Anti-abortion picketers anxious for court ruling
‘I don’t think we’re prepared for the backlash’
Demonstrators who publicly display graphic pictures at busy intersections to show their opposition to abortion made their annual visit to the south and southwest suburbs this week.
This year’s Pro-Life Action League events take on added significance as the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling that could take away women’s rights affirmed by the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
“I think it makes us anxious,” said Eric Scheidler, the group’s executive director. His late father, Joseph Scheilder, worked in public relations and founded the group in 1980 to sway public opinion on the issue of abortion.
For many years, the group’s controversial tactics have drawn honks and waves from supporters and jeers and complaints from opponents. Some parents complain about their children being exposed to large images of aborted human fetuses.
I met up with Scheidler and his group along La Grange Road at 159th Street in Orland Park. They were also in Flossmoor and Mokena Thursday and were scheduled to be in Oak Lawn and Chicago Ridge Friday as part of an eight-day, 24-stop “Face the Truth” tour.
In early May, Chief Justice John Roberts verified the authenticity of a leaked draft that indicated five of nine Supreme Court justices intended to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, though Roberts said the draft was not final. The ruling in the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is expected any day.
Scheidler said he and others who oppose abortion feel nervous anticipation.
“The leaked draft was met first with incredulity, then with amazing wonder and excitement. Now we’re all on tenterhooks,” he said. “I feel in some ways a little resentful that we aren’t going to have the experience of surprise at having Roe v. Wade overturned.”
A few months ago, he said, the best anyone could have hoped for was for the court to uphold restrictions of the Mississippi law.
No one at the time expected the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, anything other than the decision outlined in the leaked draft will be met with disappointment.
“The thing we’re afraid of is there
will be some change, that (Justice Brett) Kavanaugh or someone will get peeled off and we’ll have something short of the overturning,” Scheidler said.
I asked whether the anticipated ruling that represented the culmination of a 50-year movement felt like the dog that finally catches the car it has been chasing for a long time. He said he has heard some form of that question a lot lately, and that it seemed like a good analogy.
“It is apt at least for describing how unprepared the movement really is in a practical way, to actually implement policy, to present a case to the people that we will have to make now, and it’s not just a political football,” he said.
His response reminded me of how Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted about 100 times to repeal, defund or otherwise diminish the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The House votes were a safe way to make noise, appeal to an aggrieved base and remind people the GOP held a majority in the chamber.
House members always knew there weren’t votes in the Senate to repeal Obamacare, or to override a presidential veto.
When it finally came down to an actual vote that mattered under Republican President Donald Trump in 2017, the GOP effort to repeal Obamacare fell short.
Scheidler said he worries about how state legislatures and law enforcement agencies might react to the high court’s decision.
“States like Mississippi and Alabama, they can ban abortion with a law that’s not going to go anywhere, that’s never going to be enforced,” he said. “But will they actually ban abortion when they have to be politically accountable for it in the next election cycle?”
For 50 years, people opposing abortion have claimed the moral high ground. No one can say what happens next.
“I don’t think we’re prepared for the backlash,” Scheidler said.
Abortion perfectly exemplifies our increased partisanship, our unwillingness to compromise and find common ground. Abortion deals with absolutes. You cannot be a little bit pregnant. Life begins at conception, when a sperm fertilizes an egg to form a zygote.
Religious views, however, influence opinions on when life begins. In Judaism, for example, life is closely tied to breath, which many Jewish people interpret to believe that life does not begin until the first breath.
This week, members of a Jewish congregation argued in a lawsuit that Florida’s newly restrictive abortion law violates their religious freedom.
“In Jewish law, abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman, or for many other reasons not permitted under the act (the new law),” the Sun-Sentinel reported. “As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and thus violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.”
Christians account for less than a third of the world population and are vastly outnumbered by Muslims, Hindus and others.
I asked Scheidler whether abortion restrictions represented one faith imposing its beliefs upon the rest of the population.
Hindus believe the human soul can be reincarnated in cows and other animals.
What’s to stop Hindus from suing on the grounds that eating beef is murder and convincing the Supreme Court to uphold a law imposing a nationwide ban on steaks and hamburgers?
“They’re welcome to believe that,” Scheidler said. “What if I believed that life didn’t begin until you took your 1,000th breath, or until your 12th birthday? I wouldn’t have a right to have 12-year-olds killed because of my religion.”
Abortion is a trickier issue to debate theologically and philosophically than many realize. What the Pro-Life Action League is about, and what Scheidler’s father understood, is that the debate in the court of public opinion matters as much as arguments in courts of law.
“If we can convince the American people what science says about life beginning at conception, and add to that the moral claim that now that you have a human life you have to treat it with respect, that’s really what the question’s about,” Scheidler said.