“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.”

—Hebrews 12:4

Rescuers are radical realists. It’s important to state this up front in the prolife movement’s flagship intellectual journal because some ardent, hardworking, frontline prolifers seem to think rescuers are fringe, largely ineffective figures. Yes, they are admirable characters, full of idealism and holy zeal, yet they undermine their direct action by risking arrest and surrendering their lifesaving efforts to the unjust police arm of the culture of death. Every day they sit in court or in jail is a day they are not praying at the death centers, engaging with abortion-bound women, marching for life, calling Congress, picketing, petitioning, and in manifold ways making the public case against abortion. They also place burdens on spouses, children, and other family members who rely on them for support and fear for their safety.

So the thinking goes, and there’s much to be said for such a view. If you have never rescued, you may agree. Or if you’re like me, you support rescue from a safe distance, yet are simply too scared of prison time to risk arrest and leave a family that relies on you financially. The case against rescue is wholly rational and acceptable. Yet the case for rescue is rational as well. In fact, it is more in keeping with the reality of abortion on demand up to birth that exists in many areas of our nation, even after the overruling of Roe v. Wade.

Listen to this plea:

I know that many in the movement don’t agree with rescue and now consider me useless because I am behind bars. This shows once again how our movement often comes off as gimmicky and inauthentic. This isn’t a numbers game—this is about love. Loving the most useless, abandoned, and unwanted without fear of punishment. My vocation is to love . . . not to be reduced down to a function for the “cause.” My time in jail is the alabaster jar of perfume pouring out for the rejected and unloved.

. . . It’s not just “sad” when an unborn person is murdered; it is acutely devastating. Someone needs to feel and mourn deeply. Someone needs to love to the point of supposed uselessness. Someone needs to Rescue.

Those are the words of Lauren Handy in a statement from a jail cell after she was convicted under the federal FACE Act with eight others who participated in a rescue October 22, 2020, at a notorious late-term DC abortion clinic run by Dr. Cesare Santangelo. A member of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), Handy made headlines a while later, in March 2022, when she and a colleague were witnessing outside the same clinic and obtained a container of aborted babies from a medical waste collection company. Upon opening the container and finding more than 100 discarded babies, Handy noticed that five of them looked so well-developed and intact that she suspected they were delivered by partial-birth abortion in violation of federal law. After calling a priest to offer a funeral Mass for the babies, Handy called the police and handed over the five largest babies, asking the cops to have the bodies autopsied to see if the manner of death broke any laws. Yet, predictably, the police opened an investigation on Handy and not the abortionist.

According to a Department of Justice press release, the DC rescuers were charged with “conspiracy to create a blockade at the reproductive health care clinic to prevent the clinic from providing, and patients from receiving, reproductive health services.” These “health services” were termed “civil rights” by the Department of Justice, even though the Supreme Court had done away with the notion that access to abortion is a constitutional right. Enraged by the Dobbs decision, pro-abortion zealots, led by President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, have shown in many ways that they refuse to recognize the court’s ruling.

You may recall hearing about the convictions of Handy and her colleagues and perhaps prayed for the brave men and women who stopped abortions for a few hours in one notorious late-term death center in the nation’s capital, and then thought little more about it. What could you or I do, after all? Immediately following the verdict, after the Clinton-appointed judge ruled them to be violent criminals, the rescuers were carted off to prison, and there they have dwelt for months awaiting sentencing—which as of this writing is to commence in late March 2024!—in which they would face up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 in fines. We may feel helpless against such draconian legal measures, but we must never forget who these rescuers are and what they did and why. The dates of their convictions must be remembered by everyone in our nation who raises the pro-life banner. On August 29, 2023, a jury convicted Handy, Paulette Harlow, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, and William Goodman. (Another defendant, Jay Smith, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten months in prison.) In the other jury trial, Jonathan Darnel, Joan Andrews Bell, and Jean Marshall were convicted on September 15. By many accounts from those who attended the trials, the proceedings were grossly unfair, with juries packed with those favorable to abortion and admitted supporters of Planned Parenthood. Even worse were the rulings of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who would not allow defendants to describe the abortion procedure, give medical evidence of the humanity of the unborn, appeal to their religious beliefs, or present the necessity defense, making the case that the lesser offense of trespassing and shutting down the clinic was necessary to stop the greater offense of killing innocent children. From the judge to the jury, there was little the defendants could do to make a viable case for their actions.

But they made a good showing, with adequate counsel from pro-life law firms and even one court-appointed public defender. Now in prison, rather than referring to themselves as the DC 9, they insist on taking the spotlight off themselves and placing it on what they refer to as the DC 5, the five late-term babies discovered by Handy. Again, our hearts are moved by their unusual mix of idealism and humility. We may have thought that rescuers are attention-seeking radicals who like to make a show of their courage, like the Chicago Seven who were arrested at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and who brought props such as pigs (to reference the inflammatory Sixties radicals term for cops) to trial. Far from it. These men and women rescue to save lives, change hearts, and call attention not to themselves but to the violence of abortion and the plight of the children, such as the DC5.

In an eloquent essay titled “Personal Interposition: A Case for Reviving the Preborn Rescue Movement,” Darnel lays out the reason for rescue. He challenges every prolifer to summon the courage to peacefully block abortion clinic doors across the nation in an act of life-saving civil disobedience that would call attention to the daily holocaust and prick the conscience of Americans.

