Operation Rescue

THOSE searching for an explanation of the dramatic confrontation between pro-life activists and abortion clinics in Wichita, Kansas, need look no further than the Clarence Thomas hearings. Abortion is the most serious moral question facing America today, involving, as all great issues do, a clash of rights on both sides. Unfortunately, the Judiciary Committee inquisition led by Senators Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Howard Metzenbaum, et al. established beyond doubt that the nation's highest legislative body remains utterly incapable of addressing the question in a serious way. This is not surprising: the Senate's irresponsibility over abortion only mirrors that of our press, our doctors, our universities, even our churches.

Hence Operation Rescue. Like the unpopular civil-rights movement of a generation ago, Operation Rescue wants to disturb a general complacency with unconventional (and often illegal) actions. In this regard NATIONAL REVIEW finds itself faced with something of a dilemma. On the one hand, we believe that life begins before birth and acknowledge that if there were ever a compelling reason for civil disobedience, the lives of innocent children would seem to be it. On the other hand, tactics are fraught with moral import too. The U.S. is a constitutional republic with mechanisms to address such issues, and we are ever mindful that, in an imperfect and imperfectible world, great moral failings do not sanction an assault on the foundation. And our concern has grown as Operation Rescue has moved from passive disobedience to more aggressive actions: storming barricades, putting children on the line, etc.

However, when prosecutors are going after Operation Rescue with more zeal than after John Gotti, and police are using more force than they did against D.C. rioters this spring, where are the liberal civil-rights groups? Midwives moral ends justify just about any means, the ACLU and the libertarian Left ought to be defending Randall Terry and Operation Rescue at least as passionately as they defended Nazis wanting to march through Skokie.

Confronting this hidden bias is what Operation Rescue is all about. Judge Kelly's decision literally to make a federal case out of the Wichita abortion clinic was a dishonest example of pulling out the federal cannon to go after a local fly. The press coverage of the whole abortion issue, as newspapers from the Los Angeles Times to the Washington Post have now admitted, has been distorted by pervasive pro-choice assumptions.

Every survey of public opinion demonstrates that most Americans, while opposing the vast majority of abortions, do not support a total ban. Whether Operation Rescue ultimately alienates or persuades these people is as yet an open question. With its influence growing against all the odds--at forty thousand arrests nationwide it has become the largest civil-disobedience campaign in America ever--this is more of an open question than its critics would like to think. And it is no coincidence that a "right" imposed by judicial fiat, sustained by silence, shut out of official discourse, and representing an ethic utterly at odds with the American sould would sooner or later inspire debates on the street. But that is not where debate ought to be.