Constable, 'pro-life legend' meet after 20 years

The last time I sat down and chatted with abortion foe and “pro-life” legend Joseph Scheidler, the column didn't hit the Internet because the World Wide Web wasn't available to regular folks yet. But stepping from behind his desk in his sixth-floor office of his Pro-Life Action League in Chicago, the 83-year-old activist says he thinks he might be able to find a copy of the column in an old-fashioned manila folder with my name on it.

“We've got a lot on you,” Scheidler says, as he thumbs through old columns of mine that almost always come to conclusions that don't ring with the truth as Scheidler sees it on matters or abortion, gays, the death penalty, war or religion.

It doesn't matter what I wrote 20 years ago because we are both older and wiser now, and I didn't come to renew an old argument. Barrington's Jim Finnegan, a longtime Scheidler admirer and frequent critic of my columns, told me Scheidler's house had been vandalized by people who share my “pro-choice” attitude. Scheidler lives in Chicago and we don't usually publish stories about vandalism in Chicago, but given that he is a well-known public figure I'll let Scheidler tell the story.

“We thought maybe a shelf had fallen,” Scheidler says, explaining how he and his wife, Ann, came downstairs when the commotion woke them at 2 a.m. on a recent Thursday, but didn't see anything amiss. It wasn't until morning, when they were about to head to Mass, that they discovered two shattered windows (plus the storm windows) and a nasty note that began, “We are crazy, feminist (b-word) who will destroy your sexist ideas.”

In the nearly 38 years since the Supreme Court decision upholding a woman's right to abortion forged Scheidler's anti-abortion activism, he has been the target of “lots and lots of hate calls and death threats,” “a lot of (middle) fingers,” a lot of cursing, “a lot of things (paint, eggs and even a knife) thrown,” posters glued over their windows, protesters marching down their street carrying signs reading “Joe Scheidler kills women,” and some things painted on their garage, he says.

“One time, they got the wrong garage,” he says, adding the Scheidlers paid to have it sanded and repainted.

Here is where Scheidler and I find common ground. We both say we don't think the abortion debate should include bricks, bombs or bullets. Not everyone agrees with us. When Paul Hill visited these same offices, he signed the guest book just like I did. Hill would be executed in 2003 for murder in the shooting deaths of a doctor who performed abortions and his bodyguard. As proof that both sides need to curb the violence, Scheidler points to the murder of an abortion protester for which a Michigan truck driver was convicted earlier this year.

“I don't see any reason for violence,” Scheidler says. “That hurts the movement.”

We find a few other things on which to agree. We both agree that I shouldn't make this story all about how Scheidler, during more than two hours of conversation, once referred to women leaders of the National Organization for Women as “NOW Cows.” And we both agree that people on both sides of the abortion issue often adopt children, donate to orphanages and show care and compassion to children well beyond the “unborn” stage. We both agree that adults should be able to have the “choice” of whether or not to wear seat belts, even though I always make everyone in my car wear a seat belt and Scheidler “almost never” uses his seat belt.

As for abortion, we agree to find fault with the logic of politicians and others who say abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of a mother, but should be crimes in other situations.

“You have to be consistent,” Scheidler says. “Once you make an exception, you can do anything.”

I understand where he's coming from. It's just that I support a woman's right to choose to abort her rapist's offspring or seek an abortion for reasons of physical health, mental health or a personal reason she might share only with God, and Scheidler thinks our government should decide whether a woman carries a pregnancy all the way to the end.

Even though neither of us has budged on this issue since we met in 1990, we do agree on one other thing. We'll plan to meet face-to-face again in 2030.