Operation Rescue, in Debt, Will Close National Office

Anti-abortion militant Randall Terry said Wednesday that Operation Rescue is closing its national headquarters because of debt, but he assured a press conference in Washington that 125 local affiliates will continue their efforts to close abortion clinics across the country.

Terry, a former car salesman and a born-again Christian who founded Operation Rescue in 1988, stopped in the nation’s capital on his way home after release from a Georgia prison to announce the closing of the organization’s Binghamton, N.Y., office.

$70,000 in Debt

Operation Rescue is $70,000 in debt and unable to pay 23 employees at its national office, largely because of a $50,000 fine imposed by a New York court in a lawsuit filed by the National Organization for Women (NOW), Terry said.

“As a result of the lawsuit, we don’t have any option but to close our doors,” he said. “The movement is bigger than the office in Binghamton and will carry on with or without us.”

After Terry’s announcement, NOW issued a statement in New York City suggesting that closing the national headquarters is “the beginning of the end” for Operation Rescue.

“However,” the statement continued, “we suspect it is merely a ploy to put off paying Operation Rescue’s numerous fines.”

Susan Finn, spokesperson for Operation Rescue’s Southern California office, headquartered in Anaheim, said closing the organization’s national office “will not have any effect” on the local movement’s operations, which range from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

“We have nine different rescue communities that have been training for the past year, and they are ready and very anxious to start doing their own rescues,” Finn said. “We are very encouraged by what’s happening with rescue in Southern California.”

She praised U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima’s action in Los Angeles on Wednesday in which he dismissed a civil rights suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against Operation Rescue.

Tashima said he dismissed the suit because the plaintiffs had failed to show conclusively that anyone’s constitutional rights were violated by the Operation Rescue blockades of abortion clinics.

At a conference of religious broadcasters on Wednesday, Terry said that he plans to continue his anti-abortion activities.

“You’ll see me out there kicking,” he said. “I’m not dead. Once I get my bearings, I will still be speaking, traveling.”

Terry was released Tuesday from a Fulton County, Ga., minimum-security prison camp, where he had spent nearly four months in custody on charges of criminal trespass and unlawful assembly.

Terry was arrested outside the Atlanta Surgi-Center in 1988 and ordered to pay a $500 fine and a $50 special assessment. He refused to pay, choosing instead to stay in prison for two years. He was released after an anonymous benefactor paid the fine and assessment.