Imagine what it would be like if every person in America who believed that abortion is the murder of an innocent child acted like it, not just once or twice, but millions of people constantly confronting the abortion industry. That idea was the driving force behind Operation Rescue.
On January 22, 1973, abortion became what is called “The Law of the Land,” because seven people in black robes decreed it to be so. All of the states’ pro-life laws were suddenly nullified, not by a real law passed by Congress, but by judicial fiat.
At the time, I was a junior in high school, my dad had just retired from the Air Force, and our family had just moved from Arizona to California. My thoughts were not about abortion, but rather which boys I met were cute and whether they would make a good boyfriend. However, by that time, I had already learned and accepted as truth, the concept of The Population Explosion, which was just as stupid and counterproductive as Climate Change. We were taught that in order to save the planet, we could only have a maximum of two children, and my biology teacher taught that concept as Gospel, being fully convinced in his own mind to the point that he, being even more righteous than others, would have none.
Naturally, by the time I graduated from high school, I had received enough of this conditioning so that I considered myself “pro-choice,” and brought the concept home to my mom who told me, to my surprise, that she was pro-life. I was pretty sure she hadn’t paid any attention to the issues of the day! But I didn’t listen to her silliness because she was only my mom, and what would she know? Of course we needed abortion so that we would not run out of room on the planet!
After high school, a year later I was already married, and Eric and I both considered ourselves radical Christians, Democrats, and pro-choice. Eric had campaigned strongly for George McGovern. I only knew that Grandpa the Mayor was a Democrat, so it must be in the genetic code.
My first station in the military was Andrews AFB in Maryland. We went to an Assembly of God church in Camp Springs. My second station was at Hickam AFB in Hawaii. We went to an Assembly of God church in Pearl City. We heard nothing whatsoever about abortion. And we voted for Jimmy Carter for President in 1976 while we lived in Hawaii because he was a Democrat and a born-again Christian. He was also a former military man like we were, though he drove me crazy since he couldn’t say “nuclear” right when he talked about his experience on the Navy submarines.
Jimmy Carter was pro-choice, of the persuasion that “I am personally opposed to abortion, but I believe in every woman’s right to choose.” We agreed.
But when I separated from the Air Force in 1978 and we moved to Lafayette, Indiana, we went to an Assembly of God church there. And suddenly, there was a preacher, Pastor Charles Hackett, who was up there talking about abortion being wrong in his sermons. Where did he get that? That’s not in the Bible! We were offended and went home huffing and puffing about his injecting politics into his sermons, and that, more than once.
But the truth of the matter was that we hardly even knew what abortion was. No one had explained exactly what abortion meant before we adopted our firm position on the subject. It seemed like it was just something vague, like a method of not having a baby. It’s one thing to say, “I support abortion,” and it’s quite another thing to say, “I support the killing of a child while she is living and growing inside her mother’s womb.” Nobody would say the latter! That would have been tantamount to admitting to blatant barbarism and that wasn’t us!
So when we strolled through the Tippecanoe County Fair in ‘78, and my baby bump was getting obvious, a smiling woman tending the Right to Life booth handed me a balloon, saying, “Surely you’re pro-life!” But I wasn’t! And I was not keen on the idea of having a balloon with “Pro-Life” on it tied to my wrist. So I gave it back to her.
It took some time for me. One very hot summer day, one of our two oldest girls was heard getting grossed out (“Ewwwwww!”) by something she found on the outside of the house. I investigated and found out it was slugs.
I was very excited because I had heard that you could salt a slug and it would melt, but I had never tried it. So I ran to grab the salt shaker to perform my experiment. What I saw then changed me forever. The slug did not melt. The slug rose up, writhing and twisting.
Suddenly, I connected the dots between this poor suffering slug and a human fetus undergoing a saline abortion. It was salt on a wet slug that was burning its small body and if it had a voice, it would have screamed. And it was salt on a wet body that killed tiny embryos or fetuses in the womb. But tiny embryos are humans. Like me. I imagined myself very small, in a bath of burning liquid, inhaling and swallowing the same burning liquid with every one of my screams.
After God spoke to me through a suffering, silently screaming slug, Eric and I began to be pro-life crusaders. We felt led to look into buying a house and opening it up to unwed expectant mothers, and we almost pursued doing that, but then we met some people who were trying to establish a crisis pregnancy center and joined forces with them instead. The result was “Hope for the Unborn,” and after that office was opened in Lafayette, I became one of their earliest hotline and counseling ministry volunteers.
In fact, I was regularly doing counseling when I was pregnant with Chris. One day, towards the end of the pregnancy, one of the other counselors told me they’d made an appointment and asked if I would take it for them. Being uncomfortable with my swollen legs and feet and large belly on a hot summer day, I wasn’t really excited about the appointment but went anyway, praying I could help the mother in crisis make the right decision. But when I walked in, I found out my friends had arranged a surprise baby shower for me. How wonderful! But after I opened presents, I spent some time lying on my back on the floor with my swollen legs up on a chair.
