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Gospel Of Life Is Gospel Of Hope, Says Schenck

When Dr. Paul Schenck talks, pro-lifers should listen.  

And listen they did, all 200 of them at the Respect Life Conference sponsored by the Baltimore Archdiocese’s Respect Life Conference November 13.

When Dr. Schenck was a Protestant pastor in western New York, he recalled, a parishioner brought him a bag from an abortion clinic near her house that contained the remains of four unborn children – “eviscerated, decapitated, dismembered.”

Schenck had always believed that abortion was evil, but seeing that “pile of carnage” propelled him into two decades of fervent pro-life activism that continues to this day.

“I said, ‘We’ll bury the babies; we’ll give them a funeral.’”

They held funerals on the front lawn of the church, with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy taking part.

His parishioners wanted to pray in front of the abortion mill, “But they said they wouldn’t go unless I went with them.”

Eventually, not only Pastor Schenck, but about 75 other clergy were volunteering to stand with the pro-lifers outside abortion mills in western New York.

In 1988 a federal judge ordered Reverend Schenck and others to keep 15 feet away from clinic entrances and – something new – to keep 15 feet away from abortion mill employees or abortion clients, wherever they were – what came to be known as the “floating bubble zone.”

Two years later, for handing out Bibles near an abortion mill, Schenck was found guilty of violating the judge’s injunction, fined $300,000 and sentenced to two years in federal prison.

He spent a month in the federal correctional facility in McKean, Pa. (“I was kept busy morning, noon and night, ministering to men in the worst crisis of their lives”) and five months under house arrest.

In the meantime, his case slowly wound its way through the courts on appeal.

In 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear his case.

“We prayed and asked the Lord to confuse the opposition,” said Schenck.

“President Clinton sent Walter Dellinger, his solicitor general, to argue against me.  When he got up to argue, he kept calling the justices by the wrong names!”

In frustration, said Schenck, “He slapped himself in the face and asked, ‘How come I keep doing this?’

“We knew why!”

Dellinger finally argued that when a trial judge is faced with pro-lifers who keep violating his injunction at abortion clinics, what is he supposed to do?

Justice Anthony Kennedy replied tartly, “Well, I think he would begin by reading the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the federal judge’s “floating bubble zone” had violated Reverend Schenck’s constitutional right to free speech.

Today, as executive director of Gospel of Life Ministries, in Washington, D.C., Dr. Schenck is working to combine the pro-life efforts of Catholics and Evangelicals to restore a culture of life to the United States.

He is doing so from the perspective of a convert to Catholicism, having become a Catholic this past Lent, “the most joyous Lent of my life!”

From his offices in Capitol Hill, adjacent to the Supreme Court, Dr. Schenck can look directly into Chief Justice Rehnquist’s library.

“We’ve been able to establish good relationships with many of them; we’ve had prayer with five of the nine justices,” he said.

Schenck believes that the American people have reached a great crisis point – but it is a good crisis.

“People are evaluating the role of faith in their lives,” he said.

        He noted that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said that religion had become like pornography – something only to be indulged in privately.

“But the election results tell us that moral values were at the top of the list; dedicated Christians who take their faith seriously decided the election.”

There are countless people in our society from whom hope, faith and love have been taken away; “They reach out to embrace, by default, the Culture of Death.

“We need to offer this society hope, because the Gospel of Life is the gospel of hope,” he said.