ripped off without the sonogram pictures.” This abortionist appeared to be quite worried about what Nathanson’s next film will reveal.
A clergy panel addressed “Abortion as a Moral Good.” The Rev. Ann Carol Fowler, and Episcopal priest, said she believes “in a loving God and a good God.” To deny pregnant mothers the right to kill their babies before birth would be “to commit the sin of sexism in flagrant form” she said. So much for her “theology.”
The Rev. E. Spencer Parsons said, “If she [the pregnant mother], for instance, at the 16th week, really believes she is carrying a baby and has the abortion, her self image as a baby killer has profound, very profound repercussions in terms of her own self-identity.
“If on the other hand she sees even a 16 or 17 week pregnancy as a biological process and she does not put the label ‘baby’ on it, these people move through even the traumatic part of a second-trimester abortion fairly well.” The subject of baby killing and murder were frequently raised by the speakers and audience.
Doctors are quitting
A woman abortionist from Denton, Texas said “…we feel so isolated and so wicked, you know it’s a horrible place to be in.” The abortionists appeared to feel confident that no right-to-life infiltrators would hear their remarks.
Sally Stratton, the administrator of the Routh Street abortion mill in Dallas, complained bitterly about the picketing and sidewalk-counseling: “What’s happening out there is the real world is that those picketers are in front of our clinics, they’re intimidating our patients, they are causing doctors to quit the profession, insurance rates are going up because buildings are being burned.
“Abortion clinics are being put out of business…They [activists] are out there with bullhorns. They are out there with accusation.” Another speaker complained about “garbage cans full of ketchup coloured dolls.” Activists, if you have ever doubted your effectiveness, doubt no longer.
Abortionist Michael Burnhill of Rutgers University, who at one time championed the prostaglandin method of second-trimester abortion but has “come around” to D & E, spoke of the medical complications of abortion. (D & E stands for dilation and extraction. The well-developed child, who can feel pain, is literally dismembered with surgical instruments.)
Burnhill spoke frankly of the dangers of saline abortions: “The relative risk between saline and suction curettage of coagulopathy [abnormal bleeding] is 87 times greater with saline. That’s a nice juicy number to chew on. “Despite the danger, saline abortions are still done by some abortionists.
Burnhill said that general anesthesia with rigorous protocols is “pretty safe, but lately, within the last several months, there have been several major catastrophes in units using general…These are the types of complications that are increased [with general anesthesia]:
“You will have more blood transfusions, more cervical injuries, more major surgery. That’s I suppose because people under general push and pull more vigorously.” The abortionist went on to list about a half-dozen additional complications related to general anesthesia. I guess he forgot that legal abortion is supposed to be “safe.”
Burnhill also commented: “There is still such a thing as septic shock from abortion. There are still patients coming in in shock. We see them still once or twice a year.
Proud Pioneers
Harvard abortionist Philip Stubblefield introduced mega-abortionist Curtis Boyd of Dallas as “an artist who has been one of the people who has perfected the vacuum curettage technique in its application in the United States. He has vast experience. Some of it I understand even precedes 1973, but we’re not going to talk about that.” Boyd has performed well over 100,000 abortions by his own hand.
Boyd described how he pioneered the technique of second-trimester dismemberment of babies. “In the late sixties I had some experience wit this. You find yourself misjudging gestational age or listening to a desperate story that you can’t resist, and you attempt to go a little further with this pregnancy termination because you were the last resort of this person sitting in front of you.
“So you found that, lo and behold, you did 14 weeks [by D & E] and got away with it. [nervous chuckle] And so if you could do 14 weeks you do those for a while and you misjudge, or another story comes along, and you try 15 weeks. And then later on you try 16 weeks. So we came to know that we could do it (the D & E). “Boyd seems genuinely proud of his pioneering role in the technique of dismembering babies in the second trimester. He has performed literally thousands of second-trimester D & E’s.
Philip Stubblefield went on to discuss his part in the coercive sterilization of women. “The [hysterectomies] were widely done in Boston. Hysterectomy as a primary procedure was routine after 12 weeks for people who had any kind of reason you could fabricate to do a laparotomy, if they needed their tubes tied, and we’ve coerced them into needing their tubes tied. “Coerced sterilization? What about “choice,” Dr. Stubblefield?
D & E virtuoso Warren Hern of Boulder, Colorado, who is well known for his candid remarks on the destruction and grisly nature of the abortions he performs, pointed out that not all legal abortionists are competent:
“There was a guy down the street from me, who shall remain nameless, who is not an exceptionally good practitioner, who had so many problems with his other kinds of abortions, he thought he was just going to do hysterectomies, until I pointed out to him that the mortality rate was 100 times greater. “If legal abortion is so “safe” one wonders how the abortionist could have had “so many problems.”