Then, in the late 1980s, a homeschooling friend of ours at the time recruited us into the ranks of Operation Rescue, just as it was gaining in strength and popularity. It was exciting and new, and we were consumed with the idea that if everyone who believed abortion was murder acted like it, there would be no abortion in a very short amount of time.
We spent the night at Steve’s house in Indianapolis in sleeping bags, went with him to the rally the night before, heard what we were going to do, learned the ropes, and were inspired by the Scriptures.
“Run to the Roar” and “Rescue those who are being led to the slaughter” were our battle cries. Gates, we were told, don’t move. If the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church, then the Church needs to be on the offensive. As a driving force, the Church of Jesus could batter down those gates of hell. But it was time to stop pretending we didn’t know what was happening under our very noses in those whitewashed sepulchers.
So we got up before dawn, dressed warm, and put our bodies between the victims and the killer. Naturally, this one event could not stop Big Abortion in America, but it could spread to other cities and the movement could grow. Before long, there were week-long and month-long campaigns in certain cities, especially where the very worst abortionists operated, like the notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller a.k.a. “Tiller the Killer.” We did not stop Big Abortion, but we put some fear into them.
We all knew the drill: sit there and don’t move till somebody drags you off. Then, when one person is dragged off, "scooch" – move your butt over till the hole is filled in.
Well, we did get arrested. We expected that. Then there were the court dates and a pro bono attorney who would tell the judge that we were doing it because of our religious convictions to rescue the perishing ‒ the “necessity” defense. It never worked and we were usually lightly fined for trespassing.
We’d spend a night in jail, though, and witness to the inmates. Sometimes we were released before the night had passed because we took up too much room. Other places would rather release “Barabbas” (drug dealers, prostitutes, etc.) to teach us a lesson.
Here's a visual for you, a 700 Club broadcast from the same year we were rescuing:
Once, my attorney in Indy asked me a bunch of questions before the hearing, and I answered, yes, several kids at home (don’t remember how many at the time), x amount of income (not much) and I do a lot of canning. He ended up (to my surprise) presenting all the documents to the judge and asking for a dismissal of the charges due to indigence. I didn’t even know what that meant!
But it worked! The charges were summarily dismissed and I was free to go. I looked it up and just praised God, because when I recognized that it meant "needy" I whole-heartedly agreed. Our God shows Himself powerful when His people admit to their neediness.
When I got home, someone had a welcome home cake ready with a character in jail on top!
I rescued several times, most of them in Indianapolis, but also once in Kettering, Ohio. That last one was significant because I had recruited several others who were arrested as planned, but before the last of us were dragged off, someone was whispering, “Hey, the appointments are already inside. Let’s go and find another place to rescue.” So we slipped away and tried to find another location. Being unsuccessful, we had to just go home … without our friends. That’s when it got ugly for our friends.
In Kettering, the justice system was pretty warped and the rescuers were in jail for about six weeks, straight through Easter … for sitting in front of the abortion mill. I acted as a go-between, soliciting prayer in the churches and keeping people updated. But I felt guilty for being free while they were suffering.
Another time, we took much of the Christmas money our family had sent us and used it to send Daddy to New York City with several other pro-life activists to rescue in front of the notorious Margaret Sanger Center Planned Parenthood abortuary. The place is a stronghold of abortion, not unlike the Gates of Mordor.
The longer Operation Rescue continued to disrupt the natural flow of dead children, the more hostile and vicious the pro-abortion opposition became. We had to be prepared to suffer. In some localities, the police were using nunchucks to remove rescuers from the doors, and you could get a broken arm from those. But in New York, the police didn’t use nunchucks. They did turn their motorcycles around and blow exhaust fumes at the rescuers to gas them out. Eric and some of his fellow rescuers slowed down the removal process by lying in the middle of the road in front of the police buses that were hauling other rescuers away to the jail.
My dad wasn’t thrilled about how we’d used his Christmas money. But you see, this is where Lisa got her convictions. She saw us do that, and she celebrated her birthday with an Operation Rescue themed party when she was 8 years old. We used streamers to simulate a jail in the area of the basement that used to be the coal bin and played "scooching" games. She loved it!
We also sometimes packed up all the kids very early on a Saturday and brought them all the way to Indianapolis, where we would picket and do sidewalk counseling in front of the abortion mills as they opened for business. We met a particular stalwart pro-life warrior named Bob Rust there, who died of Covid in 2020. He was a Catholic man, who did sidewalk counseling faithfully, in all weather, every single Saturday morning because he didn’t want the babies to die alone.
