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Truth Tour supersizes message

Defend Life's third annual Face the Truth Tour packed some trenchant new punches as it showed the graphic truth about abortion to an estimated 300,000 people in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia from July 28 through August 1.

For the first time it brought its message to "the belly of the beast," going to stops in the heart of Baltimore and Washington, D.c.

It reinforced its message with the help of two "Truth Trucks."

And it supersized the message through an impressive increase in the number of volunteers.

Attendance at the 17 stops totaled almost 1,100, a 57 percent increase over the 700 of last year's tour.

Gum-chewing officer

Perhaps the heart of the Truth Tour came on July 29, when, after a nerve-testing noon stop at the U.S. capital's Naval Observatory, the Face the Truthers headed for the Holocaust Museum.

At that morning's stop in Rockville, approximately 80 sign­holding demonstrators had linedRockville Pike, a substantial increase over last year's 55.

By the noon stop the numbers had swelled to at least 90. Pro­lifers made an impressive sight lined up across from the Naval Observatory and stretching up and down Massachusetts Avenue for six blocks.

Strategically placed "Honk for Life" signs elicited a cacophony of beeps.

"There's a lot of good honking going on!" stop captain Missy Smith observed with a grin.

Demonstrators, many of them veterans of previous Truth Tours, were taking the usual negative---often obscene reactions of a minority of drivers in stride.

Early on, Defend Life Director Jack Ames had assured two Metropolitan Police officers on bicycles that the Metropolitan Police had been notified in advance of the demonstration, and they they had told him no permit was required.

But halfway through the stop, two other police officers drove up.

A gum-chewing female officer, C.R. Neal, told Ames that it didn't matter what the two policemen on bicycles had said 20 minutes earlier: the signs were too big, graphic, and causing a disturbance, and would have to come down.

"They are so large, people might be afraid that they can't walk by," she said, ignoring the fact that all the signs and sign-holders were on the grass next to the curb, leaving the sidewalks completely free.

The contretemps escalated to four police cars and officers, and a hot exchange when Fr. Patrick McCaffrey of St. Stephen's Church asked Officer Neal if she was "pro­choice" because, he said, "you're not acting in an unbiased manner."

A tense stand-off between Ames and shift commander Lt. David Hutchinson, who had ordered him to disperse the demonstration, was averted when one o'clock, the scheduled end time for the stop, arrived.

Upsetting the children

"Kudos to you for putting up with the D.C. police; they have a lot to learn about civil rights," Eric Scheidler told the 60 pro-lifers attending the luncheon at Annunciation Church afterwards.

Eric and his dad, Joe Scheidler, both of the Pro-Life Action League, had flown in from Chicago to take part in the tour.

Referring to the chief complaint of drivers that the graphic posters of aborted babies would upset children, Eric observed wryly, "Who are these observant children who see these signs? I'd love to meet them!

"When I drive my kids around, I say, 'Look over there, kids, there's a buffalo!' and they say, 'Where, Dad? I didn't see it!' They never see anything!"

"We have to go into a hostile society and speak the truth," Joe Scheidler told the crowd. "The only place people can see these pictures is on the highway.

"God is working with us and through us. Everyone knows instinctively that there is inherent value in human life. We are stirring their consciences. There may not be an immediate conversion, but the pictures are in their memory bank."

Guest speaker Margaret Heckler, former Massachusetts Congresswoman and ambassador to Ireland, said she had fought hard for women's rights, but, "The issue that you're here to defend is larger than any issue that has heretofore been addressed in Congress.

"These unborn children are God's creations: this is the most critical civil rights issue in the 21st century."

American holocaust

On board the rented bus heading into downtown Washington, Fr. Peter West of Priests for Life told the pro-lifers,"We are going to the Holocaust Museum, which commemorates one of the worst events in history, the killing of 6 million Jews.

"We hear the cry that this should not happen again but unfortunately, it is happening with the unborn. People in the U.S. did not believe what had happened in Nazi Germany until they saw the pictures.

"We are not trying to down play the Jewish Holocaust; it was unique. But people are nevertheless going to be angry at us."

Washington Area Tour Director Grace Sims led the bus riders in the Divine Mercy chaplet and other fervent prayers, induding the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel: "Defend us in battle. . ."

At the Holocaust Museum,Ames was immediately surrounded by six or eight uniformed officers.

After several minutes of tense negotiation with the officers, who turned out to be museum security police, they agreed that the demonstrators could occupy a narrow corridor between the curb and some cement posts.

Uneasiness over their reception gradually gave way to the realization that this was indeed a unique stop, because the foot traffic was incredibly dense.

Tourists entering and leaving the museum and office workers leaving work for the day offered Face the Truthers an unprecedented opportunity to follow up on the visual impact of the signs with one-on-one interaction.

At one end of the museum block a swarthy man lambasted a very elderly female sign-holder, excoriating her with a stream of invective for letting children see the signs. She stood there meekly without replying.

At the other end of the block Cal Zastrow held forth street preacher-style: "Folks, I invite you to consider the American holocaust-45 million American babies have been killed by abortion.

"Nazi Gennany dehuman­zed people; we're doing the same thing in America!"

