Edition: U.S. / Global

With Thin Staff and Thick Debt, Anti-Abortion Group Faces Struggle

Published: June 11, 1990
(Page 2 of 2)

''When a Christian gets hammered with an unfair arrest or a huge fine or a two-year jail sentence for trying to follow God's laws, the media and most of the Christian community ignores it,'' he said. ''We've got to learn to phone the sheriff, picket the judge's home, hold a press conference, or get the calls going to the prosecutor.''

Honors Student and a Dropout

Mr. Terry is still a good salesman, quick-witted and stopping frequently to gauge his listener's reaction. His speech is an unlikely mixture of fundamentalist preaching and the slang that might be expected from a middle-class Rochester honors student who dropped out of high school at the age of 16, a few months shy of graduation, to hitchhike West.

By all accounts, that move distressed his family, including his two parents, both teachers. Two aunts are active feminists, one of them the former communications director at Rochester's Planned Parenthood chapter.

Mr. Terry returned at the age of 17 and soon after, he said, he found Jesus. In 1978 he entered Elim Bible Institute, where he met his wife, Cindy. Mr. Terry and his wife have three foster children and one child born to them.

In the beginning, she was the one who spent 40 hours a week outside the local abortion clinic, trying to get women to change their minds.

But Mr. Terry soon developed a larger plan to stop abortion. Operation Rescue is a three-part mission, he says: First, to ''do everything possible to rescue babies and their mothers from the nightmare of abortion on the very doorstep of local abortion clinics.'' Second, to give women whatever help they need to carry a baby to term. And third, to educate people to ''the value of human life from a Bible-based Christian perspective.''

Operation Rescue briefly included a home for unwed mothers. There is also one crisis pregnancy center, just down the road from headquarters, where Mr. Terry says women can receive counseling or material help to continue their pregnancy.

''All those things are good,'' he said. ''But they don't stop the abortuaries that are going to kill more babies tomorrow morning. This is a life-and-death struggle. To the people on the other side it's an issue, but to us it's a baby who's going to die.''

The rescue operations began in 1986, with seven people locking themselves inside a Binghamton abortion clinic. They were arrested for criminal trespass and resisting arrest. Mr. Terry refused to pay the $60 fine and went to jail. The next year more than 200 people were arrested at a demonstration in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Convention Brought Renown

But it was not until the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta that Operation Rescue became well known. From July to October, anti-abortion demonstrations resulted in about 1,200 arrests in Atlanta. Ultimately, the courts forbade anti-abortion protesters to block sidewalks in front of clinics or bother people trying to enter. On May 14 of this year, the Supreme Court refused to stay that order.

After the Atlanta demonstrations, there were mass protests in several large cities and a steady stream of smaller ones in cities and towns.

Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, calls Operation Rescue a ''domestic terrorist organization.''

''Like the segregationists who blocked the doors of schools to keep out people of color, Randall Terry and Operation Rescue violate the civil rights of women by blocking the doors to abortion clinics,'' Ms. Michelman said. ''As someone who has escorted women into clinics Operation Rescue has targeted, I can tell you it's scary, the intimidation and verbal abuse and religious zealotry.''

Little Support Within Movement

Even some anti-abortion groups like the National Right to Life Committee find Operation Rescue distasteful and will neither discuss its activities nor report them in newspapers for members. ''We work within the law to try to change the law, and we only comment on our own activities,'' said Nancy Myers, a spokeswoman for the committee.

Mr. Terry says his group has been far more effective than the more moderate anti-abortion organizations.

''If you were to track the whole abortion controversy, you'd find that in 1984 it almost went away,'' he said. ''It was the rescues that brought it back, that redefined the extremes of pro-life activity. And if the Right to Life Committee thinks otherwise, they're fooling themselves.''

The extremes are necessary, he said, because the country has lost its way morally.

''In 30 years, we're going to have forced abortion,'' he said. ''I can already write the decision about how in a society with limited resources we can only accommodate the needs of the most by limiting each family to two babies. You say that's farfetched, but what would you have said 30 years ago if I'd told you we would be killing 1.5 million babies a year, and having Gay Pride Week and AIDS and no prayer in public schools? The feminists got what they wanted, but are women better off with pornography and no-fault divorce and irresponsible fathers who don't pay child support? I don't think so.''

Photo: ''We've got to learn to phone the sheriff, picket the judge's home, hold a press conference or get the calls going to the prosecutor,'' said Randall Terry. Three years ago, he founded Operation Rescue, a group that tries to stop women from having abortions by blocking clinic doors. (Bob Mahoney for The New York Times)