And when we found out that Dr. Hass in W. Lafayette was an obstetrician / abortionist, we worked to expose him, having funerals for babies who had died at his hands, out on the sidewalk in front of his office. We recruited various pro-life pastors to eulogize a baby we described and named. We found tiny bloody baby parts in the dumpster. We prayed and warned people away from his services as an obstetrician. In fact, one of our friends went to him when she was pregnant and he told her he couldn’t find a heartbeat, so come back in a few days for a D & C. When I found out about that, I strongly urged her to get a second opinion, and lo and behold, there was a living baby who would have been cut up and thrown away by this dangerous person. It appeared the “good doctor” needed some fast cash and didn’t mind sacrificing one of his “wanted” patients. I’m so glad Grant’s life was spared!
Dr. Hass temporarily halted his abortion practice because he fell off a ladder and broke both legs, but when he was back on his feet, he was committing abortions again. He should have reconsidered while he had the chance. The last we heard of him was that he died when his private airplane crashed. And for awhile, Lafayette was abortion free.
In response to the success of Operation Rescue, Congress enacted laws to make rescuing a felony. If you sat in front of an abortion mill, you could have your assets plundered and your voting rights taken away. Many states were using RICO statutes (racketeering) to squelch rescues, like we were the Mafia. Randall Terry, the head of O.R. was caught in that trap, and others took the reins of the organization. The next trick was FACE legislation – Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. This was only about abortion mills, nothing else. No one was ever prosecuted under FACE for blocking an entrance to a wart clinic. Then the freedom of speech rights of pro-lifers were suppressed by enacting “bubble zones” to keep sidewalk counselors from approaching abortion-minded women.
Operation Rescue is still alive and well today, but it has a different focus. Besides the standard sidewalk counseling, O.R. uses every possible means to close the clinics themselves, from collecting information about tax evasion, or publishing information on their website about all the fraud and assault scandals that plague these places, to being involved in the famous undercover journalistic efforts of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who took hundreds of hours of video footage to obtain evidence of Planned Parenthood’s direct involvement in the illegal sale of baby body parts.
Here’s one of the earliest examples of the videos exposing this hideous and illegal operation. Note: Deb Nucatola does abortions at the Planned Parenthood in Lafayette now:
O.R.'s current leader, Troy Newman, was among those sued by Planned Parenthood, along with the Daleiden and Merritt team, for disrupting their bloody business. The case against Planned Parenthood has still never been prosecuted because of extreme pro-aborts like Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra who refuse to bring charges.
This is what Operation Rescue says of itself:
“Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Operation Rescue is now headquartered in a former abortion clinic that it bought and closed in 2006. From there, Operation Rescue launches its innovative new strategies across the nation, exposing and closing abortion clinics through peaceful, legal means. Its activities are on the cutting edge of the abortion issue, taking direct action to stop abortion and ultimately restore legal personhood to the pre-born in obedience to biblical mandates.”
Until recently, Lisa was an officer for the Springfield, Illinois Right to Life and I’m so proud of her! During her time in leadership, more people were packed into the Illinois State Capitol nearly two years ago than ever had been before (some couldn't get in), to protest the extreme kill-your-baby-till-his-birthday pro-abortion law the legislature was considering.
March 20, 2019, at the Illinois Capitol
It ended up passing and being signed into law, but it sure wasn’t because people didn’t try. Meanwhile, her oldest daughter Joy was a manager for the Right to Life office, while my oldest great grandbaby Charlie played on the floor nearby.
What I can say about the pro-life movement is that it is encouraging that there are still people who are fiercely fighting this great evil in our land. Even after the 2021 March for Life in Washington DC was canceled because of Covid concerns, there were still many people who went anyway and stood for the babies who have no voice. Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the two Supreme Court rulings that foisted abortion on the nation have been crumbling for a long time. So far God has spared the nation, but He cannot continue to ignore all the blood that has been spilled.
We cannot afford to be complacent. What will you do to save a life? How can you support a woman who has tragically believed her only choice is the abortion mill?
“Oh, God, our hearts go out to the women who are deceived into thinking their baby is not a baby, who are used and their babies cast away. Save us, Jesus! Help us to know how to encourage women who are in this situation that they are strong and capable, and that there is no reason to go through the trauma of abortion.
“We especially come against Planned Parenthood, which has come to roost in Lafayette in recent years, distributing dangerous abortion pills to unsuspecting women. Few have the wherewithal to stand against this powerful baby-killing organization, and when they do, they are silenced. We pray for David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt et al, who are fighting the good fight, that they would be successful in their efforts. We pray that you will raise up other capable warriors in this battle and surround them with your angel hosts.
“And we pray that we will live to see the day when abortion is eradicated from our land. In the mighty Name of Jesus Christ, who used to be an embryo too, Amen.”
Resources:
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Did you know Dr. Hass left money to some children's organization. What a shock--- I would wanted to be him on judgement day.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. Judgment Day is a reality, an inescapable one.
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