ARTICLES

Rules Change

Locals Arrested at Supreme Court

By Allyson Smith

On Tuesday, April 25, nearly two dozen pro-life demonstrators, including four San Diego County residents, were arrested in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. They were displaying pre-approved graphic signs as the court heard arguments on Nebraska's partial-birth abortion ban case.

Troy Newman of Operation Rescue West and Rev. Pat Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition had obtained approval for the signs several months before the event, informing the court of the exact dimensions and content of the signs. Though no permits were required to be issued, officers agreed that pro-lifers had a First Amendment right to display the signs on the public sidewalk in front of the court from Easter Sunday, April 23, until the afternoon of April 25.

The display included four-foot-high color drawings depicting the partial birth abortion procedure, as well as a 10-foot full-color poster of a decapitated and dismembered late-term baby boy. For two days, as protesters fasted and prayed in anticipation of the hearing, they displayed the posters without incident.

However, about 10:30 a.m on the 25th, while the hearing was in progress, supreme court police officers told Newman and Mahoney that the signs were no longer allowed and that anyone claiming ownership of the posters would be arrested. Officers cited "Regulation 6," signed at 10:00 a.m. that morning by supreme court marshal Dale E. Bosley, as justification for the arrests.

The newly-created regulation stated that posters may be "no larger than 4 feet in length, 4 feet in width, and 1 inch in thickness" or "arranged in such manner as to create a single sign at any one time."

The demonstrators -- 12 of whom were from California -- were handcuffed and arrested after refusing to remove the posters. Those from San Diego arrested included Pastor Gary Cass of West Hills Christian Fellowship in Spring Valley; Cheryl Sullenger, president of the Calfornia Life Coalition; Heather Mechanic, therapist and registered nurse from Poway; and Patricia White of Casa de Oro Baptist Church. They were taken into custody until 11:30 p.m. that night and arraigned the following morning. Trial is scheduled for June 28.

Mechanic gave the following account: "We arrived in Washington D.C. on [Holy] Saturday evening. The Capitol looked absolutely magnificent, with the azaleas and cherry trees and dogwood all in bloom," she said.

The next day, Easter Sunday, "We went to Foundry Methodist Church, which is Bill Clinton's church. The reverend minister, [J. Philip] Wogaman, never once mentioned that Jesus is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead; he only said that Jesus was a good man. He talked about the previous day's raid by federal agents in Miami to capture Elian Gonzalez and how we should support Janet Reno for her hard work, and that he loves homosexuals enough to marry them.

"When I walked out," continued Mechanic, "I showed Wogaman Isaiah 5:20 where it says 'Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.' Flip Benham, the national director of Operation Rescue, quoted from Matthew, chapter 23, 'You brood of vipers, you whitewashed sepulchres.' He really let Wogaman have it. All of us who were there agreed it is a tragedy that congregation isn't getting the Gospel message.

"After the service we ate, and then we all fasted from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday. We had permits to set up in front of the supreme court on the sidewalk, and we honored that. We set up a picture of little baby David who is on his back; his head is missing, but otherwise he's a seven-month-old baby. Thousands of people saw that. We also had pictures from the Genocide Awareness Project. One of them showed the little arm of a 10-week-gestation baby holding a dime; the other one showed baby about six or seven months gestation who was a partial birth abortion victim, that said, 'This moral wrong should never be a Constitutional right.'

"We stayed all night on Sunday and Monday and took shifts sleeping. The people ranged in age from a 15-year old who flew by herself from Sacramento to an 80-year-old from Santa Cruz. California had more representation than any other state there.

"Flip Benham preached Sunday and Monday, and some of the other pastors (including Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life) preached. We had a service Monday evening and a prayer vigil. I went up to the top steps of the supreme court at 4:00 Monday morning. You're not allowed to kneel up there and pray, but since I was alone and there were no guards around, I knelt there alone. I realized that we cannot ask for mercy and compassion; we just need to ask for God's judgement because we haven't even repented. Tuesday, we had praise and worship starting at 7:30 in the morning. It was awesome. We even had a little four-year-old who sang Amazing Grace without missing a beat or a word."

Tuesday morning, amidst a cold rain, pro-aborts started arriving at the supreme court. Cheryl Sullenger said "When (NOW president) Patricia Ireland came, they put their umbrellas over her and treated her like she was some kind of deity. A few of us went over to talk to her, but lesbians pushed us out of the way." She added, "They stood in front of the partial-birth sign and completely blocked it. They didn't want anybody to see that sign."

