Leaving a void

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 14th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: pro-life activism and federal law.

Today, a federal judge will begin the sentencing of nine pro-life activists for blocking the entrance to a D.C. abortion business four years ago. Their goal was to save lives from abortion that day. They face the possibility of up to 11 years in federal prison.

EICHER: The government has recommended shorter sentences for each of the defendants, most of whom have been incarcerated since August of 2023.

WORLD’s Leah Savas traveled to a small town in Michigan to see how the absence of one of these pro-life activists has affected the community she left behind.

AUDIO: [Sound of walking into store, door closing]

LEAH SAVAS, REPORTER: Inside the Linden bookstore Beloved Books, 19-year-old owner Olivia Porter is ringing up a customer.

AUDIO: [Sound of customer checking out, music in the background]

Children’s classics and picture books line the shelves and bright paintings hang on the walls. Porter says the store still bears marks of its longtime former owner, Heather Idoni.

PORTER: She always just had such a joyous spirit about her. And so you can just feel that in here, when you walk in. As far as like the books go, you can tell that she hand-picked every single one of these.

Some customers don’t know why Idoni is gone. But others do.

PORTER: I was very heartbroken that we're losing such a great person around town, because everybody loved her and loves her now to this day. We all just think it's very unfair that she is where she is right now.

Idoni is in jail. She has been for almost nine months. In August, a jury found her guilty of federal crimes for blocking the entrance to an abortion facility.

One day in March 2022, the government unsealed the indictment in that case. Idoni’s pro-life activism collided with her community in Linden when FBI vehicles pulled up outside of her bookstore that morning.

AUDIO: [Walking into the barber shop]

Mary Spooner is an employee at the barber shop across from Beloved Books. She was here that March Wednesday in 2022.

SPOONER: There was like five or 10 officers just like walking around the building milling around. And all of a sudden they walk out with Heather, handcuffs behind her back, putting her in the cop car. And she was driven away.

Spooner was shocked. She’s known Idoni since she was young, growing up in the same homeschool circles as Idoni’s sons. After she started working at the barber shop, Spooner would see Idoni across the street almost every day, often sweeping her sidewalks. In 2022, Idoni ran a Ukraine relief center out of her store, collecting funds and supplies to send overseas.

SPOONER: We all know this, we all know that she's seriously community minded and not the type to get arrested for anything real.

These days, Spooner doesn’t know where she stands on the abortion issue. But she’s participated in Black Lives Matter protests and takes Idoni’s charges personally.

SPOONER: It was very sobering. I'm just gonna say, as someone who protests myself, the thought that you could get arrested in this country for using your freedom of speech is just sickening.

Officials released Idoni later that day. But within the next twelve months, the government charged her in two other similar cases. Idoni’s possible prison sentence surpassed three decades and this year, she'll be 60 years old. When Spooner heard the bookstore was closing, she was concerned. What other business would move in? Who would run it?

SPOONER: Is it going to be someone who actually is going to take care of what's going on in the community, because that's something that Heather did. She, in a lot of ways, helped others…

That was a year ago. When then-18-year-old Olivia Porter heard the news, her heart sank.

PORTER: And so then I sat down with her. And I was like, Is there any way that I could take over the store?

Idoni showed Porter the ropes around the store until she headed off to D.C. for her first jury trial. Idoni was expecting a guilty verdict, but she also thought she’d be able to come home before her sentencing. That’s not what happened. After the jury found Idoni and the others guilty, the judge ordered them taken into custody, saying they’d been found guilty of violent crimes.

Idoni has called Porter a few times from jail.

PORTER: She actually sounded very joyful. Like, if I was in that situation, I'd be very, like scared. And but you couldn't tell that from the way she's spoke.

AUTOMATED VOICE: Heather Idoni, an inmate at the Livingston County Jail Howell, Michigan, to accept this call press five.

In March, Idoni called me from a jail not far from her family and bookstore. When she arrived from a different facility, she learned the jail didn’t take in-person visits.

IDONI: I think in all the six months I've been in jail, that's the first time I really just cried my eyes out.

But Idoni said she’s not ashamed of what she did to stand up for unborn babies. She would do it again.

IDONI: I can't ask for just joy and no pain, and every single bit of pain is something else I'm offering up to share the Lord's sufferings. I may whine a little or cry, but I don't resist. You know, whatever the Lord has for me. It's to his honor and glory. And I'm good with it.

Still, Idoni’s absence leaves a gap. Here’s Spooner.

SPOONER: They're stealing from this community... So we don't lose the bookstore but we lose out on Heather. We lose out on her and see is irreplaceable. I just—ugh.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas in Linden, Michigan.

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