Home About Action News Winter 2005 History, 1980-87 (Part 1)

Winter 2005 ACTION NEWS | VOL. XXIV No. 1

NOTE: This is the first installment in a four-part Twenty-Fifth Anniversary retrospective series on the Pro-Life Action League. Due to its length, this installment is broken into two parts.

Part 1 Part 2

Pro-Life Action Comes of Age

The Founding of the Pro-Life Action League, 1980-1987

by Joe Scheidler

Joe leads a protest in the driving rain at the now closed Park Medical Center abortion mill on Peterson Ave. in Chicago, June 13, 1981

This is a banner year for the Pro-Life Action League. We have been in the business of saving babies from abortion for twenty-five years.

Ann and I got involved in what was then called the "anti-abortion" movement the day after the Roe v. Wade decision came down. In fact we attended our first anti-abortion rally a few months before Roe v. Wade in October 1972.

Ann talked me into going to an Illinois Right to Life rally at the Civic Center, now called Daley Plaza, in downtown Chicago. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. I had planned to spend the afternoon watching a Notre Dame football game on TV. Instead we went downtown with our three little boys, Eric, 6, Joe, 5 and Peter, 3.

Facing the Truth for the First Time

During the rally a volunteer handed me a "Life and Death" brochure and I saw for the first time the photo of a garbage bag full of late-term aborted babies. I thought the face of the little baby on the top of the pile looked like Eric's baby picture. I was horrified.

But abortion wasn't legal in Illinois, or in most of the other states. I didn't yet feel an urgent need to get more involved. I had no idea that Roe v. Wade was wending its way through the judicial system. I had no idea we were on the verge of a national holocaust.

Roe v. Wade jolted me out of my complacency, and I began to look for a way to fight this injustice, some way to get involved. I went to the library and studied fetal development and learned about the different methods of abortion. I started going to pro-life meetings and spent long hours learning all about the abortion issue. I was dismayed by the indifference of the media, the complacency of my fellow citizens, the inaction of my fellow Christians.

Finally my boss at a public relations firm took me aside and told me he had noticed that all my attention was focused on abortion. Fortunately he was pro-life too. He suggested I might do well to turn all my energy to the abortion battle as a full-time vocation. He was right.

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The Founding of the League

In March 1973 I started the Chicago Office for Pro-Life Publicity in an office in my basement. I worked to publicize the truth about fetal development, putting to use my experience in journalism and public relations. I thought once people knew that the unborn baby was a human being they would rise up against abortion. How naïve I was.

The Pro-Life Action League was founded upon the dedication exemplified by these waterlogged picketers at Park Medical Center, June 13, 1981

I had a lot to learn about what it would take to open up people's hearts to the plight of unborn babies, and how much resistance there would be to the truth. I couldn't even get newspapers to take ads that stated, "An unborn baby's heart is beating at 21 days"!

I could see that a more direct, active approach was demanded. And that's why after seven years working for three other pro-life organizations, I finally founded the Pro-Life Action League in 1980.

At first I was back to my basement office. Then I discovered a small storefront space just a block from my house. I called a meeting of about thirty deeply committed pro-life activists—people who were going out to picket abortion clinics, writing letters to the editor and feeling as frustrated as I was about the need for more direct action. From that meeting we put together a small staff—Barbara Menes as office manager and secretary, Marian Masella, librarian and keeper of the files, my son Joe as mailing manager. My attorney father-in-law took care of the incorporation procedure and the Pro-Life Action League was in business.

The League Goes National

I had launched my telephone Hotline on May 24, 1974 and brought it with me to the Pro-Life Action League so activists across the country had a constant connection to new developments in the pro-life movement.

The Pro-Life Action League quickly achieved national prominence. In March 1981 Chicago magazine ran an eight-page story on the League's leadership in the suspension of abortions at Cook County Hospital. Author Al Lanier called the Pro-Life Action League office a "war camp" and quoted a member of NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League), "If you cannot admire the guy [Scheidler] for his views or style, you've got to give him credit for his perseverance."