The NAF business meeting was fascinating. The main topic of discussion was the skyrocketing insurance rates for malpractice, fire, and property. NAF director Barbara Radford said: “Because the [meeting] is closed…I will be as frank as I can about this.
…We have gone through two insurance companies in the last two years…After last year’s annual meeting, I was informed that we would not be renewed. I had two months to find this organization new malpractice coverage. I was not pleased, nor were any of you, with the coverage that we ended up with. But it was all that was available to us…”
Radford said she did not expect their current group malpractice policy to be renewed. NAF is so desperate for malpractice insurance coverage that Radford said she is seriously considering the option of establishing “our own offshore [insurance] company.”
An abortion administrator from Dallas said, “Our insurance has gone up 14 fold…Our fees have shot up. Our patients have had to bear the burden of this.”
Abortion administration Judith Widdicombe of St. Louis spoke of the “very high rate of malpractice: and we look at taking care of ourselves and covering our ass, so to speak.” She went on to say: I just paid for premesis liability insurance for my two clinics that last year I paid $5,000 for; this year I paid $21,000.”
Entitled to a dead baby
Abortion attorney Margie Pitts Hames, who argued the pro-abortion side before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that resulted in the 1973 ruling, delivered the keynote luncheon address. But she appeared somewhat ashamed of abortion. She asked: “Is there any press here? It’s always inhibiting to know that there’s press in the room.
“What this gets down to is whether a woman who seeks an abortion is entitled to a dead fetus. The first-trimester abortion procedures and technology guarantee that: the D & E procedure guarantees that; it’s only in those late abortions [by instillation] that we have the possibility of live births.”
Long-time abortion promoter Terry Beresford introduced the recipient of the Christopher Tietze humanitarian award. (Tietze was a statistician who specialized in the field of contraception and abortion.) Beresford said: “The person who’s going to receive it could receive it because he’s a practitioner: a man who’s done countless abortions for women who wanted them, did them with compassion and respect and skill, still does them, and does some of the hard ones – early, and late…A human being who is upright and honorable and decent…Phil Stubblefield, come up here.”
“I want to be sure…”
Judith Widdicombe, the director of Reproductive Health Services in St. Louis, moderated the workshop on “Post-Abortion Care: Administrative Counseling & Medical Aspects.” She said: “We may get into some sensitive issues this afternoon, I want to be sure that those of us that are here have a reason to be here and that we will not share the information with those who might use the information in a disparaging way.”
One of the main topics of discussion was what to do about WEBA (Women Exploited By Abortion), which has effectively exposed the duplicity and greed of the abortionists. One abortion counselor commented: “I wonder where these women are coming from. Those women who feel abortion is killing, that it’s morally wrong, they do it anyway and then work against us. And that’s what we’re seeing with these WEBA women, and they’re ripe to be plucked by the other side.”
Widdicombe asked: “Do you ever not abort someone who wants the fetal tissue baptized? These things have happened through the years.”
A counselor from the audience said: “I’d like to address this, because in the last seven or eight months, we have chosen not to give services [abortions] to [some] women. And we really agonized over that. When women come in and tell us that they have to have an abortion and they believe it’s murder, and that they will allow us to kill their baby, we send them [home]. It took a lot of guts….Our deciding factor was a woman laying (sic) on the table asking the physician whether or not, why she could kill her baby.”
Another member of the audience commented: “We had a high increase in complications following an anti-abortion media campaign.” She blamed the media campaign for the increase in complications, not the abortionist.
Many of the abortionists complained about the picketing, sidewalk-counseling, and sit-ins. One person said: “When I had an abortion, nobody was standing outside the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center [picketing]. It’s real different for women now.”
Closing an abortuary
During the clinic defense workshop, abortion activist Nicki Nichols Gamble explained that right-to-lifers could close down more abortion mills by “harassing” the abortuary administrator. She described the situation at Planned Parenthood of Worcester, saying that right-to-life activists “have tried to make it difficult if not impossible for a director to stay with us. One director would not continue with us because his personal life was so harassed….
“A third director joined us and began to get harassed with phone-calls, picketing, and office invasions by pro-lifers…They might be able to close us down by eliminating our directors. This creates extraordinary free-floating anxiety and stress and an inability to focus on forward movement.” Activists, take note.
The clear message of the abortionists is that anti-abortion activism – sit-ins, picketing, sidewalk-counseling – is taking its toll on the abortion movement. Every abortion worker should be confronted by right-to-life every day, and every pregnant mother that approaches an abortuary should be offered a life-affirming alternative by sidewalk-counselors. We have our work cut out for us.
