Back to the August 2003 Newsletter Index

Pro-lifers gather to applaud stars

Over 300 pro-lifers packed Michael's Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie on June 20 for The Second Annual Pro-Life Appreciation Night, sponsored by the law offices of Peroutka & Peroutka.

Highlighting the evening was an address by Joe Scheidler, director of the Pro-Life Action League, and the presentation of four awards, including a pro-life "hero" award to Defend Life Director Jack Ames.

The Marilyn Szewczyk Pro-Life Service Award went to Mary Ann McCaffrey, who started Gabriel's Homes, a branch ministry of the Gabriel Project.

Through Mary Ann's efforts, Gabriel's Homes opened two homes in Bowie and one in Ellicott City for young women in crisis pregnancies, providing them with shelter up to 6 months after their babies are born, and offering them Bible study, help in fInishing their high school education, and training in parenting and office equipment practices.

Mary Ann is also active with the Bowie-Crofton Pregnancy Center and with Defend Life and its Face the Truth Tours.

Fr. Peter Ryan, SJ., received the Dr. William J. Hogan Education Award for his pro-life teaching at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg.

Father Ryan is a graduate of Loyola College in Baltimore and a former teacher at Loyola, where he served as a mentor to the college's student pro-life group.

"There are a lot of young, pro-life priests coming up" through the seminary ranks, he told the audience after receiving the award.

Former State Delegate Martha Klima was given the Senator Francis X. Kelly Political Action Award for her untiring efforts for the pro-life cause during her two decades in the General Assembly.

"Everybody in this room is a leader in the most important movement in the world: the saving of God's precious infants," said Joe Scheidler after the awards, seguing into a rousing "pep talk" to culminate the evemng.

"Right here and now, we are the Church Militant, not the Church Miserable; that means we have a fight on our hands!" he said.

Scheidler referred only briefly to his February 26 Supreme Court victory, in which the court ruled in his favor in Scheidler v. NOW, ending 17 years of litigation against him and the Action League by the National Organization of Women.

"The 8-to-l decision, to me, was a kind of mira­cle," in light of the court's pro-abortion ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Webster, he said, joking, "I still think that [liberal Justices] Ginsburg and Souter and Breyer don't know why they voted for us!

"But we had convents of nuns and people from all over the world praying for us."

Scheidler made an impassioned plea for the showing of pictures of aborted babies in Face the Truth Tours as an effective pro-life tactic.

In the movie, "Nuremburg," he pointed out, the trial against Goering and other former Nazis was going nowhere.

"Then one day the prosecutors showed the pictures of what happened in the concentration camps. That's when they started winning."

For too long we've been showing these graphic images of aborted babies to each other, said Scheidler; we need to get out and show them to the nation.

"Some people say, 'I don't do that.' Well, do it!" he chided.

"People say, 'Would Jesus do that?' Jesus did it! He was a bloody mess!"

It's now mandated that a crucifix must be above every altar in every Catholic Church to show people what Jesus went through, he noted.

"Imagine what happens to the children in an abor­tion when their arms and legs are twisted off! It is our obli­gation to take this truth out to society."

We have to fight against abortion with all of our zeal and effort, said Scheidler, "and in the process, it will make us saints."