Operation Rescue 'Has No Place' In Antiabortion-Rights Movement, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 24 Sep 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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Many are "questioning" whether the extremist antiabortion-rights group Operation Rescue is "on its last legs" after group President Troy Newman sent a fundraising letter "pleading for donations to save its life," Kansas City Star columnist Mary Sanchez writes. "Indeed, times have not been good for Operation Rescue lately," Sanchez says, adding that the murder of George Tiller, a Wichita-based abortion provider and the group's "greatest fundraising tool," has left Operation Rescue "floundering."

Sanchez writes that she was "a little suspicious" of the letter and "suspect[s] that Operation Rescue will be around as long as Troy Newman has fingers and an Internet connection." Although the group "will never relive the glory years it enjoyed at the head of the antiabortion movement's most violent days, when it could collect a million dollars from its faithful," it is "entirely possible Newman generated enough donations to make his recent e-mail plea worthwhile," she writes. In the wake of Tiller's death and the subsequent closing of his clinic, Operation Rescue is focusing on Nebraska-based abortion provider LeRoy Carhart, who has pledged to Tiller's work and may relocate to Wichita, according to Sanchez.

In its e-mail, Operation Rescue "claims to be embracing new methods," including "no violence, no threats," she writes, adding, "Don't hold your breath." Sanchez continues that abortion-rights opponents, herself included, "believe that more reasoned measures can reduce the number of abortions in the U.S." and that we need "better access to contraception, and education on how to use it, to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place." Women seeking abortion "shouldn't have to see anyone but trained counselors [and] professionals, not the kind of people who linger outside clinics to 'sidewalk counsel' women hurrying from their cars to the clinics to make sure that all options are known to them," she writes.

"Such a future has no place for Operation Rescue," Sanchez says. Scott Roeder -- the man charged with Tiller's murder -- "[e]ven ... seems to recognize the group's tainted image," she adds. According to Sanchez, Roeder in a letter to Newman wrote, "'It looks as though your hollow cries are falling on deaf ears.'" Sanchez concludes, "We would be lucky if Roeder were proved correct" (Sanchez, Kansas City Star, 9/22).

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