What's wrong with Operation Rescue?:
DiSalvo, Charles R
WHAT'S WRONG WITH OPERATION RESCUE? UNCIVIL, UNLOVING, UNCONVINCING CHARLES R. DiSALVO Abortion is the most difficult moral issue of our time, arousing deep emotions on both sides." Enough...
...Many of those arrested were subjected to the taunts and fists of white toughs...
...The Samaritan...was "good" because he responded to the human need that he was presented with...
...they give pseudonyms to the police...
...Let us examine the effectiveness of this civil disobedience...
...In addition, the ICC prohibited interstate carriers from using segregated terminals...
...Do prochoice women (and men) need the love of prolife women (and men) to remove their tensions, insecurities, and fears...
...Whoever can provide love, sacrifice, and suffering may very well be able to lead the American public to the consensus it so desperately needs...
...The Kennedy administration, through the ICC, enacted new regulatory law that prohibited segregation in interstate bus transportation...
...But if one side could change the moral feelings that underlie and fuel the larger debate, the law, politics, and women's choices would mimic the change...
...These acts of civil disobedience produced national media attention and with it pressure upon the Kennedy administration to seek relief through the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the body with jurisdiction over the bus terminals...
...In each case, civil disobedience led to social change...
...CHARLES R. DiSALVO is W. A. Potesta Professor of Law at West Virginia University, where he teaches a course on civil disobedience and the law...
...The use of adults as surrogates weakens the movement's evocative abilities...
...In the process, the attitudes of some toward the race question began to soften, and Jim Crow laws fell by the wayside...
...Without sacrificial suffering a disobedient cannot generate public sympathy...
...Here the original Freedom Ride ended, but duplicates quickly sprang up all around the South as hundreds of new disobedients put their lives at risk for desegregation...
...The action-promoting function of civil disobedience builds upon and extends the work of the debate-advancing function...
...Martin Luther King, Jr...
...By asking such questions, the public was able to perceive a connection between the disobedients' suffering and the evil under protest...
...Politicians, business people, restaurant owners, and others felt the pressure of a popular sympathetic response...
...The movement quickly spread and regular en masse arrests of would-be diners for breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, and trespass began...
...God's love...
...But a disobedient with genuine love for her sisters and brothers on the other side of this debate is a disobedient whose suffering can be sacrificial...
...This history teaches us that civil disobedience can alter the debate and forcefully advance discussion of no-compromise issues...
...Because abortion remains a constitutionally protected right, at the moment only one side can employ civil disobedience...
...Why are these disobedients suffering with such patience and not responding with anger or violence...
...The trip was slated to run from Washington, D.C...
...In contrast is the disobedient who hates...
...The first arrest occurred on May 8,1961, when one rider was arrested for attempting to get his shoes shined in a white barber shop in a bus terminal...
...In the civil rights movement, those whose rights were at stake were those arrested...
...In an apparent reaction to this failure to create consensus by debate, persuasion, and other traditional democratic methods, the prolife movement has turned to civil disobedience...
...springs from the need of the other person for belonging to the best in the human family...
...Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy persons...
...Civil disobedience can move people when argumentation and exhortation fail...
...When words fail to resolve no-compromise issues, an open society has two choices: political violence or civil disobedience...
...Suffering, sympathy, conversion, action...
...Just as blacks were forbidden to eat at public lunch counters, so too were they prohibited from using eating and restroom facilities at bus stations in the southern and border states...
...Fetuses are at risk...
...Elsewhere he says: Agape is disinterested love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor...
...As a consequence, for a period the public discussion centered not on the prochoice movement and its concerns, but on the prolife movement and its concerns...
...they resist arrest...
...for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut...
...The Freedom Riders challenged the customs and Jim Crow laws which held this kind of segregation in place...
...A]gape...
...They have failed to generate sympathy precisely because the media no friends of the prolife movement to begin with are alienated by the arrogance of rescuers...
...They resorted to civil disobedience...
...A second type of connection concerns the act of disobedience itself...
...And the way is then open for the other phases of consensus-building sympathy and conversion to take place and lead to action...
...The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the group that organized the first Freedom Ride, also aimed at forcing the Kennedy administration into a stronger pro-civil rights posture...
...It begins by loving others for their sakes...
...The prolife movement, largely through Operation Rescue, has taken advantage of this opportunity...
...King understood that the ability to suffer in a way that evokes sympathy comes from the sufferer's decision to love the other...
