Yesterday I attended the funeral mass of a fellow rescuer – that’s what we called members of Operation Rescue, “the largest peaceful civil disobedience movement in American history.” We would sit and pray in front of abortion “clinics” in numbers sufficient to block the entrance in order to prevent the deaths of unborn children scheduled to the aborted. Since we refused to move, we had to be carried (or dragged) away. As our numbers increased the punishments became harsher, and many rescuers spent weeks and months locked up for their trouble. Jim, quiet, gentle, loving, totally harmless, was such a man. God rest his soul.
It came to mind during the mass that the next day was Mothers’ Day, and that I had written a poem on Mothers’ Day in 1992 when I was in the Erie County Jail in Buffalo NY. Though I’m not much of a poet, I offer what I wrote that day in memory of and as a tribute to those who cared enough about the unborn to lay down their lives (after a fashion) for the most helpless and vulnerable among us. Read the rest of this entry »