Long ago, back in 1980s Denver days, I was out of town covering a national religion-news event when something interesting happened during an Operation Rescue protest at abortion facility.
The protest was going as planned, with peaceful protestors willing to be arrested for blocking the entrance (think civil disobedience) when someone rushed forward and started verbally and physically harassing a client and her escort. This became the big story of the day.
When I heard about what had happened I asked the city desk if anyone had checked to see if the attacker was actually part of the planned protest. There was a possibility, of course, that this was a rogue protestor or even a plant from pro-abortion-rights groups whose goal was to get Operation Rescue shut down.
The key question: Had this person signed the Operation Rescue card to take part in the protest, in which participants promise to do nothing more than pray and sing hymns during the blockade, then allow themselves to be arrested? I had included that tactical detail in my earlier coverage of the protests.
Well, no one asked. To cut to the chase: No one really wanted to ask.
The template for the story had already been created. Factual details about Operation Rescue techniques were irrelevant. Once I was home, I checked. No one knew the identity of this rogue protestor and he had not signed the pledge card. He wasn’t part of the organized protest.
I thought this was a story. My editors just shook their heads.
I bring this up because of an interesting story I read at Christianity Today: “DOJ Steps Up Prosecution of Pro-Life Protestors at Clinics.” GetReligion rarely looks at coverage in religious-market publications, but I thought that this piece included some information that might help MAINSTREAM reporters cover this important trend story. Here is the overture:
In the past month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted more than a dozenpro-life protestors across the country for obstructing access to abortion clinics.
Such prosecutions have been rare historically, with just a case or two annually for the past decade. But after the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade this summer, the DOJ announced a task force to pursue more enforcement against anyone obstructing access to abortion clinics. Many of those protestors facing charges are Christian.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, prohibits obstruction of access to, threats toward, and destruction of clinic property. In these recent charges, protestors face up to 11 years in prison. Pro-life activists say the recent prosecutions seem politically motivated; some are now facing charges for incidents that date back more than a year.
Here is the information that caught my attention:
After the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, pro-life protestors began the tactic of lying down and blocking abortion clinic entrances. Demonstrators shifted to less aggressive tactics after the FACE Act was signed in 1994, following the shooting injury of late-term abortion provider George Tiller.
In more recent years, pro-life demonstrations outside clinics have again been growing. In 2015, the National Abortion Federation tallied 22,000 protestors outside abortion clinics; that number rose to 99,000 over the next three years. The newer generation of protestors tend to focus on praying outside clinics instead of trying to block women from entering.
This brings me to the first of two pieces of information in this story that I think are crucial for reporters to ponder.
The first is a flashback to that 1980s incident near Denver.
One of the recently indicted protestors, Mark Houck, was a volunteer with 40 Days for Life, a Christian group that mobilizes pro-lifers to stand and pray outside of clinics.
The organization requires its volunteers to sign a peace statement for protesting outside clinics, which reads in part, “I will pursue only peaceful, prayerful and lawful solutions to the violence of abortion by supporting life from natural conception to natural death.” If women engage volunteers in conversation, they will offer referrals to services to support them in their pregnancies.
Reporters need to find out, when covering these protests, if the anti-abortion leaders are requiring protestors to sign cards similar to this. What do the cards say? Are their specific promises that the protesters make in terms of what they will or will not do?
The big question: Will protest leaders actually discuss these fact with mainstream reporters? In my experience they will, if contacted in advance (and contacted in a professional manner).
The CT report want on to note:
A year ago, Houck, a Catholic who leads a ministry for young men, was praying outside a Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia. According to the federal charges, he shoved a 72-year-old volunteer escort of abortion clinic patients to the ground, which “resulted in bodily injury.”
Houck and 40 Days for Life dispute those charges. According to 40 Days for Life, the escort began to “verbally abuse” Houck’s 12-year-old son. The organization said Houck and the abortion clinic volunteer got into an “altercation,” then local law enforcement was called and determined no charges should be made.
At the end of September, a year after the incident, Houck said a large team of agents came to his house and arrested him at gunpoint in front of his children.
Here is my digital-era question. Based on my own reading these days, it appears that the leaders of these kinds of protests almost always have someone with a smartphone filming the event in order to have a record of what does and what does not happen.
Who has seen the videos of this case and others like it? Have journalists asked to see the videos? What do they show?
It’s possible that videos of this specific altercation led “local law enforcement” officials to dismiss the charges against Houck.
If reporters want to offer accurate, fair-minded coverage of these controversies they are going to need to seek access to hard-news materials of this kind.
Do the protest leaders have these documents and video-recordings? Will they allow reporters to see them?
Journalists need to ask — right now.
FIRST IMAGE: From a TacticalGear.com feature on the proper use of handcuffs.