...That is admirable, but it converts no one...
...The customs and laws that enforced segregated dining changed...
...By contrast, the second type of disobedience projects animosity, intolerance, self-righteousness...
...They resorted to civil disobedience...
...Two tactics of the civil rights movement illustrate the effective use of civil disobedience: the lunch-counter sit-ins and the Freedom Rides...
...The public's ability to perceive a connection between the disobedience and the evil protested is weakened...
...They do not create conditions for sacrificial suffering and they deflect attention from the prolife message...
...of sacrificial suffering...
...Eventually the Ride proceeded to Montgomery, and then to Jackson, where James Farmer, a CORE organizer, and the remaining riders (many of whom were new recruits replacing the injured original riders) were arrested and jailed for violating Jim Crow laws banning integration...
...The public was able to focus on the heart of the disobedients' grievances, and, as a consequence, to sympathize with the disobedients' sincere efforts to set things right...
...finally, curative societal or institutional action occurs...
...The first Freedom Ride was a difficult experience...
...the Freedom Rides, by contrast, resulted in the creation of new regulatory law...
...the public questions, then sympathizes with the disobedients...
...No amount of verbal s wordplay, rational debate, or moral argumentation between the two sides will resolve the issue...
...These are the tools for communicating the movement's suffering and message on open lines to the public...
...In this respect there are two characteristics of the current disobedience campaign that limit its effectiveness: (1) Who is being arrested...
...It is about fundamental notions of autonomy, motherhood, career, family, life...
...Continue Operation Rescue, but with a different spirit...
...Because it has these two uses, civil disobedience can have a substantial impact on public debate and opinion so substantial, at times, as to create new public policies, to create new social attitudes, so powerful as to create new law...
...What is called for is love...
...The side that changes those feelings will be the side that wins...
...By contrast, anti-abortion disobedients are being arrested for trespass, disorderly conduct, and the violation of injunctions...
...Participants in Operation Rescue typically block abortion facilities and are often arrested for trespass, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest...
...Just as whites had a legitimate interest in integration, men also have a legitimate interest in abortion...
...The riders were arrested and beaten to near-death for doing exactly that which they were forbidden to do and which they claimed a right to do...
...The riders were beaten while the police looked on...
...Element number one: suffering...
...Has Operation Rescue advanced the debate...
...Civil disobedience, properly understood and practiced, brings the opposition into areas that make productive discussion possible...
...This type of disobedience sacrificial disobedience is the type of disobedience that causes the public to sit up and take notice...
...Since prolife supporters appear to have placed their trust in disobedience detached from sacrificial suffering, they have failed to generate sympathy...
...Serious violence took place in Anniston, Alabama, when the riders were greeted by a mob carrying chains, sticks, and iron bars...
...Before the Freedom Rides came to an end, hundreds were arrested on a variety of charges...
...A question somewhat more easily answered is: in what ways could the prolife movement engage in sacrificial suffering as a way of building public understanding and perhaps even public consensus for its views...
...When the public asks, "Why are these gentle, sincere people suffering...
...If there are no conversions, there is no action...
...None of these charges is directly related to the destruction of prenatal life...
...It is their hearts the movement must convert...
...But in Operation Rescue's disobedience those arrested are not those whose rights are at risk...
...Consequently, the public has some trouble relating the act of civil disobedience to the evil being protested...
...In each case, the same moral and political elements are at work: The disobedients endure suffering...
...These, then, are some of the possibilities open to the prolife movement for advancing the abortion debate, a debate attended by more division than the debate brought on by Vietnam, a debate more emotion-laden than the debate over women's suffrage, a debate more pervasive than even the civil rights debate, for this debate stretches into every legislature, every community, every church, every neighborhood, every family, every person, every woman...
...Element number two: sympathy...
...King quotes Gandhi: "Things of fundamental importance to people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering...
...In this instance, the political pressure produced by the civil disobedience of the Freedom Riders resulted in the enactment of regulatory law, backed by the enforcement powers of the federal government...
...Element number three: conversion...
...They too resorted to civil disobedience...
...There is nothing inherent in the nature of any of these charges that relates to an abortion...
...the opponent experiences some form of conversion...
...Acting on the request of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the ICC issued a variety of rules disallowing racial segregation in the operation of interstate buses and terminals...
...to New Orleans...