He writes:

. . . let’s not forget that there are about thirty million fully anti-abortion adults in the United States. That is more than enough people to shut down every surgical abortion mill in the nation, as well as many of the pharmacies that sell abortion drugs. Even if each anti-abortion adult rescued only once, our criminal justice system would not be able to incarcerate that many people. While civil strife is a possible outcome, a much more likely result would be that our nation would be forced to alter its laws and outlaw child-killing. I realize, of course, that this scenario is unlikely to transpire, but it is unlikely only because prolifers are unwilling to rescue in massive numbers. If they were willing, the abolition of abortion would be practically a fait accompli.

Call him naïve in thinking that there are truly thirty million Americans who are committed prolifers, given the more recent election losses for prolifers in “red” states such as Kansas and Ohio. And Darnel also likely underplays the likelihood of “civil strife” in response to massive nationwide rescues. If I learned anything from years of sidewalk counseling outside of clinics, it’s that pro-abortion forces are rabid, fueled by an energy that comes from the demonic. They will not rest, and if our side pushes harder, they will rush at us harder still. “Civil strife” is a polite way of describing what will happen. Yet it’s difficult to argue with the logic of Darnel’s appeal. Maybe God will bless our movement with success and peace if enough assemble at the frontlines. To bring about such a scenario, even with a hundred thousand rescuers, we need an organized movement to assure that everyone acts together and thus provides safety in numbers. A handful of rescuers are vulnerable to pre-dawn raids by heavily armed agents only because they are few and easy to track and harass. But law enforcement would be hard-pressed to use such tactics on many thousands of citizens sitting down in protest, and the political fallout of persecuting the leaders of the movement would be greater if an administration knew that a multitude of Americans supported rescue not only with letters and phone calls but with their own bodies planted firmly at the doors of clinics.

Joan Andrews Bell is perhaps the most credible witness to the effectiveness of rescue. She began her pro-life efforts soon after Roe was handed down in 1973 and was among the earliest rescuers in the 1980s, suffering more than one hundred arrests and spending years in jail. She took a respite from rescue, as did most others, after the FACE Act was passed and prolifers began to feel the heavy weight of jail time and treble fines. She and her husband, Chris Bell, spent the time raising their family, with a number of adopted handicapped children who would accompany them each year at the March for Life and other public pro-life events. Through the years, Chris has continued running Good Counsel Homes for unwed mothers in crisis.

Yet around 2017, a few prolifers were seeking more direct ways to save lives and change the culture. They started Red Rose Rescue, entering abortion clinics to hand out symbolic roses for life to women awaiting abortion. They were sometimes arrested for trespassing or causing a public disturbance, but the penalties were few under a Republican administration. But with President Biden, a self-professed Catholic, the price of opposing abortion has increased manifold. And as the recent rescuers have stated, the need for more serious and assertive methods is needed. Of course, Joan Andrews Bell has answered the call.

Her husband Chris spoke to me soon after Joan was imprisoned in September in a detention center in Alexandria, Va. She was able to call him every day, he said, and had attended Mass and received Communion. When asked if Joan, at 75, has not done enough over many years and should be able to rest from her pro-life labors, Chris said, “There’s no such thing as ‘done enough’ when babies are being slaughtered. It’s not a matter of who has done enough or not enough, it’s a matter of what you are called to do, how God is calling you.”

He added, “I think Joan and I are totally confident in the love of God if we submit ourselves humbly. In prison, she has always been able to witness to the other female inmates and have them pray together. God can use her time there for his own purpose and bring a greater good out of these small sacrifices in reparation for the slaughter of abortion. We hope and pray for that good, for the saving of many babies, more than we hope and pray for her freedom.”

It is no easy matter to address the many grave injustices of our world. We are limited, woefully weak, self-justifying individuals who think we are heroes for not cooperating, at least formally, with evil. We can rightfully boycott Target and Disney and Bud Light for their offenses against marriage and morality and vote as pro-life as possible in each election. The United States bishops as a body have once again stated, against those who would water down their witness, that abortion remains the premier issue among many moral and political concerns, thus giving Catholics and others of good will strong support for their pro-life efforts. Yet, as the rescuers plead by their presence in jail, what more is needed besides annual marches, email petitions, state referenda that may go awry, and prayer at abortion clinics, as good and necessary as each one is? What if God is calling me or you to sacrifice our freedom for the unborn? What if the foundational Scripture passage of the rescue movement suddenly strikes us to the heart?

Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? (Prov 24:11-12)

What if this message becomes literal for you on a certain day, at a certain hour, in a particular city and address? What would you do? After all, we have the example of Jesus, who chose arrest and the cross. In this context, the rescuer’s challenge is simple: What if we make him our model?

Convinced? Let’s roll! But the truth is, I have not even convinced myself. Fear and family obligations keep me on the pro-life sidelines, in the prayer pen, on the marches, on my laptop (using my pen name in this case), supporting pregnancy centers, in the voting booth. There are other ways to pick up your cross and follow the Lord. Rescue is not for everyone. But it may be for you. Pray for guidance, and for those unjustly incarcerated for showing us the more perfect way.