OPERATION RESCUE

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard looks at the tactics

of 'pro-life' guerrillas in America — and their opponents in the media

New York MY squadron assembled furtively before dawn in a suburban shopping mall. The 'rescuers' were edgy. A few sat in their cars; others stood around smoking and telling war stories about Pittsburgh and West Hartford.

A frail man in his seventies rolled up a trouser leg and showed me a deep scar on his ankle. 'That was Hartford. I was just lying on the ground and a cop came over and stamped on me. He was a young kid. I couldn't believe he'd do a thing like that.'

It seems the police in West Hartford, Connecticut, ran amok last June. They took off their identification badges, armed themselves with billy clubs, nunchakus, and other instruments of order, and beat up a peaceful crowd of 'pro-lifers' picket- ing an abortion clinic. The police ripped the film out of every camera they could find, but a video of the assault was some- how smuggled out and is now circulating underground. It shows a 63-year-old woman armed with a rosary being hurled onto the pavement. That kind of thing.

At first light we were given orders to drive to yet another secret meeting place, where almost a hundred cars were lined up waiting. The 'rescuers', mostly Catholic, formed a circle holding hands and said the Lord's Prayer. Then we set off in convoy for an assault on `Gynecare'. The purpose was to paralyse the clinic for a whole morning, causing appointments to be can- celled, in the hope that some of the women would decide to keep their babies after all. Occasionally they do. A 'rescuer' called

Dorothy showed me a photograph of a little black baby. 'That's my god-daughter. She's cute, isn't she?. . . We saved her last year.'

The rescuers split into two groups. The majority marched up and down the street in front of the 'aborttoir', as they call it, carrying placards with gruesome pictures of fcetuses stacked up in rubbish bins. Meanwhile the shock-troops formed a blockade around each of the doors to the clinic, and sat there on the steps singing hymns and psalms. Somebody inside the clinic leant out of the window and poured a cup of hot coffee over them.

Within minutes seven police cars had turned up. Then came the first of the counter-demonstrators from the 'pro- choice' movement. They stood on the other side of the road with pictures of coat hangers (for do-it-yourself abortions) and chanted: Anti-women, anti-gay, born-again bigots go away About the same time, the owner of the clinic arrived, wearing crocodile-skin shoes, white socks and dark glasses. He screamed at the police for not moving fast enough to clear the doors, 'What the hell is this shit? This is my property; they're trespassing.'

His clinic charges $325 for a first trimes- ter abortion. Anaesthesia extra. Cash only.

• He does not accept payments from Medi- caid, the public funding that provides free treatment for poor women. To get some idea of how a business like this operates I spoke to Carol Everett, who used to manage a clinic in Houston before chang- ing sides. She says that she was paid a $25 commission for every fcetus and that she had a staff of aggressive vendors pushing abortions on the telephone. 'It's a skilfully marketed product sold to a woman at a vulnerable moment in her life.' The last month she worked Mrs Everett made $13,625 in commissions. The doctors were paid $75 per abortion and could do one every ten minutes. Big bucks, as they say over here.

Eventually the police closed in for the arrests. It was almost ceremonial. One by one the limp protesters were carried away and loaded onto a school bus, while the crowd sang 'Were you there when they crucified our Lord?' A bishop and a monsignor even had the luxury of stretch- ers. There was none of the taunting cruelty of West Hartford where the police used 'pain compliance' techniques — wrist burns, thumbs in the neck, etc — to make the protesters walk. The chief of police in this county was an Irish Catholic, and he sat across the road watching every move.

'Decency has prevailed,' bellowed the `choicers'.

'Death has prevailed,' bellowed the 'lif- ers', as the last body was dragged away.

In the corner of the car park, protected by the police, was a group of bemused young women waiting for their appoint- ments. They were just beginning to file cautiously into the clinic when two female 'rescuers' charged at them, shrieking like maniacs. This was supposed to be counsell- ing. Limbs went flying, there were a few thumps, and then all I could see were the two zealots lying on the ground.

If any of the pregnant women had been moved to remorse as the morning went on by the faith and self-sacrifice of the protes- ters, the effect was most likely undone by this last, ugly incident. It was a glimpse of the moral tyranny that the 'pro-life' move- ment is often accused of, and that has made it so detested by the media. Even so, it is remarkable how unsympathetically their cause has been portrayed. Over 31,000 people have spent time in prison since Operation Resale launched its guer- rilla war in May 1988. That compares with about 10,000 activists detained during the entire civil rights movement of the 1960s. At any one time several clergymen are usually in prison across the United States. After the West Hartford arrests a Catholic priest, Father Norman Weslin, was badly beaten while in police custody and held for 24 days before his trial was set. There is no doubt that the opinion elite would be scandalised if the rights of racial minor- ities, or gays, or 'pro-choice' activists were so systematically abused, or even if they were arrested legitimately on such a scale while protesting against some grievance, real or imagined.

In effect the biggest protest movement of the last 20 years has been blacked out. The usually high standard of objectivity in American news reporting breaks down on the issue of abortion. The television net- works mostly use the terms 'pro-choice' and 'anti-abortion', the preferred designa- tion of one side but not of the other. Linda Greenhouse, a veteran reporter who cov- ers abortion for the New York Times, actually participated as a demonstrator in a recent 'pro-choice' march in Washington, a firing offence under normal circumstances. She still covers abortion.

A builder, a carpenter, a postman, a primary school teacher, and their wives: these were the people picketing Gynecare. Perhaps they can set off a revolt among their fellow commoners, the great rump of the American middle class, now that the Supreme Court is beginning to return the regulation of abortion to the state legisla- tures. But I doubt it. As drivers went by all morning, peering out of the window at the picket line, their expressions were mostly ones of mild irritation, as if to say: 'What weird people. Why don't they go home?'