Tanya Melich - The Republican War Against Women: An Insiders Report from Behind the Lines

HOUSTON

AUGUST 19, 1992

They were beautiful childrena honey-haired boy about four and his older sister with similar golden locks. They were dressed in white shirts, cutoff jeans, and dirty white sneakers. Wide-eyed and sweet-faced, they reminded me of my own two. They stared vacantly from the curb across the street. I smiled. They pretended not to see me.

The Texas sun seemed too hot for so early in the morning. Their skin was pale and fragile. They had no hats, nothing to protect their arms, their legs. Theyd be sunburned soon.

I wondered where their parents were. Didnt anyone over there care?

The adults standing around them paid no heed. They were busy saving the unborn; they had no time for children standing on curbs.

I hurt inside. I didnt like being there any more than those children. Something was terribly wrongchildren being forced to watch their elders preach hate, police with holstered guns treating demonstrators like criminals, ordinary people shouting crude epithets and threats.

It was no place for children. It was no place for anyone.

* * *

Wed already been standing there an hour. When Id arrived at seven A.M. from the convention hotel with other pro-choice Republicans, the lines were already forming. We stood three deep in front of the doors of the Planned Parenthood clinic locking arms with pro-choice Houstonians. Before us were blue sawhorses, while fully armed Houston police patrolled past us up and down the block.

Across the street were more sawhorses. Leaning against them were the children, the brother and sister and others, and behind them were the adults. Unlike their children, the adults were not beautiful. Their faces were contorted, and for the last hour theyd been calling on us to stop killing Gods children! Repent your sinful ways! Accompanied by two women beating a bass drum, we had drowned them out with our own chant: Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate.

At first it had been a game, the exercise of free speech. We were chanting, they were chantingthough with an edge. Then it turned ugly; the threats came, the yelling started, and some of the Operation Rescue men broke past the police officers to get to the doors of the clinic.

They failed, but it was no longer just another demonstration of opposing views. This was deadly serious. A fight could break out, a knife could flash, a gun could go offand then, as always happens when grown-ups forget children, the children would be hurt. The same pattern, old as history, would play out once again.

Suddenly the shouting stopped, and thirty-four-year-old Randall Terry, leader of Operation Rescue, moved to the center. His microphone popped with static. An array of ministers in their shapeless brown and gray summer suits, all white men except for one lone black among them, began to sing Amazing Grace. I saw some of the twisted faces of the women relax, and they joined in. I felt an urge to join in too.

For a few moments both sides were caught up in the beauty of the hymn; we could all have been standing together at a Fourth of July celebration. We werent. We were soldiers in a deadly war. My colleagues and I were in Houston to prove our strength not only to Terry and his followers but to the delegates of the Republican National Convention and to George Bush. And worst of all, I thought, Im one of those delegates and Im in the middle. Im here pledged to nominate the man whos encouraging these people even as I stand here against them.

I cant remember Randall Terrys exact words, but I remember that he spoke quietly at first as he exhorted us to love others as Jesus had said, to turn the other cheek. I, who had gone to Baptist Sunday school almost every week from childhood until college, recognized the Scriptures he quoted. Then his tone changed. The biblical words of love turned sour. He became an avenger. The microphone crackled. The hate spewed forth: Baby-killers! Murderers! Scum of the earth! Destroyers of precious life! He shook his finger at us.

I found myself trembling. I could feel the arms of my newfound friends on either side stiffen as the diatribe grew shriller. Our side called back: Not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate. We too were shouting now. The sun grew hotter. More police arrived. My stomach turned over. I felt sick.

Where were the two children? I strained to find them. No one was on the curb. They had been taken home. At least someone over there had sense.

Then I saw them, each perched on a mans shoulders. The girl was easier to spot. Her hair glinted in the sun as before, but her pretty face was twisted like the grown-ups.

Her little brother sat on the shoulders of a smaller man and stared blankly at his sister. He watched her as she raised her delicate finger and pointed it directly at me, screaming, Stop killing the babies! Stop killing the babies! Murderer, murderer! The little boy picked up the rhythm and in a high singsong voice joined his sister: Murderer, murderer! Baby-killer, baby-killer! It was as if their hatred were a match for Terrys.

My nausea gave way to anger. The call to hate, the paranoia, the conspiracy theories, the manipulation of decent peoples emotions, the robbing of those childrens innocence, the gratuitous violence, were all being justified in the name of religious faith. This was not the religion of my childhood. This was not generous, loving, compassionate.

Id deluded myself. The tacit approval of the President of the United States was being used to shatter the nations tranquillity, to tear away at its Constitution, to shackle women, and to stifle dissentall in the cause of winning elections. George Bush and the other leaders of the Republican party were to blame for giving respectability and power to this movement of hate, this sickness of the soul. And I too was to blame. Theyd encouraged this firestorm and Id gone along. Id let cleverness overwhelm good sense. Id not been willing to let go, to leave the party of my roots, my ambition, my lifes work, my dreams. Id been wrong, very wrong.

The noise diminished. The other side was packing up. For today, the confrontation was over. My friends and I left the picket line to go to the hotel to plan our next move. I glanced back. Terry and his troops roared one last time, You traitors, you traitors to life! as the children singsonged, Baby-killer, baby-killer! I didnt yell back. The bigger problem lay elsewhere.

I cannot remember a time when the Republican party was not part of my life. I grew up in a family where political talk dominated daily meals and weekend picnics in the red rock desert surrounding my hometown of Moab, Utah. My mother and father constantly reminded us that public service is an honorable calling, that we had a duty to participate in the nations political life, and that we could do this best by working for the Republican party.