Operation Rescue president committed to ending abortion in U.S.
Respect Life Award recipients, from left, Patricia and William Schneider of Christ the King Parish in Indianapolis and their son, State Sen. Scott Schneider (R-Indianapolis), accept their awards from Right to Life of Indianapolis president Marc Tuttle during the Celebrate Life dinner on Sept. 27 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. (Photo by Mary Ann Garber)
By Mary Ann Garber
God blesses us with babies, Operation Rescue president Troy Newman emphasized during a pro-life fundraiser in Indianapolis, and it is our moral imperative as Christians and Americans to protect defenseless children from the moment of their conception.
The co-author of Their Blood Cries Out, resident of Wichita, Kan., and ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church was the keynote speaker for the 29th annual Celebrate Life awards dinner on Sept. 27 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.
“In this fight for children’s lives, we can’t be mediocre,” he said. “We can’t be middle of the road, … because the children’s lives demand it.”
Sponsored by Right to Life of Indianapolis, the event also recognized State Sen. Scott Schneider (R-Indianapolis) and his parents, William and Patricia Schneider of Christ the King Parish in Indianapolis, with the organization’s Respect Life Award for their many years of distinguished service to the cause of life.
Carmel High School teachers Margaret Winans, a member of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in Carmel, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese, and Jon Kane, a member of St. Luke the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis, received the organization’s Charles E. Stimming Sr. Pro-Life Award for founding a Teens for Life Club at that public school.
In 1998, Newman told the gathering, he began his innovative leadership of Operation Rescue by transforming it from organizing pro-life demonstrations at abortion facilities to investigating abortion providers and gathering evidence of illegal activities for criminal prosecution.
“It’s the abortionists that belong in jail,” he said.
“… We began to refocus Operation Rescue’s work from a protest group to one that demands justice, one that enforces the laws, one that demands regulatory agencies to enforce the laws that are already on the books. … We know [abortion providers] are breaking laws across the nation.
“God’s plan is for life, and we should never forget the urgency that children are dying today—3,500 today and the next and the next [in abortions in the U.S.],” he said. “… It’s a moral imperative that we reach out to the least of these, those who are helpless, who have no voice.”
Life is truly a miracle that must be protected, Newman said. “At the moment of conception, the DNA of the mother, the DNA of the father and the brand new DNA of their baby is present in a unique and amazing form. Never in the history of the world has that unique human being been created.”
Abortion providers and pro-choice legislators even use pro-life rhetoric, he said, to try to distort the ugly truth that abortion kills defenseless unborn babies.
“It’s an absolutely illogical argument to argue in favor of killing an innocent baby in the womb,” Newman said.
“… Abortion is not health care. Abortion is the disease, and pregnancy is health care when that baby is delivered.”
Activism drives legislation, he said. “We have to be the [pro-life] activists on the street and on the phone and in the e-mail in boxes supporting our legislators, reminding them that we have clout in America.”
Operation Rescue targeted 20 abortion clinics in Texas during a three-month undercover investigation, Newman said, that revealed multiple health code and legal violations, including misuse of the disposal of aborted babies’ body parts.
The pro-life organization also tackled health code and legal violations at abortion facilities in Kansas, he said, to reduce the number of clinics in the state from eight providers to only three centers today.
“One of them, Planned Parenthood, is facing 107 criminal charges,” Newman said, “23 of which are felonies.”
To achieve these life-saving successes, he said, “we had to do a fundamental shift in the way the pro-life movement in Kansas was doing business. We had to make abortion ugly. We had to make it what it is. We had to report every single botched abortion. … We made abortion a daily issue in the state of Kansas.
“That’s the sort of pro-life grassroots activism that supports legislation,” Newman said, “and gives the legislators the [facts] that they need to pass strong pro-life laws, … to follow Indiana’s example and defund Planned Parenthood and pass a strong sonogram law.”
The pro-life movement must focus on “peaceful, nonviolent, direct action exposing the crimes of the abortionists,” he said. “We must denounce every act of violence, every single one.”
Recent polls indicate that 63 percent of Americans want serious restrictions placed on abortion, Newman said. “Americans can no longer tolerate abortion. … This year, 480 pieces of pro-life legislation have been introduced in statehouses, and following Indiana’s lead seven states have [tried to defund] Planned Parenthood.”
Fifty abortion mills have closed in the U.S. during the last 18 months, he said, and 1,400 abortion centers that were closed during the past 15 years have not reopened.
“Seventy percent of the abortion industry [in the U.S.] has closed,” Newman said. “The abortion industry is a dying business.”
Yet, in Indiana alone, he said, there are still nine abortion facilities killing unborn babies and receiving help from our tax dollars.
Pro-life Americans must continue to work hard to overturn the health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, he said, and to defund more Planned Parenthood businesses throughout the country.
“We’re on the winning side,” Newman said. “We are pressing toward victory. We have to be goal-oriented. … We must win this battle. We must come together and be God’s voice on behalf of the children.” †
