Children are on the front line in this city`s abortion protests. It`s
”children rescuing children,” as the radical Missionaries to the Preborn sees it.
Kids as young as 7 kneel in submissive posture before police officers, then scamper between them in an effort to make it to the front door of a clinic the group hopes to shut down.
Like sacks of potatoes tossed over police officers` shoulders, 43 young protesters were carried off Thursday for violating a court order to stay at least 25 feet from clinic grounds. There were no demonstrations Friday, but another was scheduled for Saturday.
”We`re here to save babies, and it`s our idea,” said Ryan McGlade, 14, of Bradenton, Fla., his face stamped with serious purpose. With him is his brother, Keith, 12, and his sister Rachel, 8, a little girl with an unstoppable smile.
Critics say the growing involvement of children is a sign of an anti-abortion movement in distress, a frustrated movement hemorrhaging adult volunteers, finding its financial support waning, going broke from paying jail fines and outnumbered by abortion-rights supporters.
”To me, they`re no better than Fagin in Oliver Twist,” Milwaukee lawyer and abortion-rights activist Stephen Glynn said of adults who deploy children in the anti-abortion effort. But anti-abortion activists insist the actions arise from the children`s own dedication.
”Children grow up with their parents taking this stand, and it touches their lives,” said Pat Mahoney, national spokesman for Operation Rescue. He compared their involvement to that of black children in the 1960s civil rights era.
Children have taken part in other anti-abortion protests-several lay down before oncoming cars in Wichita last summer-but never in such numbers as in Milwaukee this week.
In addition to the 43 arrested Thursday, 32 were arrested Tuesday while seeking to block entry at another clinic.
Overall, 47 of the arrests were of children under age 14, the cut-off point for trespassing and disorderly conduct fines. Younger children are merely released to the custody of an adult, in accordance with a city ordinance.
Thursday`s arrests, in which children outnumbered adults-58 of whom remain in jail from Tuesday`s protests-came near the end of the first week of a planned six-week national anti-abortion campaign in Milwaukee. It follows similar efforts in Wichita and Buffalo over the past year, and it presages more protests set for this summer in Houston, New York and Baton Rouge.
Operation Rescue leaders also vow to hold massive demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Houston to counter pressure for change in the party`s anti-abortion plank.
”But this is the first protest event in which kids have officially been recognized as part of it,” said Rev. Joseph Foreman, a Presbyterian minister and leader of Missionaries to the Preborn, the group organizing the Milwaukee protests.
Missionaries to the Preborn is one of several new militant but non-violent anti-abortion groups whose members divest themselves of property and bank accounts and willingly serve jail sentences for civil disobedience.
The children involved in the protests, ranging in age from 7 to 17, are members of Youth for America, an Atlanta-based group that grew out of Operation Rescue and a desire to counteract school sex-education programs that mention abortion as an alernative to childbirth.
When you ask them about the motives for their involvement, they bristle at suggestions that they are mere minions of their parents` will.
”We go to them and tell them. They don`t ask us or force us one bit,”
said David Norton, 16, of Springfield, Va., a veteran of 19 arrests.
Like many of the youths, Norton is not accompanied by his parents. When he was arrested at the protest Tuesday, he was released to an adult in the group who held a custody note from Norton`s parents.
Foreman argues that children, like adults, must act if they believe babies are being killed. ”You`re not talking to kids who have been brainwashed,” he said. ”They know exactly what they`re here for.”
When asked about how his schoolmates in Bradenton, Fla., feel about his activism, Ryan McGlade, 14, indicated that was not a concern because he is
”home taught.” The three McGlade children came on this mission without their parents.
”Everybody I know in Youth for America is more involved than their parents,” said Laurel Foreman, 14, who also was arrested Thursday. She is one of Foreman`s six children.
”I`m the one who got my parents involved. They would picket (a clinic)
every Sunday, and I said, `Dad, if they`re really killing babies in there, why are you just carrying that stupid sign?` ”
”Adults aren`t getting the job done.” she said. ”We`re doing more than carrying a stupid sign.”
But those on the other side of the issue see it differently.
”They`re using kids who clearly don`t understand what`s at stake for the woman attempting to go into those clinics,” said Sally Patterson, Planned Parenthood`s national media coordinator in New York.
”It`s pretty unfortunate that we have people teaching 14-year-olds to defy the law,” said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for Free Choice, based in Washington. ”They`d be giving their children a better education if they taught them how to work to change the law, not break the law.”
On Friday the Milwaukee city attorney`s office issued seven citations against parents and guardians of the children for contributing to the delinquency of minors.
Within the movement, some readily admit the practicality of using children. The same tactic has been used by urban drug dealers.
”They can`t put a kid in jail for 60 days,” said Tony Rozewski, 50, a former realtor from Milwaukee who now devotes his life to the Lambs of Christ, a small, militant, Catholic anti-abortion group involved in the Milwaukee protests. Members refuse to pay fines or post bonds, often drawing long jail terms.
On Thursday at the Metropolitan Medical Services Clinic, David Norton, Laurel Foreman, the McGlade children and others crouched a few feet from officers guarding the entrance driveway.
”If you try to run around a cop (standing up), you can brush against them and they can say `assault,` ” Norton said. ”But by crawling, how can you assault them?”
But even though the children are smaller, faster and more agile than most adults, none succeeded in getting around the police lines Thursday. And for those who made it to the front door of the clinic Tuesday, the victory was short lived. Officers soon carted them away. It is, in a sense, a kind of game.
”In the beginning, it`s kind of scary,” said Rachel McGlade, smiling.
Thursday, while her brothers scouted the police line for a vulnerable point, Rachel remained at the driveway, kneeling, her sun-browned face cast shyly downward.
When an empty squadrol arrived, officers began picking up the children at the driveway and placing them inside for a trip to a National Guard armory that serves as a holding and processing facility. For most of them, plastic bands secured their wrists together.
One police officer gently hoisted Rachel beneath his arm, like a father toting a recalcitrant child off to bed.
She was still smiling.