Blob of tissue

In the middle of the block, a woman shook Albert Stecklein's hand and said, "God bless you for what you're doing."

"I'm getting the usual, 'You shouldn't be here letting kids see these pictures,' but it's mostly positive reaction," he said.

Don Cummings, who had come down from Bethlehem, Pa., for the tour, witnessed two teen­aged girls leaving the museum do a double-take when they spotted a poster of an aborted baby.

"I thought it was only ablob of tissue," said one.

"That looks like a real baby!" exclaimed the other.

Nearby, a group of tourists from Texas fonned a semi-circle around Joan McKee.

"This picture tells it like it is," she told them. "There are always problems in life. This is the only problem that we kill."

A man in the group asked her for infornation on Face the Truth Tours, saying he would like to hold one in Texas, where abortion was "rampant."

Ringing Legg Mason

Two days later, two "luxury" buses, supplied by Catherine Connelly and her son, bus company owner Brian Connelly, transported 54 pro-lifers in style from Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Loch Raven Boulevard to the heart of downtown Baltimore.

More pro-lifers were waiting to meet them. Ninety-five sign holders lined the curbs of Charles, Lombard, Pratt and Light streets, ringing the towering Legg Mason Building, catercorner to Harbor Place.

Seven more walked around, handing out pamphlets titled, "How can these fanatics show these disgusting images?" to motorists and pedestrians.

Monty Phair, holding a  huge Defend Life banner with his son Christopher, was able to talk to many drivers as they stopped for the traffic signal at Pratt and Light streets.

"I'm pro-life, but these signs are offensive," said a woman in a mini- van.

"I'm sorry if they offend you," was Monty's polite response, "but this is the only way we can get the message out that 4,000 babies are being killed by abortion in the US. every day.

'The word 'abortion'is so sanitized, it has no meaning any more; people need to see the signs to understand the reality of abortion."

Later, Monty commented, "It's amazing how many people gave us 'thumbs up,' or rolled down their windows and asked for brochures."

Two babies saved

On Charles Street a teen-aged girl approached 13-year-old Tabitha Watts, standing next to an aborted baby sign.

"That's not real," the girl said. Tabitha assured her that it was. "They found the baby in a dumpster," she told her.

After Tabitha gave her some pro-life literature, the girl cried, "I can't do this any more-I can't have any abortion." She took down the phone number on a sign for help.

A young, African-American couple came up to Ed Flanigan, standing with a sign on Lombard Street, and asked him, "What's this all about?"

They appeared very curious and highly interested.

He handed the girl a brochure and took an instinctive stab in the dark: "You're with child," he said.

She nodded wordlessly.

"What are you thinking about the baby?" Ed asked.

The girl looked up at the young man and laughed nervously, "kind of like she had been caught," Ed said later.

"I said, 'Are you going to have it? You know, the word "fetus" is Latin for baby. That's what you have growing inside you, and if you let it grow, one day maybe it will take care of you!"

By the time they were done talking, the young woman declared, "You know what? I'm going to have the baby!"

SUV hops curb

From Winchester, Va., on the morning of July 28 to White Marsh on the afternoon of August 1, hundreds of hardy volunteers braved the uncer­tainties of weather (ranging from pleasant 70s to tropically humid 80s to pouring-down rain) and the slings and arrows of outraged motorists to bring the truth about abortion to a public whose reactions ranged from apathetic to warmly approving to hopping mad.

But in Bel Air, Francis Mahoney was holding the Jesus sign when, he says, "all of a sudden I saw this guy in an SUV hop the curb onto the grass, within 3 feet of me!

At the stop on Charles Street near Kenilworth Drive the morning of July 31, said Jack Ames, "One guy driving a shredder truck drove back and forth, again and again, honking his horn in approval."

And Maureen Berger recalls a boy who leaned out the window of a school bus on Northern Parkway, hollering, "Honk, honk, honk!"

"He yelled, 'You people don't care about children!'"

As Marilyn Bevans, holding a sign on Northern Parkway, observed, "There's a lot of honking. But when they're angry, they're very angry!"

Truth tours mainstream

Media reaction ran the gamut too. The NBC-TV affiliate in Hagerstown gave very favorable coverage to the tour, interviewing Jack Ames and pro-lifer Laurie Watts and showing the signs.

From there on, media­wise, it was all downhill.

A reporter from the Annapolis Capital came to the stop on Route 2 and West Street, said Grace Sims, "just as this co­ple was having this bizarre conversation with me; they were saying, 'What about cows and pigs? Don't they have souls?'"

Channel 2 in Baltimore ran a negative piece on the Charles Street stop, featuring a bus driver complaining about the "insensitivity" of the pro-lifers holding their signs near a school for the disabled.

A photographer from the Aegis did take pictures at the Bel Air stop. And a Fox 45 camera­man interviewed Jack at Northern Parkway.

For the most part, however, the media, especially in Baltimore and Washington, studiously ignored the tour.

But the burgeoning participation of pro-lifers, even in the liberal state of Maryland, and the proliferation of Face the Truth Tours across the country indicate that they are mainstreaming despite the media, as pro-lifers embrace them as an effective weapon in the battle to end abortion.