We began publishing the Action News as a monthly newsletter early in 1981, and the old issues are chock full of activities. The League launched national Days of Rescue in 1980—seven years before Operation Rescue came on the scene. Hundreds of activists all across the country protested abortion at clinics in their cities on an appointed day several times a year. When the second national day of rescue was announced many clinics closed for the day just to avoid the aggravation of having pickets in front of their centers.

Outside the League's first office on LeMai Ave. in Chicago, from left: Jim Weber, Ann Scheidler, young Joe Scheidler, Barbara Menes, Joe, Marian Masella, Steven Bower and Rich Freeman

The League was featured in a CBS 60 Minutes segment in front of the Park Medical Center on Peterson Avenue in Chicago. Two hundred and fifty picketers showed up in a driving rain. That abortion mill closed for good in 1990.

In July of 1981 the League protested President Ronald Reagan's appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor to the U. S. Supreme Court. Although her first vote on abortion was pro-life, her subsequent votes were not favorable. The League and their friends who objected to Reagan's appointment of O'Connor turned out to be right.

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Employing New Tactics

In the early days of the League's fundraising, we tried all sorts of innovations. Our office building had a large yard next to it, so we held huge yard sales. The first one in 1980 netted $2000. We also auctioned off Twenty-Dollar gold pieces, which the winners would often donate back to the League for another auction. We bought out the entire Goodman Theatre for their November 26, 1980 production of A Christmas Carol. The theater crew did not seem thrilled with a full house of pro-lifers, but the performance was great and the pro-life audience loved it.

When advice columnist Ann Landers announced her pledge to take on the right-to-life movement and defeat the Human Life Amendment, the League announced a "dump Ann Landers" campaign. Apparently it was effective because she stopped writing about abortion and never again mentioned her crusade against pro-life.

The League sings Christmas Carols at the downtown Chicago offices of the pro-abortion anti-Christian ACLU

During Christmas 1981 we began a League tradition—Christmas caroling at the ACLU offices. And in January 1982, I made a New Year's Resolution—"No More Mr. Nice Guy." Art O'Brien of New Jersey had a shirt made bearing that motto.

Important Investigations

In 1982 we began to investigate the lawsuits filed against abortion clinics and doctors, laying the groundwork for what would become the Chicago Method of sidewalk counseling. That same year Planned Parenthood announced plans to open fifty new clinics in the Chicago metropolitan area. We held town hall meetings, and that never happened. In 2005 there are only seven.

In June 1982 the League again drew national media attention when we hired a private investigator to find an eleven-year-old girl who was being forced to have a late-term abortion. Dr. Jasper Williams, OB-Gyn., Pastor Hiram Crawford and counselor Laura Canning were able to speak with the girl's mother. It was not clear whether the abortion ever took place.

Radical Nuns Target the League

When the Human Life Amendment was introduced in Congress a new, radical group of renegade nuns formed the National Coalition of American Nuns to fight the amendment. The League petitioned the Holy Father to discipline the nuns, including two from Chicago, Sr. Margaret Traxler and Sr. Donna Quinn, both of whom later picketed the League offices on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. People magazine ran a story on the nuns' project, quoting Scheidler that the nuns were deceitful and hypocritical to stay in the Catholic Church while undermining its teachings.

At the LeMai office, Joe reviews a local Chicago television news interview

I was interviewed by Ted Koppel on July 17, 1982 for his ABC Nightline show on the topic of the growing violence at abortion clinics and the attempts to implicate pro- lifers in these actions. Also on the program was Susan Hill, the administrator of a chain of a dozen abortion clinics. There had been no proof that any offense at an abortion clinic had been committed by anyone from a pro-life organization. However, the few incidents of vandalism fueled the pro-abortion groups and their allies in the media in their efforts to label all pro-lifers as violent.

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