“Equal rights now: Stop abortions.” Above the legend on the picket sign was a color photograph of an aborted 11-week-old fetus, small enough to hold in the palm of a human hand. The reds and blues matched the flag held in the other hand of the protester, a stylish woman in her 30s with a ruddy complexion and a train of small children behind her.
They were with the nearly 200 other protesters who gathered in front of Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge Saturday, the day before Mother’s Day, to demonstrate against the hospital’s abortion policy. Pro-choice advocates chose to ignore the rally, avoiding potential confrontations. One of about a half dozen events organized by the pro-life Operation Rescue in the Chicago area, the gathering fell far short of its projected 1,000 protesters, but those in attendance were adamant about their beliefs.
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“All of us are involved in the pro-life movement, individually or in groups,” explained Tony Lesniewski, a 27-year-old construction worker who was passing out antiabortion literature to the overwhelmingly white, mostly male crowd that stood and listened to a procession of speakers.
At that moment, what Lesniewski saw was a couple of men wearing octagonal stickers on their jackets that read “Keep Abortion Legal.” Lesniewski tucked the pamphlets under his arm and followed them. “They look like troublemakers,” he said, “especially the one in the black leather jacket.” He trailed them, even baited them when he overheard a particularly sarcastic remark, but the two men kept to themselves.
He smiled sheepishly. “It was hard sometimes,” he admitted. “I came close. I did it in my heart, unfortunately, but I lived through it with the grace of God. I was a virgin in the physical sense, but not in the spiritual. I’m as sinful as anybody. The main reason for sexual intercourse is procreation. I mean, sure, it’s fun, and we do it sometimes for pleasure. It is pleasurable–it must be–or we wouldn’t be attracted to each other. But it’s more than that. Sex for pleasure–using contraception, for example–is sex without responsibility.”
Lesniewski added a whispered “Please.”
“It’s a bad law, the wrong law,” said Lesniewski, referring to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion. His forehead wrinkled with worry. “You know, in his letter from Birmingham, Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘If the law’s not just, don’t obey it.’ That’s how I feel about Roe–just don’t obey it.”
