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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
Walter Hoye (right) with Ann and Joe Scheidler in Hawaii last year
In Oakland, California, Pastor Walter Hoye started praying at an abortion clinic when two elderly women asked him to join them because most of the clinic’s clients were African-American.
A quiet, devout man, Hoye began to counsel the women coming to that clinic. And he saved babies. So, in short order, the City of Oakland passed a bubble zone ordinance to try to keep Pastor Hoye and the two older women from reaching out to women and offering them a real choice.
Pastor Hoye was arrested under the ordinance, in spite of the fact that he actually abided by the stipulation not to reach into the 8-foot floating bubble around the abortion clinic clients. He refused to pay a fine and was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
But although Pastor Hoye is a peaceful, soft-spoken gentleman, he is not a wimp. He appealed his conviction and challenged the ordinance in Federal Court. On Thursday, August 26, his criminal conviction was overturned by an Alameda County Court of Appeals panel. And the oral argument in his federal appeal is scheduled for October 8, 2010.
We are keeping a close eye on the various places in the country which have bubble zone laws in effect. We used to be proud to proclaim that Chicago was still a free speech zone—that we had no restrictions on where we could stand or what we could do while standing on public property, sidewalks that our taxes pay for.
But since last November, Chicago pro-life activists have operated under the cloud of an ordinance that the abortion clinic operators either don’t understand or choose to misrepresent. Many of the Chicago Police officers also do not understand the ordinance either. And many pro-lifers are confused about how the bubble zone impacts sidewalk counseling.
In Chicago there have been four arrests under the bubble zone ordinance. Three of those have already been dismissed by Circuit Court judges. The fourth hasn’t come up for a hearing yet. And plans are afoot to legally challenge the entire ordinance.
Unfortunately the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Colorado bubble zone law in 2000. That decision led to the enactment of these restrictive ordinances in several cities. But confusion reigns. And the real victims are the pregnant women who may never get the information they need in order to choose life for the babies they carry in their wombs.
Also troubling is the recent charges of violation of the federal FACE law (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) against people who pray at sites where the 40 Days for Life vigils have taken place. It looks very much like a concerted effort by U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder to stop prayer and counseling at abortion clinics.
We had better keep a close watch on our government. Our cherished freedoms are hanging in the balance.
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Lies again, you are not offering ‘real’ choice, you are offering limited choice. It’s a straight forward fact.
The FACE laws would stop you from harassing innocent people going about their business, as per their choice.
It is people like yourselves who are the real threat to ‘our cherished freedoms’.
Posted August 29, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Eric: It’s really pretty simple. The woman walking into an abortuary is really only being offered one choice: abortion. That’s what they’re all about.
We’re there to offer another choice. And that’s why it’s a real choice. Because when you have only one option, you don’t have a choice.
And that’s what we hear from so, so many women going into these places, “I don’t have a choice.” They really believe they have no choice but to have the abortion—usually because or pressure from family, or the father.
But like it or not, the U.S. Constitution protects our right to offer another choice—to try to show these women that they do have a choice.
Eric Scheidler
Executive Director
Pro-Life Action League
Posted August 30, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Eric,
It would be interesting to hear your story regarding why you appear to be so ardently pro-abort.
I see you posting comments on almost every blog entry I happen to look at. There must be some reason(s) you feel compelled to leave comments so frequently. I am not asking for any reason other than to understand where you are coming from.
Posted August 30, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Capital E Eric, when someone goes into an abortion clinic, they are choosing one of ALL the options open to them. When they attend one of your establishments, they are entering a place where they have one less choice. You are offering them YOUR choice.
Pat, because I dislike people forcing their beliefs and behaviors on others. It’s that simple. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one, and I will defend your choice not to. But if someone else does choose abortion, it has nothing to do with you, leave them alone.
Posted August 30, 2010 at 5:52 pm
“Pat, because I dislike people forcing their beliefs and behaviors on others. It’s that simple. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one, and I will defend your choice not to. But if someone else does choose abortion, it has nothing to do with you, leave them alone.”
If someone chooses to not kill someone, that’s their choice, I will defend that.
If someone chooses to kill someone, that’s also their choice, but I will not do anything aginst them……I’ll leave them alone!
