Antiabortion Gathering Praises ‘Prisoners’

Not many organizations highlight their annual gatherings with updates on members subpoenaed by federal grand juries or tearful readings of letters from those who could not attend--because they are behind bars on charges ranging from murder to arson.

But there was very little that was ordinary about the “White Rose Banquet” on Sunday night in a somewhat down-at-the-heels motel in Arlington, Va.

Staged in the shadow of the annual march on Washington by mainstream antiabortion activists on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling, the White Rose event was attended by most of the nation’s leading antiabortion extremists, who gathered to pay homage to their movement’s “prisoners of conscience.”

First among the absent honorees was Paul Hill, who has been sentenced to death for the 1994 shotgun killing of an abortion doctor and his escort in Pensacola, Fla.

The evening’s central message was blunt: Honor those who kill abortion doctors. “The just sanction for the capital crime of abortion, as with any other murder, is death,” stated the banquet’s program.

The dinner--attended by a sold-out crowd of more than 100 activists--suggested that support for antiabortion violence has been undiminished by an ongoing federal investigation of whether there is a nationwide conspiracy behind it.

Five people have been killed and at least seven wounded in antiabortion shootings since 1993, prompting the Clinton administration to create a Justice Department task force on antiabortion violence, with the FBI taking the lead in all major abortion-related criminal investigations. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, just outside Washington, has been working with the Justice Department to determine whether the government can establish any links between the scattered shootings and fire bombings of abortion clinics.

So far, most U.S. officials are skeptical that there is a nationwide conspiracy. But they say they could uncover smaller, regional networks of extremists responsible for violence on a local level.

The Alexandria grand jury continues its work and has become a major hindrance to cooperation among antiabortion activists. Many leaders do not want to be seen with militants who might be targets of a grand jury, and philosophical debates over the use of violence to end abortion dominate nearly every antiabortion meeting.

The violence issue has, in fact, left the militant wing of the antiabortion movement badly divided; Operation Rescue leaders, including founder Randall Terry and current director Flip Benham, refused to attend Sunday’s banquet.

But there were no signs of disagreement among those who made the trip. Instead, there was an attitude of open defiance, marked by jokes about the clumsy mistakes made by clinic arsonists leading to their arrests.

Half a dozen people in the audience responded to a request for a show of hands of all those who had been interviewed by the FBI or subpoenaed by the grand jury.

One prominent guest was New Hampshire antiabortion militant Andrew Cabot, whose former fiancee, Cheryl Richardson, is in jail in Virginia for contempt of court for refusing to testify about his activities. Last year, Cabot called John Salvi, also from New Hampshire, a “hero” after Salvi was arrested and charged with killing two people and wounding five others in shootings at two suburban Boston clinics that performed abortions.

“I happen to know that if they lock up every single person who has been subpoenaed to the Virginia grand jury, they won’t stop anything,” wrote Shelley Shannon in a letter read at the banquet.

Shannon is serving 31 years for the attempted murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., and for a string of clinic arsons and fire-bombings in California and the Pacific Northwest.

Sponsored by the unaffiliated Reformation Lutheran Church of Bowie, Md.--whose lay minister, Michael Bray, spent nearly four years in prison for the bombings of 10 abortion clinics--the banquet was attended by several activists who had signed a petition circulated by Paul Hill endorsing the killing of doctors as “justifiable homicide.” Included among them were some of the leaders of the American Coalition for Life Activists, which has emerged as the main political rival to Operation Rescue among antiabortion activists.

The most enthusiastic response from the crowd came when Michael Colvin, a fellow lay minister in Bray’s church, read a prison letter from Hill advocating further violence.

“Now is the time to arise in the strength of our Lord, that his enemies should be scattered,” Hill wrote in an ersatz religious style. “What do we say if one of us who puts 100 to flight receives a mortal wound? Is it not better for one to fall while causing hundreds to flee than for any man to cause his brother’s heart to faint by his cowardly example? Better to die but once while boldly pursuing your adversary than to die the continual and eternal death of a coward.”

Advocates of abortion rights said Sunday’s dinner should serve as a warning that antiabortion violence is not about to disappear.

“People think that because there hasn’t been a murder this year, violence is gone,” said Vicki Saporta, executive director of the National Abortion Federation in Washington. “But there is still a group of people who believe that burning down clinics and shooting doctors is the way they should be proceeding, and it’s somewhat frightening.”