While Sullenger stood outside during the hearing, Mechanic went inside the court with several other pro-lifers. "At 9:20," said Mechanic, "I got a feeling that there was something terrible going on. I heard a sound like a banshee scream, and then all these women from NOW came marching through our group and blocked our pictures and chanted.

"Inside, it was really amazing to see this austere chamber with all these high-powered, influential people and the supreme court justices. Two things particularly struck me. One was that inside, on one of the walls, there is a magnificent fresco of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. The other was the way the hearing opened, when the court marshal said, 'God save the United States and this honorable court.' I thought those things were ironic because after that it was like God was thrown out of that chamber.

"Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Clinton appointee, gave me goose bumps. There was such evil coming out of her mouth. She gave absolutely no consideration or desire to even weigh the potential for the child. It was strictly 'a woman's body, her choice.' Bader Ginsburg, Breyer and Stevens were the worst. Sandra Day O'Connor jumped in at one point and said, 'This procedure's gruesome,' but that was all. Chief Justice William Rehnquist asked some technical questions. Kennedy asked just one question, and Souter made one or two pro-abortion comments. Clarence Thomas said absolutely nothing, not one word. He just rubbed his face."

"Justice Antonin Scalia was truly awesome. He called the fetus a baby. He said that this is murder, that the child is out of the womb of the mother, just inches from being born, and whether you're doing a partial-birth D&X and sucking the brains out, or ripping the arms and legs off, either way it's gruesome and it's infanticide.

"I was very disappointed by the defense of the Nebraska attorney general, Don Stenberg. For one thing, he kept referring to the child as 'potential life,' and I thought he weakened his case by doing so. Bader Ginsburg continually, deliberately interrupted him to break his concentration.

"In contrast, none of the judges except Scalia interrupted Heller (the lawyer who represented defendant Carhart, a Nebraska abortionist.) "Scalia unnerved him a little bit, but not too much. Actually I thought that Scalia's questioning helped our cause more than Stenberg's arguments. I was on the verge of tears and praying when Scalia was talking, because he was the only one to call partial-birth abortion what it is: infanticide."

"Pat Mahoney and Troy had been notified about 10:30 that anyone who claimed ownership of the signs would be arrested, even though they planned to take the signs down at 12:00. The police said that they had written a law at 10:00 and the signs were now illegal. We wouldn't leave. Mahoney and Newman said 'Absolutely not. We've got a permit and we're here. We've been here since Sunday, and we're supposed to be here until 12:00, and we're not leaving, because we aren't breaking any law.'

"By the time I came out at about 11:00 a.m., people had already started to line up for arrest; I was arrested within minutes of coming out of the court. We all sang 'God Bless America,' then changed the lyrics to 'God Save America.' We were all handcuffed behind our backs. They held us in the street, soaking wet. They put space blankets on us to keep us dry, but some of us were so chilled we were shaking to the bone.

"We found out later that some high-powered feminist attorneys had complained to Bader Ginsburg and to O'Connor, who complained to Rehnquist, and Rehnquist called the marshal and the supreme court police force to get rid of us.

"They brought a police transport van and put five women on one seat, four on the other, and then brought bars down across our chests and calves, the way they transport serial killers.

"We were searched twice on the street, and then when we got to the police station we were searched again. The nine women were locked in a 4x6 cell with no bathroom, phone or water -- remember, all of us were still fasting. There were just two benches in a filthy dirty cell; none of us could lie down, and we were there for the next 12 hours. We finally got food about 6:00 that evening -- green baloney. Thank God that we were there together so we could support each other.

"Unbeknownst to us, Gary McCullough and another fellow were working on our behalf. They got the American Center for Law and Justice to represent us; they made phone calls and demanded that we be released on our own recognizances. So at 11:30 at night we started getting released.

"The next morning we went for arraignment. Nobody had our paperwork; nobody knew what we were being charged with; nobody knew what to do. So we had to hang around all morning, because they didn't know what the charge was. They had never heard of it, because it was a new law; they had just made it up.

"Several people had to leave because their planes were leaving; some of us stayed. At 2:00 p.m. the citations finally arrived and we all pled Not Guilty. Five of us were there for the arraignment. Fortunately, one attorney offered to represent all of us just for the arraignment, granting in abstentia for everyone who was supposed to be there but had left, so nobody got a bench warrant. We're all scheduled for trial June 28."

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