Posted August 30, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Legality does not preclude morality!
Posted August 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm
eric, clearly you have never visited a crisis pregnancy center to see what goes on there. Interestingly, you assume that when a woman walks into an abortion clinic she is choosing one among ALL the options, yet when she walks into a CPC she’s not doing the same?
Every pregnant woman has the same 3 options: abortion, adoption, motherhood. The crucial difference between the care a woman receives at an abortion clinic versus a CPC is information. At a CPC a woman receives information about pregnancy and adoption as well as material support should she choose to have and keep her baby. Women don’t take the abortion decision lightly, however they frequently make that decision with a serious lack of information about all 3 of their options. They aren’t going to get that information at an abortion clinic. That’s why it’s so critical for pro-lifers to be outside those clinics offering those women the opportunity to make a WELL INFORMED choice.
If you care about women eric, spend some time reading the testimonies at Silent No More. Hear the information from the women themselves about the circumstances surrounding their decision to abort. Why do so many women feel they have no “choice”? Because they aren’t given INFORMATION!
Posted August 31, 2010 at 10:57 am
[...] up for Bubble Zone’s everywhere with Pastor Walter Hoye’s Bubble Zone arrest being overturned last week, Officer Stevens of the Chicago Police Department reminds us that it’s not over [...]
Posted August 31, 2010 at 11:17 am
Eric:
A: How exactly are we “forcing” our beliefs on anyone? What “force” is involved in manning a pregnancy center where women can get help if they want it, or in standing outside an abortion facility offering alternatives to any woman willing to hear about them?
B: Everything you say about pro-life pregnancy centers offering only one choice applies equally well to abortion facilities. They offer abortion. They don’t offer a woman all the resources a pregnancy center does to enable her to choose life for her unborn child.
Eric Scheidler
Executive Director
Pro-Life Action League
Posted August 31, 2010 at 12:14 pm
We already know about the lies and misinformation given out at CPC’s. So women aren’t ‘well informed’.
A. the harassment and coercion of people. I don’t stand outside churches with signs and propaganda stating that god is a lover of violence and christianity a doctrine of fear.
B. rubbish. Abortion clinics are there to perform terminations. Pro-choice pregnancy centers include all options. Anti-choice centers do not.
Posted August 31, 2010 at 7:06 pm
“B. rubbish. Abortion clinics are there to perform terminations. Pro-choice pregnancy centers include all options. Anti-choice centers do not.”
Choice concerns right and wrong.
“Terminations” are evil….void of the good (unborn child).
Posted September 1, 2010 at 6:18 am
eric, what “lies and misinformation” are given out at CPC’s? I’ve never seen that.
Posted September 1, 2010 at 9:50 am
Eric writes: “I don’t stand outside churches with signs and propaganda stating that god is a lover of violence and christianity a doctrine of fear.”
First of all, trained sidewalk counselors do nothing like this. The goal is to get abortion-bound women to stop and talk. Tactics of “harassment” or “coercion” are contrary to that mission.
If you felt inclined to, you certainly could go and do something similar outside a church on Sunday. You could stand out on the public sidewalk and try to talk to church-goers and convince them not to go into church.
If I saw you there, I certainly wouldn’t feel intimidated. If you were behaving respectfully, like our counselors do, I wouldn’t feel harassed. And I certainly wouldn’t feel “coerced.” I’d just go on into church.
But I wonder why you don’t do this. I’ve seen pro-choice folks raise this analogy again and again, as if we Christians will “see the light” when we contemplate someone protesting at our churches. But in fact, I’d have no problem with it. I’d welcome it.
So go for it, man. Get out there and exercise your First Amendment rights. It’d probably be good for you.
Eric Scheidler
Executive Director
Pro-Life Action League
Posted September 1, 2010 at 11:32 am
Cheryl, they supply a stream of untrue and inaccurate information about death rates, physiological effects, things like breast cancer and not being able to have children later.
Eric, the difference is, I’m happy to let you go off and practice your faith. But you are not happy to let others do as they choose. So who’s the offender?
Posted September 1, 2010 at 7:10 pm
“Eric, the difference is, I’m happy to let you go off and practice your faith. But you are not happy to let others do as they choose. So who’s the offender?”
