Joseph M. Scheidler - Racketeer for Life: Fighting the Culture of Death From the Sidewalk to the Supreme Court

A MEMOIR BY JOSEPH M. SCHEIDLER WITH PETER M. SCHEIDLER

EDITED BY JOHN F. BRICK

TAN Books

Charlotte, North Carolina

2016 Joseph M. Scheidler

All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in articles and critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The following is a memoir. To protect the privacy of certain nonpublic figures, in some cases, names have been changed, slightly altered, or surnames not given.

Cover design by Caroline Kiser

ISBN: 978-1-61890-850-6

e-ISBN: 978-1-61890-851-3

Published in the United States by

TAN Books

PO Box 410487

Charlotte, North Carolina

www.TANBooks.com

To my wife, Ann, who led me into the pro-life movement, and for Monica, who gave me hope in the darkest hours of the battle

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

American Law Institute (ALI)

Americans United for Life (AUL)

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)

Clergy Consultation Service (CCS)

Delaware Womens Health Organization (DWHO)

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE)

Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)

Friends for Life (FFL)

Illinois Right to Life Committee (IRLC)

Indiana University (IU)

Knights of Columbus (K of C)

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

National Abortion Federation (NAF)

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL)

National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB)

National Organization for Women (NOW)

National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)

Officer of the Day (OD)

People Expressing a Concern for Everyone (PEACE)

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN)

Pro-Life Nonviolent Action Project (PNAP)

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)

Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR)

Single European Act (SEA)

Society for the Preservation of the Unborn Child (SPUC)

Southern Illinois University (SIU)

United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

US Catholic Conference (USCC)

Women Exploited By Abortion (WEBA)

This is the way I remember itthe more than four decades of legal abortion and the fifty years of moral decay that led to the January 22, 1973, disasters known as Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. This is the way I remember the early years that prepared me for the raging battle to save the lives of the unborn. It is, of course, an abridged history, but it is filled with my memories of the fight against abortion and the effort to turn our national culture away from the ugly, violent narcissism that makes legalized abortion possible. This is the way I remember the people I worked with and planned with and went to jail with. This is the way I remember the enemy we are still fighting.

Our office in Chicago is filled with files upon files from decades of workold newspapers, flyers, news bulletins, press releases, court transcripts, and photographs. I used all the tools at my disposal to check, double-check, and recheck my facts to tell the most accurate story I could. I read through more than forty of my personal diaries. I reviewed more than six thousand transcripts of my hotlinesdaily recorded phone messages each a few minutes long. I pored over back issues of our Action News monthly, reread old newspapers and magazines, studied volumes of court documents, interviewed scores of activists and friends, and viewed miles of taped news reports and video footage of our activities. I gave a dozen drafts of my manuscripts to people who were also there, to find out what they remembered.

But memory is a funny thing. It takes impressions of the stories we find ourselves a part of, like metal in soft wax. Our memories hold the shape of things that were, but they cant capture the things themselves. While researching my own past for this book, Ive often been surprised at what Id forgotten, or that what happened wasnt quite the way I remembered it. Everything in this book is as accurate as I could make it, with the help and dedicated diligence of my wife, Ann, and my son Peter.

But this is still a memoir. It is my memoir: my recollections, my reflections, my impressions, my own story in a vast and intricate history.

Now I invite you to join me on my journey.

Yours for life,

Joseph M. Scheidler

National Director

Pro-Life Action League

I n the spring of 1987, I was in northern California to meet with local and national pro-life leaders and to speak at a rally. Early one morning, before the meetings began, I visited the newest branch of the Feminist Womens Health Centers, a clinic in Redding. I hoped to talk with the new administrator there, but the clinic was closed, its windows dark and the door locked. I flipped over one of my Pro-Life Action League business cards and wrote, Sorry I missed you. I signed my initialsJMSand wedged it in the door.

I met with the leaders and spoke at the rally, but I wasnt able to stop back at the clinic before I left town. But I did see that business card againeleven years later in federal court. It was March 1998, and I was on trial in downtown Chicago for violating federal racketeering laws. In the first week of a seven-week trial, that card was displayed for jurors on a screen as big as a billboard, while Dido Hasper, founder of the Feminist Womens Health Center, testified to being scared when she arrived at her Redding clinic and found my card. The plaintiffs alleged that my card constituted a death threat, part of a pattern of conspiracy and extortion against the nations abortion providers and their clients.

Early in my activist career, I regularly visited abortion clinics, asking to speak with the physician or the administrator, hoping to learn why they got into the business and to try to talk them out of it. Over time, I realized that many are not happyabortion is a grisly line of work. Some abortion providers responded to an outsiders concern. I tried to persuade them to use their talents to build up society, not add to its many miseries. Strange as it seems, Ive seen people quit the business after a compassionate encounter with a pro-lifer, some even right on the spot.

As I sat in that courtroom, seeing my card on that screen and trying to puzzle out how my message could be read as a death threat, I found myself wondering how I wound up there. How did a guy from Hartford City, Indiana, population seven thousand, end up a defendant in a federal racketeering trial? Chicago has a long history of mob bosses. But me? I didnt know the first thing about running a national crime syndicate. But here I was, sitting in the Dirksen Federal Building at the defendants table, watching a jury study my handwriting, and hearing my lifes work described as a wild, decades-long crime spree.

This is how it happened. In 1973, when the Supreme Courts abortion rulings were announced, I was working as an account executive with a public relations firm in Chicago. Within a few months, Id left that job to work full time on the pro-life cause, some on my own and some part-time with the Illinois Right to Life Committee (IRLC). By January 1974, I was working as the director of the IRLC.