BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo has had a strong history involving advocates on both sides of the abortion issue.
That includes a time 30 years ago when the eyes of the nation were focused here as the debate spilled out into the streets.
In April 1992 the so-called Spring of Life Offensive was launched by Randall Terry of Operation Rescue and welcomed to Buffalo by then mayor Jimmy Griffin.
It marshalled hundreds of anti-abortion activists to fan out to protest at clinics across this city where they were met by an even greater number of abortion-rights advocates.
For more than a week police were kept busy, by enforcing a federal court injunction to keep demonstrators at least 15 feet away from clinics, and in their efforts to separate the crowds to keep the peace.
The demonstrations, while heated at times and quite vocal, were largely not violent although several arrests were made.
Among the more memorable was that of Rev. Robert Schenck, an evangelical minister from North Tonawanda who shocked many by attending a demonstration carrying a fetus.
Schenck was charged with disorderly conduct under a law that prohibited "creating a physically offensive condition."
“I was utterly committed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” recalled Schenck during a phone interview on Monday from where he now lives in Virginia.
However, now that the Supreme Court may be poised to do just that, his reaction might surprise those who remember him from 30 years ago
“I now sit with a very different perspective and think that frankly it would be a disaster for this country for Roe to be overturned and it would be a setback for the Christian people I worked with,” Schenck told WGRZ-TV.
A "Moral Test" for the Pro-Life Movement
“In the short term there could be a great deal of satisfaction among some that abortion could be illegal in many parts of the country,” said Schenk. “But on the other hand pro-lifers and Christian people will be known as insensitive at least, if not anti-woman, anti-child and anti-family. This will be a moral test to see if the multiple millions of dollars we all raised for this cause, and the enormous amount of political clout that was mustered for it, will now be converted into support for the women and children in crisis as a result of this outcome.
He does not appear optimistic that it will.
“I’m afraid we will fail that test. That kind of support will not be forthcoming and as a result woman in crisis pregnancy and children being born into very difficult circumstances will not get the support they need. And this will be seen as nothing more than an act of raw political power and not of human compassion.”
A Different Approach, Starting with Compassion
Schenck now believes that allowing states to outlaw abortion and in certain circumstances possibly making it a punishable crime would be wrong.
“I am very much pro-life, and I think every child conceived should be welcomed into the world,” he explained. “But the sad reality is that many are not and to deny that reality and to punish women who face that reality is not Christian. It is simply cruel.”
“The way I see abortion is that it's a sad human reality,” said Schenck. “I think it indicates a multitude of failures. The failure of society to support women in crisis pregnancies and the failure of religious communities like my own evangelicals to be compassionate and empathetic and understanding. I see abortion as a series of things that have gone wrong, but the cure for that wrong is not to have politicians using it as political leverage or courts using it for punishment or people in power using it as a point of coercion. That's not the answer. The answer is empathy, compassion, concern and generosity and the Supreme Court and the state courts and the legislatures cannot administer that kind of care for people in crisis.”
That job he says, falls on a new pro-life movement, unlike the one he previously was part of.
A Change in Tactics
Schenck has disavowed the aggressive tactics employed by the groups he once associated with, and insists he’s far from alone.
“Many pro-lifers have seen with time the complexity and the nuance of abortion and the pain and the difficulty that it represents in a woman’s life,” he said. “Blockading doors or holding signs or shouting ‘baby murderers’ does not effectively resolve the conflicts and the agonies that those individuals experience, so I think a lot of people like myself have taken another look at abortion and have come to different conclusions that protest activity is not the way to solve the crisis that leads to abortion."
He also noted that significant laws enacted since the days of clinic blockades bring with them serious punishment for actions seen as interfering with the constitutional right to abortion.
“Incidentally, it took me a while to admit that the people involved in the movement that I was a part of engaged in acts of violence, destruction of property, intimidation of individuals and ultimately murder,” he said.
But if left up to states to decide the issue, as a majority of current Supreme Court Justices purportedly believe, he fears there could be a return of more radical protests in states permitting abortion.
“It’s very possible this kind of decision could embolden those same extremists and we could see a resurgence of violence at clinics and against abortion providers and others so I think if this (Supreme Court decision) does come down as it appears to be, we should be prepared for that or at least be conscious of it.”
What Changed for Rev. Schenck?
“There wasn’t just one thing, there were many things,” said Schenk when asked if there was an “aha” moment in his life which changed his stance on the pro-life movement.
“But there was one moment in particular when I was in jail in Alabama for my protest activity and I was placed, weirdly enough and maybe appropriately, in the psychiatric wing of the jail although I think it may have been because there wasn’t room anywhere else.”
Schenk recalled that both men and women were housed in the unit.
“There was a woman in a cell a couple of doors from mine, obviously mentally ill, and in absolute anguish and great fear and distress and she was screaming ‘who will take care of my babies… I have three babies at home …who is with my babies?” She was pleading and screaming, and it chokes me up to even recall it to memory,” he said.
It was that woman that made him think differently about what he had believed up to that point.
“I thought at that moment, that during all of my pro-life activism, I had imagined comfortable suburban people who have all kinds of family and community and religious support around them. In my mind, I imagined there were people who had financial means and I wondered, why would anyone want to have an abortion when they can give birth and have the support (to raise a child) or when they can place the child for adoption with a family who will love them?” Schenck recalled.
“But I had never thought of this woman in that jail cell in Alabama utterly alone, totally isolated and in utter panic about who would take care of her children, and it helped me to see the whole crisis from a whole different vantage point and I'd say that was part of the change.”
Regrets, I’ve had a Few
A review of footage of the 1992 Spring of Life protests from the Channel 2 archives captures both Schenck walking around with what he told people was an aborted fetus, and his arrest where a police officer takes him into custody while seemingly confused as to what to charge him with.
The officer, when asked by reporters at the time, muttered something about an alleged health code violation but indicated that at that moment police weren’t even sure if the fetus was indeed real.
Schenk, while insisting to anyone who would listen that it was, rebuffed a reporter who asked him if it was “the same fetus you were walking around with in Kansas City last year?”, by not answering and walking away.
30 years later, he now recalls his actions as regrettable.
“As I think back on that I have very mixed feelings about it,” he said.
“I think truth and reality are often necessary and important, as offensive as they may be. I think we are seeing that in the war in Ukraine…seeing the actual bodies in the streets is important. But at the same time, what I did not consider was the trauma that doing that would inflict on women who had been through an abortion or a miscarriage, and that leaves me with more regret than anything else.”
He also says the fetus was indeed real, but no longer claims with affirmation that it was the result of an intentional abortion as he did back then.
A Child Known Only to God
“It was given to me by a pathologist, a physician whose specialty was working with human tissue and it was his responsibility to dispose of the fetal remains and he thought it was important that the world see it for what it was because he lived with it every day, so he conveyed it to me,” Schenck said.
“This pathologist told me that it was from an intentional abortion. But later another pathologist who examined the remains after my arrest said that it was more likely from a spontaneous abortion from a miscarriage. But I don’t think anyone knows for sure.”