Making choice the end, disregards the evil which is being done.
Posted September 2, 2010 at 4:32 am
“end”…..be-all
“disregards”…..directing attention away
Posted September 2, 2010 at 4:47 am
little (e)ric,
As a woman who has gone into the abortion clinic and had an abortion I speak from experience when I say that choices are not offered to a woman in crisis at an abortion clinic. What they tell her is everything will “get back to normal” once the pregnancy is terminated. What they don’t tell her is of abortion’s lingering aftermath, the haunted feeling that you willingly participated in the murder of your own child. For some those feelings are immediate, for others it may take years to manifest, but I can say unequivocally that women’s psyches are scarred by abortion.
Too many women who go to the clinics are there because they feel they have no other option. Perhaps it is the father of the baby that is pushing them so he can avoid responsibility for his choice in participating in the pro-creation of this new life. Perhaps it is a parent, either knowing or unknowingly, that makes the woman feel like she is stuck between a rock and a hard place. When a woman has that feeling, offering her a chance to balance the equation and look at things from a fresh, new perspective will give her a chance to make a more informed decision. Isn’t this what choice is all about? If the woman is afraid her parents will kick her out and that her only reason for choosing abortion is she doesn’t want to be out on the streets, is that a real choice? How about showing her there are places she can go if indeed her parents kick her out, so she can have a place to live and continue to go to school if she chooses and raise the child herself or perhaps to make another hard decision to adopt the baby out.
eric, when the woman who is in a crisis or unplanned pregnancy has a psychological gun to their head, or she feels like she is between a rock and a hard place, she doesn’t have enough options to choose from. This is what the pro-life sidewalk counsellors at the clinics are wanting to share with her.
The day I had my abortion, I felt very co-erced by my abusive husband. I so wanted someone to reach out to us that day at the clinic and rescue me from him because I felt trapped. It was many months later that I was able to make it out of that relationship alive. Unfortunately my child did not. This is my shame and I regret that I didn’t have enough courage on my own to stand up for myself and my child at that point in time. I hope no other woman has to be made to feel as bad as that abortion experience made me feel. Who was it that reached out to me afterwards? Was it Planned Parenthood that provided support for me after I paid them my blood money to kill my child? No. It was thru selfless individuals that reached out to me in my pain and said I know what you are going thru, I’ve been there myself – it was the people in the pro-life movement that gave me hope that others don’t have to go thru the same bad experience I did.
You don’t have to be black to know slavery was bad. You don’t have to be a woman to know that killing one of your own children has to leave some sort of deep indelible impression on a person’s soul. If I had to guess, eric, you are reaching out to people on here because you have also been a victim of abortion, perhaps as a silent father who had no choice, or perhaps even encouraged an abortion at one time. I can tell you there is hope and healing that can come if you let it.
Panda
Posted September 2, 2010 at 7:39 pm
‘…the haunted feeling that you willingly participated in the murder of your own child’ – that’s because it wasn’t really your choice. Was the pregnancy planned, accidental or forced? It sounds like you would have been forced to have an abortion even if it wasn’t legal.
‘…I can say unequivocally that women’s psyches are scarred by abortion.’ – well actually, no you can’t. Yours was.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…..
‘…I felt very co-erced by my abusive husband. I so wanted someone to reach out to us that day at the clinic and rescue me from him because I felt trapped…’ – this amounts to domestic violence. It has nothing to do with the abortion clinic itself. It’s about an abusive man and your relationship with him.
‘…it was the people in the pro-life movement that gave me hope’ – it was the people in the anti-choice movement who found a wounded person and took advantage.
You don’t have to be a woman to know that enforced pregnancies or having to raise unwanted children are bad. I’m reaching out to people here to advise them to keep their hands and minds off the rest of us. It is entirely the woman’s choice and no-one else should have any influence.
Posted September 2, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I think “eric” must be a troll for Planned Parenthood or dailykos.
But he’s not a very good one because his statements are very adolescent-sounding, almost childlike, and his arguments don’t hold water.
Posted September 3, 2010 at 12:43 am
[...] convicted under the ordinance after it was adopted in May 2008, although those convictions were overturned last [...]
Posted August 2, 2011 at 3:19 pm