Buffalo, NY — The morality play about abortion that for years unfolded on Buffalo streets – attracting hundreds of outsiders who blockaded or protected abortion facilities, displayed graphic photos of aborted children or placards supporting abortion — faded a long time ago.
Local pro-life advocates are coming together again to oppose the establishment of a new abortion facility and one disciplined abortion practitioner's efforts to open a second. However, this time, the tactics are different.
Protests planned by the pro-life movement – peaceful demonstrations, leafletting and prayer – are less abrasive compared with the tactics of the past.
“Aggressive tactics weren't effective,” said attorney Laurence Behr, a local pro-life leader. “They seemed to be polarizing society in an adverse way, and there's a hope that through education and more peaceful means people are coming around to recognizing the sanctity of human life and how wrong it is to kill.”
“Raucous demonstrations,” he said, “were turning people off.”
Court rulings forcing protesters to stay a specific distance from abortion facilities have played a role, but the turning point for the movement, Behr acknowledged, was the 1998 murder of abortion practitioner Barnett Slepian in his Amherst home.
Members of the pro-abortion movement agree.
“After Dr. Slepian's murder, many responsible pro-life activists
renounced any kind of direct “in your face' action against docs and clinics,” said Glenn E. Murray, attorney for the local pro-abortion network.
“Many people viewed the assassination of Dr. Slepian as an attack on democracy,” he added. “There's been a lot less in-your-face actions against doctors and people entering clinics because reasonable people said, “I'm not going to be involved in that kind of activism.'”
This gentler attitude of the local pro-life movement is obvious at the Buffalo Womenservices abortion facility . The handful of protesters quietly and sporadically picketing across the street have replaced the boisterous protesters of the past. They often shoved literature at young women entering and screamed that they were killing their babies.
The new approach was also evident two years ago, when abortion opponents learned that the Planned Parenthood was considering offering abortion services in its Wheatfield facility.
Niagara County's pro-life movement held a prayer vigil on Good Friday that year to protest the plans.
A Niagara County leader of the pro-life movement expressed shock Saturday when told that the abortion business actually opened three weeks ago, but he also said there would be no protests.
“I think it is horrendous. It's shocking that the state Health Department gave them a license,” said Anthony J. Murty, chairman of the Niagara County Right to Life Party.
Members of the pro-life community, Murty said, would continue to devote their energies to more constructive ways of assisting pregnant women rather than picket.
“Our main effort is to help people and not do protests for the sake of protests. We're trying to do it in a positive fashion,” Murty said. “We're trying to steer troubled mothers to pregnancy crisis centers and to let them know we are here to help.”
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)