Fighter for life

Sept. 7 brings the 90th birthday of Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League. Next January’s 45th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision will also be the 45th anniversary of Scheidler’s pro-life work. Here are edited excerpts from a conversation with him.

What inspired you to activism?

When I saw the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions that made abortion legal up to the day of birth for any reason or no reason, this was just unconscionable. Here was a whole class of human persons just written off. My wife was pregnant with our daughter Cathy at the time, and I took it very personally that Cathy had no value in the eyes of the government. Cathy was born in May of 1973. Her value as a human being is inestimable. She, to me, is like a goddess, yet she had no protection from our government.

What shaped your beliefs on abortion?

My background: I spent eight years in a monastery and studying for the priesthood. In the Catholic church, abortion is one of only six excommunicable sins. In other words, you can’t go to communion and a whole lot of other things until you’ve repented. One time a Catholic woman was running an abortion clinic without a license, so I went in and closed them down. While she was on vacation, she went skydiving and died—the parachute didn’t open. I read in the newspaper that she was having a big funeral in a church on the north side of Chicago. I called the pastor and said, “You can’t give her a funeral; she was out of the church.” He checked with the archdiocese, and she was not allowed to have a Catholic funeral.

Did you make a lot of people mad at you?

I got into all kinds of trouble for that. But if she had a big funeral and people knew she had run an abortion clinic, they would think the church was accepting abortion. It was bad publicity for me, but it showed how important it is if people can’t even get a Catholic burial if they had been involved in abortion and hadn’t repented.

‘Life begins at the moment of fertilization. That’s biologically sound. Whether you believe that or not depends a lot on your own wishes.’

When did the pro-abortion/pro-life divide become political?

In 1976, the Democrats had their convention first and came out as pro-abortion. They said they supported Roe v. Wade. So a bunch of us went out to Kansas City where the Republicans were having their convention a few weeks later. We started meeting with the committee on social issues. We found some of them pro-life, but the chairman was not very good on the issue. We were able to get him recalled to Washington. The vice chairman was a Mormon—they are almost naturally pro-life—so we beefed him up, got him to send out a telegram, got Ronald Reagan and even Gerald Ford to make a statement.

The party platforms began to differ?

Republicans came up with the pro-life platform, supporting an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade. Since then the Democratic platform has gotten more strongly pro-abortion. Republicans now have their strongest pro-life platform ever. That’s kept the issue very much in the public eye.

Any regrets looking back?

We learned little by little what worked and didn’t work. We used to paint things on the sidewalk, put stickers on lampposts, other questionable things. But I was never for violence. … Some really good friends of mine had been abortionists. Don’t shoot them: That makes you as bad as them, even though your motives may be good.

Did people tell you about their plans to attack abortion centers?

No, it was just the opposite. If I would be suspicious of somebody, they would deny they had any intention. These were all surprises to me. I made it very clear that violence was not part of my program at all.

Why did you title your recent memoir Racketeer for Life?

The National Organization for Women charged me with racketeering because I was taking money away from the abortionists by talking women out of abortion, talking doctors into becoming pro-life. That shows how desperate the abortionists were.

What are the fruits of pro-life work by you and others?

Fewer abortions. Some 1,000 abortionists have quit. They are down to 700—used to be close to 2,000. Surgical abortion clinics have closed—used to be 3,000, now below 1,000. The general public seems to have a sense now that abortion is not a good thing. The presence of the baby, the primary victim of the abortion, is being recognized: more ultrasound pictures, and now some food and drug labels are saying, “Don’t eat or take this if you’re pregnant because it may harm or kill your baby” (instead of “fetus”).

Many pro-lifers point to young people joining the movement. What message resonates with them?

Truth is truth and it always will be true. Life begins at the moment of fertilization. That’s biologically sound. Whether you believe that or not depends a lot on your own wishes. The mind is not happy with a lie. Ninety-some percent of the men in a book I contributed to, Men and Abortion, were unhappy about the abortions they were involved in. I explained that abortion is bad, it’s bad for the relationship, it’s bad for the man. You have to doctor up abortion to make it look good—it’s ending something that is supposed to be positive and good.

What does “pro-life” mean today? Is there room for a nuanced view?

The nuances have always been there. I know doctors who are just as pro-life as we are after 20 weeks of gestation. They are for abortion at up to 20 weeks, and then they become almost livid when they hear of a doctor doing an abortion after that. The point is, human life exists at the moment of fertilization. We know that. We know that when the egg is fertilized by the sperm that cell division has already begun. You’ve got a life there. It may not look like much, but that’s not the point: Just give it some time.

You have your pro-lifers who are all over the place.

I don’t really consider them pro-life if they allow for abortion for this or that. They’ll say rape, incest, you know. The only possibility of ending a pregnancy is when the woman is dying and it’s a choice between the woman and the child. You still try to save both.

What about different pro-life strategies? Is there merit to incremental approaches such as pushing for a 20-week abortion ban but not a more limiting heartbeat bill?

Politicians are politicians—they say they’re pro-life and then mince around. We want to try everything and get what you can get. If you’ve got a 20-week bill, go back further and do a heartbeat bill. If the heart’s beating, it means it’s a human being. You don’t play with that.

What’s next for you?

I’m going to keep doing what I do. I get up every day and go to the clinics where I get a chance to talk to the abortionists.