. . . because action speaks louder than words.
League history, NOW v. Scheidler, Action News, Joe Scheidler, League staff
League history, NOW v. Scheidler, Action News, Joe Scheidler, League staff
Q & A on abortion, the unborn child, where we stand on the issues and more
Helping abortion-bound women choose life for their babies
Unmasking the truth about abortion in the public square
Our youth outreach, raising up a new generation of pro-life leaders
Abortion industry converts tell the inside story
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
This Special Report on the Pro-Life Action League's battle in Aurora, Illinois is divided into seven parts.
With our round-the-clock Vigil going strong and our Rally breaking records, it was time to storm City Hall to expose the deception practiced by Planned Parenthood in their permitting and applications process and to demand an investigation. I put out the call and over 400 area residents packed City Hall for the August 28 City Council meeting. More than 100 signed up to speak during the public comment period.
Many pro-life speakers highlighted specific acts of deception by Planned Parenthood. On permit after permit, Planned Parenthood hid behind the name of "Gemini Office Development". "Gemini" claimed that the tenant of the building was "unknown" not only on permits but at a November 16, 2006 Planning and Development Committee meeting—thereby lying to the aldermen. And there was Trombley's admission that they tried to keep the project "secret".
Other speakers talked about the harm that abortion does to women and society, and the negative impact of having an abortion facility in the area. Many shared the anguish of abortion they'd experienced in their own lives—as pro-life counselors, doctors and nurses and post-abortive mothers. And all 122 pro-life speakers called for a formal, open investigation into fraud and deception by Planned Parenthood. Only two people spoke up in favor of Planned Parenthood.
The public comments ran into the middle of the night. At their conclusion, Mayor Weisner said that an investigation would be conducted.
Yvonne Florczak-Seeman addresses the Youth for Truth, Sept. 1, 2007 [Photo by EJS]
One of the many pro-lifers drawn into the fight against Planned Parenthood was a high school student named Danny Schleitwiler. He and his parents had participated in the Vigil and attended the community meeting and other events. Danny decided that it was time for more youth to get involved, so he called together a group of friends from several area high schools and formed Youth for Truth. I was privileged to attend their first meeting at Rosary High School, along with Generations for Life Co-Director John Jansen, where plans were drawn up for a big youth rally.
The rally took place on September 1 at Planned Parenthood and was a huge success. Five hundred high school and college teens attended, along with several hundred family members. As I pointed out in my remarks to the group, unlike Planned Parenthood, we don't believe in separating young people from their families—so this was a family event. Five hundred Youth for Truth T-shirts were passed out, with a design I helped prepare for print, paid for by donations from Annunciation Church in Aurora and the League.
Pro-life speaker Yvonne Florczak-Seeman spoke to the group about her experience having five abortions at Planned Parenthood, pleading with them to hold fast to their faith and never fall into the kind of life that she had. As the event concluded, several teens were interviewed by the local press, including seventeen-year-old Mary Kate Guest, whose powerful testimony on virginity aired on WBBM radio.
On September 3, yard signs began to appear here and there reading This Family Supports Planned Parenthood. This was the first sign that Planned Parenthood realized they were in trouble in Aurora—they had finally abandoned their plan of completely ignoring us.
I quickly learned that Planned Parenthood was putting these signs up with the same deceptive tactics they'd used to sneak into Aurora in the first place. I received an e-mail from a couple whose neighbors had one of these signs up, having been told Planned Parenthood helps poor women with health care. When they learned from this pro-life couple that Planned Parenthood does abortions, they tore up the yard sign. In another case, a sign was put up in the yard of a woman with Alzheimer's disease! I also learned that someone was calling around saying, "I'm from your church" to get people to put up the signs.
Eric Scheidler and his six daughters pose with a "captured" yard sign, changed to read "This family supports Planned Parenthood—NOT!" [Photo by Sam Scheidler]
Three days later, on September 6, Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Cecile Richards sent out a national e-mail alert, declaring, "Ground Zero in the fight for women's access to reproductive health care just landed in . . . Aurora, Illinois." The previous day, I had sent out my own e-mail in which I wrote, "Aurora, Illinois is becoming Ground Zero in the fight against Planned Parenthood." I don't know if Richards was reading my e-mail, but we were agreed that Aurora had become the epicenter of the abortion war.
I had already initiated plans for pro-life yard signs when the Planned Parenthood signs began to appear, but their deception drew so much outrage that I was able to raise over $2,500 in 24 hours to pay for signs reading, Planned Parenthood: BAD for Aurora and Planned Parenthood: BAD for Fox Valley. These signs, along with a Spanish language version, began to appear everywhere starting on September 8.
In a few weeks, over 3,000 pro-life signs were put up around the area, distributed by churches and at the Vigil—a grassroots effort headed by volunteer Andrea Heeg. Planned Parenthood hired a professional call center to push their signs, but it was rare to see one, while you couldn't drive a block without seeing a pro-life yard sign.
Even as we took our battle to City Hall, the media and the front yards of our neighborhoods, the center of our entire effort remained the prayer presence at the Planned Parenthood site, bolstered by overwhelming support from area churches and dioceses. Critical help was provided by my neighbors Roger and Elizabeth Earl, who took over the day-to-day duties of running the Vigil so I could concentrate on these other matters.
On September 7, several hundred faithful responded to Joliet Bishop Peter Sartain's call for a pro-life day of prayer by attending an ecumenical candlelight Vigil at Planned Parenthood. Then on Sunday, September 9, we began a seven-day "Jericho March" around the block occupied by Planned Parenthood, inspired by the famous biblical story in the Book of Joshua. Four hundred prayer warriors, including a large group from Aurora's Hispanic parishes, gathered for that first twilight march around the block in prayer, headed by a red cross banner borne by representatives of Youth for Truth.
I had to make my 1.25 mile march quickly in order to make it to a friend's house to watch an exposé of Planned Parenthood on Hannity's America on the Fox News Channel. The report featured our battle in Aurora, and included an interview with me from the Vigil site recorded at the end of August. It was a major black eye for Planned Parenthood in the national media.
Planned Parenthood's Sept. 10 full-page ad in the Aurora Beacon linking the pro-life leaders of Aurora with abortion clinic violence
With their yard sign campaign floundering and the entire community mobilizing against them, Planned Parenthood grew desperate. On September 4, Planned Parenthood's Steve Trombley mailed a letter to the Mayor and City Council in which he attempted to justify their deception of the people of Aurora as a reasonable response to fear of violence from Joe Scheidler and the Pro-Life Action League. Trombley even went so far as to repeat some of the most outrageous accusations against my father from the NOW v. Scheidler trial—never bothering to mention that my father ultimately won that case in two decisive Supreme Court decisions!
Then in full-page Open Letter ads in the Aurora Beacon on September 6 and 10, Trombley repeated his accusation that the leaders of the protests in Aurora have a "well documented history of advocating violence". He even printed a photograph of an abortuary burned down in Michigan in the 1980s—a crime that was never solved.
As troubling as it was to be publically defamed by Steve Trombley, I was encouraged to see how desperate Planned Parenthood was becoming. And of course, my attorneys and I immediately began to move forward with a libel suit to clear our names of Trombley's outrageous lies.
[Go to Part 4] [Back to Top]