When it comes to lawbreakers, Operation Rescue members were about as orderly as they get.
Before the group’s designated troublemakers committed their crimes, they sat down with police and agreed to some ground rules: They would trespass for three to five minutes and then leave peacefully. Police agreed to oblige those who wished to be arrested, but the two arrests were more a courtesy than a necessity.
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It was an excruciatingly polite group of 150 people who gathered from across the country to protest outside three abortion clinics and a newspaper office in Chicago’s western suburbs Tuesday. They offered a taste of things to come this August in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
Their decorum contrasted with the image of anti-abortion confrontations underscored last month by the murder conviction of John C. Salvi III, who gunned down two women at abortion clinics in a Boston suburb.
That image has been fueled by recent legal developments, but Operation Rescue officials said they wanted no part of violence.
Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that abortion protesters could be sued under federal racketeering laws. Then Congress passed a law that made it a felony to block access to clinics.
Operation Rescue youth coordinator Terry Gensemer said that emotional confrontations at some abortion protests have made the group careful about tactics.
“We have made some adjustments in some things, because people who were not affiliated with us got out of hand,” he said.
DuPage police said anti-abortion activists have spent years cultivating a peaceful technique that relies on good relations with officers and rarely results in mayhem.
“What they wanted, in a word, was to have the media film them in front of the closed doors of the clinic,” said Downers Grove Deputy Chief John Davis.
Tuesday’s protest was carefully planned to keep reporters and camera crews in tow and provide photo opportunities.
At each clinic, police allowed groups of 25 protesters to block the doors and pray for a few minutes. Then, after asking everyone to leave, they arrested one designated member who stayed behind. No one was prevented from entering the clinics.
“If Operation Rescue is tailoring protests for TV cameras, I could not be happier,” said Amy Coen, president of the Chicago chapter of Planned Parenthood. “It’s when (abortion protesters) tailor them to shoot and murder, that’s when it’s horrible for us. If they’re just going to do TV-savvy demonstrations, that’s great with me, but I wish they would do it closer to the TV stations and not at the clinics.”
Charges against the two men who were arrested Tuesday will be forwarded to the FBI, because blocking the doors of an abortion clinic is a federal offense, said Zbigniew “Jerry” Zywczyk, deputy chief of the Westmont Police Department.
At the West Concord Medical Center in Westmont, Rev. Philip “Flip” Benham, Operation Rescue’s national director, was arrested and charged with criminal trespass. He was released an hour later on $100 bond.
At the Access Medical Center in Downers Grove, national activist Jim Phillips of Ft. Worth was carried away in a police van and was charged with trespassing.
Those who protested social issues in the 1960s and 1970s paved the way for today’s anti-abortion activists, said Walter Weber, litigation counsel to the American Center for Law and Justice, which defends religious liberties.
“The way it worked in the ’60s and ’70s is that there often would be a liaison between the police and the protesters,” Weber said. “The people who are involved in the pro-life movement learned a lot of those lessons. . . . It’s very good to talk to the police officers, because police officers don’t like surprises.”
Police said it is common for such protests to be held locally during Holy Week, the period between Palm Sunday and Easter. But in Aurora, protesters said they also were practicing for the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Chicago in August.
“We want to prepare Chicago for the Democratic Convention that’s coming to town,” said Rev. Jim West, who oversees a Baptist church in Des Arc, Ark. “We feel the president we have is a baby-killing, pro-abortion president.”
Chicago police spokesman Paul Jenkins said police are prepared to work with the protesters as they have in the past.
The most volatile event of the day came in Lisle at the offices of the Daily Herald, where Joseph Scheidler, director of the Pro-Life Action League, made an explicit and gory speech about partial-birth abortions, which Congress recently has tried to ban.
The activists charged the newspaper with censorship for refusing to run an advertisement describing the medical procedure.
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Daniel Baumann, president of the Daily Herald, said the charges of censorship were “not true.” “We have . . . printed advertisements from pro-life groups,” Baumann said.
But the rejected ad in question appeared to be “graphically designed to deeply offend people’s sensitivity” and included unverifiable statements set forth as fact, Baumann said.