Back to the April 2004 Newsletter Index

Truth Tour Targets D.C. Abortionist

Over 40 pro-lifers conducted a three-hour Face the Truth Tour in Bethesda March 20, targeting Earl McLeod, an abortionist and owner of abortion mills in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

Twenty pro-lifers lined the median strip on River Road adjacent to upscale Bannockburn Estates, where McLeod lives.  

In addition to displaying graphic posters of aborted babies, they held signs bearing a large photo of McLeod and listing the names of two women who died after an abortion performed by him or in one of his facilities.

A second group of pro-lifers distributed flyers throughout Bannockburn Estates, informing residents that their neighbor on Nevis Road is an abortionist who, by his own admission, has performed 150,000 to 200,000 abortions.

The flyers detailed two wrongful death lawsuits filed against McLeod, which he settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.  

One suit involved the 1997 death of a Montgomery County schoolteacher after an abortion he performed.  The second was for the death in 1996 of a woman at a Harrisburg, Pa., clinic owned by McLeod.

Pro-lifers from the District, Virginia and Maryland were joined by a contingent of seven Harrisburg pro-lifers, led by Ed Snell, who have picketed  McLeod’s Hillcrest clinic in Harrisburg for 16 years.

A man and woman hired by McLeod to photograph and videotape the demonstrators and their cars and license plates failed to intimidate the pro-lifers, some of whom volunteered their names or jokingly posed for photos, displaying their “best side.”

The McLeod Truth Tour was the brainchild of D.C. pro-lifer Missy Smith.

“What galvanized me was an e-mail from Troy Newman, who said he had closed down 18 clinics in San Diego,” recalls Missy.

“I said, if he can do that, we can do that!”

When signs in February indicated that all was not well at the Hillcrest abortion mill on Georgia Avenue, she decided to direct efforts at  McLeod, who, in addition to Hillcrest NW, owns a chain of mills, including Potomac Family Planning Center in Rockville.  “He’s the linchpin, the big fish,” says Missy.

Smith brainstormed on tactics with Bill Luksic, Forest Graul and Dick Retta, and obtained information on lawsuits against McLeod from Michael Schwartz of Concerned Women of America.

She also joined forces with  Defend Life Director Jack Ames in Baltimore, who hired a detective to photograph McLeod, then produced McLeod-specific flyers and the 3-by-4½-foot posters, which he had laminated and mounted.

Missy feels that the demonstration created a heightened awareness in the neighborhood of the presence of an undesirable neighbor, and let McLeod know “that we’re on to him and we’re not going away.”

Jack agrees.  “I’ve always thought that picketing an abortionist in his neighborhood is an effective tactic.

“He can’t be proud of what he’s doing.  And his neighbors, even if they condone abortion, probably aren’t comfortable having an abortionist as a neighbor.”

“Our objective is to make McLeod so uncomfortable that he goes back to Jamaica; he is not a U.S. citizen,” says Missy.

The McLeod picket, coming hot on the heels of the closing of two Hillcrest abortion mills in the capital, has got local  pro-life activists “pumped up,” she says.

“The feeling is that there’s something really big going on in the spiritual realm.  Our Lady has said, where there’s great evil, there will be a great infusion of grace.”

The pro-lifers are planning to repeat the McLeod Truth Tour in April and again in May.

“We want to retire him from his ‘profession,’ says Jack.  “It will be a major moral victory.”