...Of these episodes in the history of civil disobedience, the disobedience of the civil rights movement is the best paradigm for demonstrating the two essential functions of civil disobedience that make it a substitute for political violence...
...It is the prochoice doctor, the prochoice nurse, and above all the prochoice woman whom the movement must genuinely love...
...Does each side somehow need the love of the other...
...But it is not just a question of having adult surrogates...
...they throw up legal defenses in court by saying the harm associated with violating trespass laws is justified by the need to prevent the greater evil of abortion...
...If there is no sympathy, there are no conversions...
...The effectiveness of Operation Rescue for creating the conditions necessary for a curative societal or institutional response, however, is another question altogether...
...the channels of communication are open, free, clear for the disobedients' message to come through to the public...
...No court decision, certainly not Webster nor even any of Webster's progeny, will quiet the passions abortion arouses...
...The great majority of Operation Rescue disobedients are no friends of silent suffering...
...While Operation Rescue gained a temporary advantage by focusing the debate on its agenda, the prolife movement is not now capable of building a consensus for its view of morality and law because the effort has not included sacrificial suffering...
...In the post-Webster future there may be occasion to apply the principles articulated here to the prochoice movement...
...2) For what...
...Civil disobedience has previously given American society a way out of no-compromise situations...
...It will not be resolved by rational discussion...
...understood and practiced sacrificial suffering...
...But not all disobedience is so capable...
...Since the white man's personality is greatly distorted by segregation, and his soul is greatly scarred, he needs the love of the Negro, The Negro must love the white man, because the white man needs his love to remove his tensions, insecurities, and fears...
...Element number four: action...
...The disobedients caused public discussion to focus upon issues of vital importance that the normal democratic processes had ignored or refused to address...
...There is no room for these disobedients' ideas or feelings to get a hearing...
...In each case, with the necessary political conversions made, an institutional response followed that effectively ended the crisis...
...The losing side will simply continue to fight on...
...The abortion debate, it should be eminently clear to everyone, is not going to be won by any side that limits its tactics to intel-lectualized argumentation or exhortations to believe in certain moral, religious, or political principles...
...The loving act of redemption was done "while we were...sinners" that is, at the point of our greatest need for love...
...A change in spirit means a change in tactics...
...At the turn of the century, women found that they could not obtain the right to vote in federal elections through the usual democratic means...
...they press their moral claims by shouting at incoming pregnant women...
...The answer should be obvious...
...Translate King into the present tense...
...The closer the connection the act itself has to the evil being protested, the more evocative the disobedience is...
...It is not enough to love the fetus...
...The disobedient who loves is a disobedient who is silent, who endures taunts without response, who suffers physical violence without complaint, who is not angry, who allows arrest to come without resistance, who mounts no legal defense but welcomes punishment, who, with her sisters and brothers, fills the jails this disobedient generates public sympathy...
...Only civil disobedience that is characterized by sacrificial suffering is effective...
...The use of adult men in anti-abortion disobedience weakens the evocative possibilities further...
...Moral feelings about abortion, however, cannot be changed with words...
...These two problems plague the current disobedience movement and, standing alone, would make its chances of success problematic...
...It is a no-compromise debate...
...The injuries suffered by prolife disobedients at the hands of the arresting police some have been serious, with one demonstrator's arm being broken in Los Angeles in June have been a tragic waste...
...Noisy demonstrations, insults hurled at opponents, preaching at pregnant women, resistance to arrest, the erection of ornate "necessity defenses" which the public does not appreciate, and disrespectful exchanges with prosecutors and judges all these tactics do nothing but hurt the prolife cause...
...The classic illustration of this principle is offered by the Freedom Rides...
...This phase of the civil rights disobedience campaign was a ringing success...
...But there is a third, and more serious, difficulty...
...Acting somewhat impulsively, four courageous college students engaged in the first sit-in in early 1960...
...The first violence occurred the next day when two riders were beaten while attempting to use a "whites only" waiting room...
...Later, the mob chased the bus down the road, smoke-bombed it, trapped the passengers in smoke and flame, and beat the passengers again as they fled...
...This focus has shifted following Webster, but for some time the disobedience of Operation Rescue gave its practitioners control of the debate agenda...
...The civil rights disobedients were successful in promoting curative institutional action because the voluntary suffering they endured while challenging the status quo made the public ask questions: "Why are these blacks being beaten...
...What is called for is a truly radical solution...
