TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102191/1021510.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11.5 KB | 274 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 26

Crusading Against The Pro-Choice Movement


As founder of the controversial Operation Rescue group, RANDALL
TERRY doesn't care that most people reject his blockades of
abortion clinics and other confrontational tactics. He insists
that the country is dying from moral pollution and will be saved
only by his measures.

By RICHARD LACAYO and Randall Terry


    Q. This summer Operation Rescue caused an uproar in
Wichita, Kans., by blocking the entrances to local abortion
clinics. What did you gain from those six weeks of
confrontation?

    A. More than 40 children were rescued from death. If that
were the end of the story, that would be enough. But we also
rekindled some fresh fervor in the whole pro-life movement. And
we put child killing back on the front page where it belongs.


    Q. But you also got a public reprimand from George Bush
for breaking the law. After that, you sought to meet with him,
but to no avail. Why do you suppose he won't meet with you?

    A. The President did a great disservice to the pro-life
movement by his remarks. He has been inconsistent. He encourages
or applauds the civil disobedience of Kurdish rebels or Russian
citizens or students in Tiananmen Square. But he tells us to sit
down and be quiet. I don't think he's getting the straight dope
from his staff. I don't think George Bush knows that our people
have had their limbs broken, women have been sexually molested
by prison guards, Mace has been used on nonviolent
demonstrators.


    Q. According to a poll in the Wichita Eagle, your tactics
in that city -- screaming at women who approached the clinics,
chaining yourselves to clinic doors, costing the city hundreds
of thousands of dollars for extra police -- turned off a large
majority of people. Does that matter to you?

    A. Absolutely not. Look at the arrests in the civil rights
movement. The majority of Americans were against the tactics of
the civil rights workers, the lunch-counter sit-ins, etc. And
yet those street-level protests produced political change.
Frankly, the fact that 20% of the people polled liked our
tactics was a shock to us.


    Q. The civil rights movement sought to expand and
guarantee the rights of blacks. Aren't you seeking to do the
opposite in the case of women, preventing them from exercising
a right that the law currently recognizes?

    A. A white supremacist would have argued that he had the
right to serve whom he wanted at his lunch counter and that
these black protesters were prohibiting him from operating his
legitimate business. Whenever you are seeking to expand the
rights of one group of people, inevitably you're going to have
another group crying that their rights are being infringed upon.
The problem in the child-killing debate is that the children
have no voice. When the abortion industry succeeded in
legalizing child killing, there was no group of babies who
stepped forward and said, "Wait, we have a right to be alive."
It was left to those of us who were already born.


    Q. Are there no exceptions to your opposition to abortion?
What about rape and incest?

    A. Incest and rape are both hideous crimes, and we can
never make light of the trauma that a woman has undergone when
she has been violated in this way. However, an abortion will
not undo rape or incest. And furthermore it is unjust to kill
an innocent child for the crime of its father.


    Q. You've helped establish "crisis pregnancy" centers
around the country that appear to offer abortion. But women who
go to such places are confronted instead with films and
lectures intended to frighten them away from having an abortion.
Some members of Congress say the operators of such places may
be guilty of fraud. What do you think?

    A. No, it's not fraud at all. What most crisis pregnancy
centers advertise is that they give "abortion information." Not
only is that true, but they are the only place that a woman is
going to get straight information about abortion. The abortion
industry has thrived in secretive darkness.


    Q. Last year you formed a new organization called the
Christian Defense Coalition, which you say was created "to teach
Christian communities to defend themselves against police
brutality, judicial tyranny and political harassment." What is
it doing?

    A. We mobilize Christians to speak out against the abuse
of fellow Christians. For one thing, we give out judges' phone
numbers and addresses and highlight the injustices they've been
involved in [such as issuing injunctions against Operation
Rescue demonstrators].


    Q. You encourage people to flood them with calls?

    A. Absolutely. The First Amendment says we have a right to
petition for redress of grievances, whether that's an elected
official or an appointed official. We also organize pickets in
their neighborhoods.


    Q. What's your complaint about police?

    A. In some jurisdictions the police have systematically
tortured people. It's a very low-grade torture, but it's torture
nonetheless. When you have police pushing their knuckles into
people's eye sockets or lifting people up by their jawbones,
that's agonizing. What has me so irritated is that if we were
any other group that was politically correct there would be a
hue and cry from the media and from civil rights groups over
such tactics. But because we are pro-lifers, because we are not
a currently hip cause, we are ignored.


    Q. Why did you once say "I hate the Renaissance"?

    A. It sought to make man autonomous from God and from
moral absolutes. Man is not autonomous from God, and man always
has been and always will be accountable to God and his laws.


