Tracing the Evolution of the Abortion War

In 1994, Los Angeles Times reporter James Risen flew to Kansas to cover the trial of Rachelle Shannon, who was charged with attempted murder for shooting an abortion doctor outside his Wichita clinic.

One of the witnesses was Judy L. Thomas, a Wichita reporter who was subpoenaed after she snuck into jail and wrote a story in which Shannon had confessed to trying to kill the doctor as well as to firebombing clinics in several other states.

Shannon was convicted. Risen came away impressed with his colleague Thomas.

“I thought that anyone who could get someone to confess to attempted murder before their trial must be a good reporter,” says Risen, who covers intelligence issues for The Times in Washington.

Risen had been planning to write a book on the evolution of the anti-abortion movement in America and over lunch asked Thomas, who now works for the Kansas City Star, if she was interested in becoming his co-author. The result of that partnership is the just-released “Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War” (Basic Books).

“Far and away the most thorough and knowledgeable history of anti-abortion activism after Roe [vs. Wade],” writes David Garrow, an Emory University professor and noted scholar of abortion history, in the New York Times. “. . . Far more comprehensive and better informed than anything that previously has appeared.”

Risen became intrigued by the subject when he saw television footage of Operation Rescue sit-ins at abortion clinics in the late ‘80s, finding the idea of right-wingers aping the civil disobedience tactics of left-wingers fascinating.

“This was the largest social protest campaign since the 1960s,” he says. “It had a dramatic impact on changing fundamentalists in America.”

But digging into the history of the movement yielded some surprises: What wound up as a militant conservative Protestant cause that precipitated the rise of the religious right in American politics started off as a continuation of left-wing Catholic antiwar activism. As Risen explains: “If you opposed killing in Vietnam, you should oppose killing the unborn.”

Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy clan in-law and pillar of liberalism, even organized an influential early anti-abortion conference in 1968. And after Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion 25 years ago, Catholic antiwar protester John O’Keefe led the first clinic sit-in in 1975. Still, the Catholic Church’s hierarchy shied away from launching a frontal attack on legalized abortion.

“The bishops worried that if they got too active, their tax-exempt status would be threatened,” Risen says. “They began to very quietly pull back. They continued to speak out but they never mounted a full-out campaign in the way you would expect, since they said [that abortion] was murder.”

By the late ‘70s, the movement was mutating: Catholics were burning out and were increasingly replaced by Protestant fundamentalists. Risen says Christian fundamentalists had spent most of the century in political isolation, preferring to sit out secular conflicts, quietly awaiting the Second Coming.

“Their core belief was that Jesus was coming back very soon and that there would be chaos in the last days,” he says. “If things were getting real bad, it was good because it meant Jesus was coming back really soon. It was the perfect excuse for not getting involved.”

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Then the late Francis Schaeffer, a highly influential minister and author whose books included the call-to-arms “The Christian Manifesto,” led a new generation of evangelicals into the throes of activism. One of these was a former used-car salesman named Randall Terry, whose theatrical Operation Rescue campaign laid siege to clinics across the country amid extensive media coverage.

“For the fundamentalists, the ‘80s were like the ‘60s for baby boomers,” Risen says.

Terry, however, proved too cautious for some elements of the movement. In the 1990s, these elements began to call openly for violent action to stop what they considered genocide. A wave of shootings and bombings followed, as well as a federal crackdown on clinic blockades.

“There was a very public endorsement of these acts of violence in a way you hadn’t seen before,” Risen says. “The violence essentially killed off Operation Rescue-style activism. The average grass-roots-type person began to see that this was becoming far too extreme for them.”

The energized evangelicals, however, didn’t slink away but instead became active in Republican politics. Their influence on the GOP remains strong, as witnessed by the recent intraparty furor over late-term abortions.

Terry, for example, is running for Congress from upstate New York--although Risen says that getting him to talk was one of the biggest challenges in working on the book. Terry felt that most reporters were biased in favor of the abortion-rights lobby and it took Risen months and numerous visits to Terry’s home to win his cooperation.

“Terry had vowed never to talk to reporters again,” Risen says. “But I think he knew we were getting enough access to everyone else that he might be the only one left out, and I think he wanted to tell his story. He’s much more complex than people have given him credit for.”

Terry wasn’t the only one who had reservations about the two reporters.

“Everyone wanted to know if I was on their side,” Risen says. “I always told them, I’m on history’s side. I just want to present what really happened. I try not to tell people what my views on abortion are. If I’m successful, people won’t be able to tell what my views are [even] after they read the book.”