...With a few notable exceptions, neither side the abortion debate understands the need, source, or place for sacrificial suf-fering in the resolution of no-compromise issues...
...Sit-ins gave black leaders the leverage they needed to negotiate equal access to many places of business...
...The difference between these two types is all-important...
...According to historian Louis Sobel {Civil Rights, 1960-1966), by September 1961, "eating facilities in one or more establishments in 108...cities had been desegregated as a result of the sit-ins...
...Do prolife women (and men) need the love of prochoice women (and men) to remove their tensions, insecurities, and fears...
...Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friends and enemy...
...The ability of any civil disobedience to evoke sympathy depends in part on the closeness of the connection between the evil being protested and the act of disobedience...
...We don't need another essay to lay out the moral issues for us...
...And just two decades ago, many Americans of good conscience found no way in the traditional political system to disengage their country from an immoral Vietnam War...
...Finally, the ICC's stricture against racially segregated seating was ordered printed on all interstate tickets...
...Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities...
...In midcentury, blacks found that voting and lobbying were ineffective at enforcing Supreme Court decisions condemning segregation...
...Political violence coerces the opponent through force into acquiescence...
...The fact is continued discussion of the abortion issue is a dead end, a waste of time, and a pointless exercise in chest-beating...
...Three thousand six hundred persons were arrested during the twenty months following the first sit-in...
...If anything in the abortion debate can be a matter of common agreement, it is that each side has, at least until now, been unsuccessful at creating a broad and deep public consensus for its own views...
...Hear King's voice in these words he wrote in 1958: One may well ask: "What is the nonviolent resister's justification for this ordeal to which he invites men...
...They self-righteously chant and sing at their demonstrations...
...As a result, I address myself here to the prolife movement...
...It...discovers the neighbor in every person it meets...
...King continues...
...Enter civil disobedience...
...Enough essays opening with those words have been written that, if they fueled a power plant, there would be enough energy to supply all the homes in Philadelphia for a year...
...The first disobedient says, "I believe so strongly in my cause that I will sacrifice my liberty, my freedom of expression, and indeed, my body for it...
...Is either side of this debate capable of a sacrificial love...
...It is fair to say, therefore, that insofar as the debate-advancing function of disobedience is concerned, the anti-abortion civil disobedience campaign has had its successes...
...The sit-ins were aimed at eating places that had been segregated by custom and, in a few instances, by ordinances or statutes that expressly prohibited blacks from eating in restaurants with whites...
...Each side of the abortion controversy has deeply held moral, social, and political views...
...The sit-ins resulted in changes in the practices of business and service establishments throughout much of the South and in the border states...
...But because of the special interests of women in the abortion controversy, the use of adult, male surrogates places limits on the movement's evocative capacity...
...The best way to assure oneself that love is disinterested is to have love for the enemy-neighbor from whom you can expect no good in return, but only hostility and persecution...
...The campaign has received moderately good coverage in the secular and religious media at both the national and local levels...
...This disobedient is one who is angry, who hurls epithets at the other side, who has to be dragged kicking and screaming away from the arrest site and into court, who defiantly pleads not guilty, who complains of imprisonment this disobedient generates no public sympathy...
...Abortion is a no-compromise issue...
...fails not because man needs his love...
...The answer is found in the realization that unearned suffering is redemptive...
...Suffering is infinitely...
...it is directed toward both...
...When blacks recognized that quiet pleas for the enforcement of their rights went unanswered, they found that arrests and beatings at the hands of the police and the public worked to create a national debate on the race question...
...As a consequence, the channels of communication with the public buzz with static, distortion, noise...
...This weakness in anti-abortion disobedience is shared by environmental disobedients who are arrested for scaling power plant fences, and antimilitary disobedients who are arrested on burglary charges for entering military establishments...
...There were four characteristics of the successful movement to integrate lunch counters and interstate bus travel in the South...
...Used properly, civil disobedience can (1) advance debate on no-compromise issues, and (2) promote curative, institutional action on those same issues when normal democratic procedures fail...
...powerful...
...While it is true that prolife activists such as Joan Andrews and Juli Loesch Wiley have silently suffered in defense of the unborn (Andrews has undergone a lengthy imprisonment), their example and message have largely gone unreplicated...
...The movement's real allies are silence, cooperation with the police at the point of arrest and with the judge and prosecutor at the point of trial, and an uncomplaining submission to punishment...
Vol. 116 • December 1989 • No. 21
