Defend Life Newsletter Masthead


Back to the June 2004 Newsletter Index

Quick Action Foils ‘Baby’ Heist at Seneca

“Baby” John Paul nearly got abducted in his baby carrier outside the Seneca abortion mill May 1, but pro-lifer Jeanne Nollen rescued him in the nick of time.

Jeanne, part of a group conducting its regular Rosary vigil outside the abortion mill on Northern Parkway, was holding a large poster of a smiling baby.

About 10 feet away from her,    John Paul (yes, he’s named after the Pope), an extremely lifelike newborn baby doll, was snoozing in his carrier on the sidewalk when the abortion mill manager, who identified herself as “Kathy,” came out and confronted Nollen.

Kathy was angry because Jeanne had tried to talk a young couple entering the building out of having an abortion.

“Kathy, are you aware of what abortion does to a child?” Jeanne countered.

“It’s just a piece of tissue,” said the manager.

“That’s not true,” said Jeanne.  In her work in a pathology lab as a cytotechnologist, she has seen a spontaneously aborted child of only six weeks’ gestation--not a blob of tissue, but perfectly formed, with arms and legs, fingers and toes.

In an abortion, she told Kathy, “The baby basically bleeds to death!”

Kathy heatedly denied that that was the case.

After an emotional exchange, the manager stalked off and Jeanne looked away.  When she looked back, she was startled to see that the manager had picked up John Paul in his carrier and was walking toward the building.

“I ran ahead and blocked her path,” Jeanne recalls.  “She told me she was keeping the baby and the carrier and ordered me out of the way.

“I reminded her that she was stealing my baby and I was having no part of it.”

Jeanne reached over and grabbed the handle of the carrier.  A little tug of war ensued.

Cookie Harris, who leads the Rosary vigil, came running over and said she would call the police.

“I looked directly into Kathy’s eyes--we were only inches apart--and asked her if that would be necessary,” says Jeanne.

A still very angry Kathy reluctantly let go of the carrier.

Jeanne told her that she would be coming back to pray there as long as Kathy continued to help kill children.

Jeanne began her “frontline” pro-life work five years ago, joining others to say the Rosary at an abortion mill in Falls Church, Va.

She found it so depressing, thinking of the abortions going on inside the mill while they prayed, that she didn’t think she could go back.

But she decided to try to brighten things up.  First, she brought helium balloons that read, “It’s a Boy!” and “It’s a Girl!”  Then she began bringing baby dolls--just regular dolls, with glass eyes.

At a Toys R Us store, however, she discovered La Baby Nursery dolls—dolls the weight and size of a newborn, with soft, lifelike skin and expressions.  It takes a sharp eye to discern that they are not real babies.

She told customers and salespersons alike how she planned to use the dolls to save lives.  An obliging salesperson brought out more of the dolls from the storeroom.

“I bet we had 25 to 50 dolls laid out on the floor to compare them.  Everybody was discussing which ones were the most lifelike and which would work best at the abortion mill,” says Jeanne.

Since then, she has donated several of the dolls, of different ethnicities, to other respect life groups.

Jeanne joined in the Rosary vigils at Seneca after she moved to Baltimore last fall.  In the future, she plans to give out baby booties at Seneca with the Gabriel Project phone number on them.