    Q. You've denounced feminism repeatedly. If there had not
been a women's movement, how would the world be different?

    A. If by feminism you mean women's voting rights, equal
pay for equal work, freedom from being harassed sexually on the
job, then I am supportive of those objectives. However, if you
will just look at the positions of the National Organization for
Women, you will see a very antimale, lesbian-oriented, Marxist-
oriented, put-your-kids-in-day-care-and-go-out-and-pursue-a-
career, proabortion mentality.


    Q. In a country where most households need two paychecks,
how would many families survive without day care?

    A. I disagree. Most families do not need two paychecks.
We're talking oftentimes of an antichild attitude. In most of
Middle America, people can make it on one income.


    Q. Though you would permit use of condoms and gels, you
oppose many forms of contraception, including the pill and IUDs.
Doesn't that virtually guarantee more single mothers and
children in day care?

    A. I believe that married couples who confess to be
followers of the Lord Jesus Christ should leave the number of
children they have in the hands of God. I believe there is a
very antichild mentality in this culture. People don't want
kids. They want money, they want bigger homes, they want a boat.
I believe that there is a devil, and here's Satan's agenda.
First, he doesn't want anyone having kids. Secondly, if they do
conceive, he wants them killed. If they're not killed through
abortion, he wants them neglected or abused, physically,
emotionally, sexually. Barring that, he wants to get them into
some godless curriculum or setting, where their minds are filled
with pollution. One way or another, the legions of hell want to
destroy children because children become the future adults and
leaders. If they can warp or wound a child, he or she becomes
a warped or wounded adult who passes on this affliction to the
next generation.


    Q. You talk about wanting to base American government on
laws of the Bible. What happens to a free society if you try to
institutionalize biblical authority?

    A. The freest societies are the societies that
self-consciously try to build their laws and institutions around
the principles and laws of the word of God. Why is rape always
wrong? Because God says that it's wrong. Why is theft always
wrong? Because God says that it's wrong. If you do not have the
unchanging moral principles of Higher Law -- and that's capital
H and capital L -- as the bedrock of your culture, then you are
left with the ever shifting sand of the newest fad, the latest
whim.


    Q. How does that make you different from the Islamic
fundamentalists who have established a theocracy in Iran?

    A. I do not believe that the church should rule in this
country. I believe in a constitutional republic. However, the
underpinnings of the republic have got to be what God gave Moses
on Mount Sinai and confirmed through the Lord Jesus.


    Q. Where does that leave everyone who's not a Fundamentalist
Christian?

    A. They're going to be just as safe and free in a culture
where it's wrong to murder and steal.


    Q. Aren't there already laws against theft and murder?

    A. Yes, and why? This country's roots are in the Puritans
and people who believed in biblical values.


    Q. Your group owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in
unpaid court fines from previous blockades of abortion clinics.
Do you plan ever to pay?

    A. You can't get blood from a stone. Why aren't the people
from ACT UP [a gay activist group] and the animal-rights
protesters and the antinuke protesters being fined hundreds of
thousands of dollars?


    Q. What will you do if Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court
ruling that created a constitutional right to abortion, is
overturned but many state legislatures vote to permit abortion
in their own states?

    A. We will continue to do rescue missions, boycotts and
protests in the states where they are killing children, and we
will work to change the face of the state legislatures. The
apple is for the plucking for whoever is willing to do the work.
Most nonpresidential elections are determined by 15% to 18% of
the voting electorate. There is something like 20% to 25% of the
electorate in this country who claim to be hard-core pro-life.


    Q. A lot of people would say that the power of religious
Fundamentalism in the U.S. peaked in the 1980s. Do you agree?

    A. In the late '80s and early '90s, we're seeing a whole
new wave of Christians come in, through two main venues. One is
the Rescue movement. It brought in thousands and thousands of
people who were not involved in the religious right or the
Moral Majority. The other was the Rev. Pat Robertson's
presidential campaign. Robertson brought out of the pew and into
the process tens of thousands of new people, many of whom are
still involved. Their full impact will not be felt until the
1996 election, the 2000 election, 2004.

    The pollution and degradation of this culture did not
happen overnight, and neither will our ability to reclaim it and
reform it happen overnight. It's going to take a good
half-generation to turn things around. The church for two full
generations has been taking its brightest and its best and
saying to them, Be a pastor or be a missionary. It's time we
took our brightest and our best and said, Be a lawyer, be a
judge, be a Governor, be the dean of a university, be the editor
of a newspaper. We're involved in a cultural civil war. Right
now there are very few Christians involved in the trench
warfare. Part of my mission is to challenge Christian families
to deliberately raise up their children to serve and to lead,
in every walk of life.