Our longtime client, co-founder, and friend, Joseph M. Scheidler, passed away on January 18, 2021. Known as the ‘Godfather’ of the pro-life movement, Joe was a giant figure whose background in communications and public relations served to inspire and network with others around the country to build up and galvanize the growing pro-life activist movement throughout the United States. Joe’s first book, Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion (1985), included a long litany of instructional guides on how pro-life activists could -- and should -- go on the offensive to help reach the minds and hearts of Americans to turn away from the regime of abortion-on-demand that was launched on January 22, 1973, with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe vs. Wade. Among the 99 types of protest he described in his book “Closed,” etc. were such mundane and simple methods such as writing letters to the editor, but Joe also described how “sidewalk counseling” at the threshold of abortion providers could actively involve pro-lifers with the dramatic task of persuading pregnant Moms, often accompanied by Dads, to turn away from abortion and to save the lives of their infants – encounters as fraught with high drama and significance as any last ditch appeal for clemency for convicts facing execution on Death Row at the local penitentiary. Joe’s message thus offered to help us realize that promoting the “pro-life message” meant more than merely reciting the nice dulcet phrases from our Declaration of Independence about our inalienable rights, including “the right to life,” with which we are endowed by our Creator. No, much as Joe revered the Declaration as our nation’s key foundational document, he urged that pro-lifers had to invest their physical and spiritual lives in these sacred phrases, to live them as well as intone and proclaim them, by not shrinking from the grim, ghastly, flesh-and-blood reality that abortion providers do not operate “clinics” that heal and help living beings, but rather that they operate legalized killing centers where human beings are regularly and painfully put to death, ripped apart by suction machines, or dismembered or cut to death by application of the abortionist’s knife. Joe’s activism and eloquence made it urgent that his fellow countrymen and countrywomen actively bear witness in their daily lives to our nation's longtime commitment to the sanctity of each and every human life, from conception until natural death.

Thus Joe Scheidler's advocacy and his personal activism inspired many pro-life activists to conduct "sidewalk counseling," or prayer vigils, or even “rescues” at abortion provider locations. It was Joe who back in the late 1980’s inspired a young Evangelical Christian minister, Randall Terry of Binghampton, New York, to found and organize a new activist group called "Operation Rescue." Terry’s group began to conduct mass "rescues," involving pro-life activists, often as many as several hundreds, thus engaging in what Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference called “peaceable, non-violent direct action” (Letter from Birmingham Jail, April, 1963) by peacefully, prayerfully, and passively blocking access to abortion providers, thereby causing them to shut down if only for temporary periods. All this activism – not only the “rescues” but also the prayer vigils, sidewalk counseling, and even the letters to the editor provoked powerful, hostile opposition to Scheidler on the part of the abortion industry and its many allies.

Thus in June, 1985, Joe was sued under the federal antitrust laws. The suit was brought by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and a pair of abortion providers purporting to represent all U.S. women whose access to abortion providers had been impeded by pro-lifers inspired by Scheidler and by a pair of abortion providers purporting to represent all abortion providers operating outside of hospitals. Both NOW and the abortion providers were represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) while NOW was also represented by its general counsel, Patricia Ireland. The lawsuit charged the defendants – Scheidler, his Pro-Life Action League (“PLAL” or “the League”), his two helpers, Andrew Scholberg and Timothy Murphy, St. Louis activist leader, John Ryan, his St. Louis-based Pro-Life Direct Action League (“PLDAL”), and activist Joan Andrews, who was then imprisoned in Florida for having pulled the plug on a suction machine at an abortion provider in Pensacola, FL, were engaged in a conspiracy to “unreasonably restrain trade” by shutting down the abortion industry, allegedly thereby eliminating “competition” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

These defendants were initially defended by a non-profit group, then based in Chicago, called Americans United for Life (AUL), and it was AUL that asked Tom Brejcha to join the defense as AUL was then staffed by young relatively inexperienced lawyers who were adroit and skilled in writing legal briefs but who had never defended depositions nor tried actual cases in courtrooms. SPLC was then led by the famous, immensely profitable lawyer Morris Dees and his helper Richard Cohen. Dees had gained renown by winning court victories over the Klu Klux Klan and he was a legendary fundraiser, boasting offshore bank account totally hundreds of millions of dollars. He analogized what Scheidler and his pro-life co-defendants had done to what the Klan defendants had done, using tactics of intimidation and violence to eliminate economic competitors, such as Vietnamese fishermen who were driven out of business by their Klan-backed established fishermen who had felt threatened by the new Asian immigrants who had migrated to Louisiana in the wake of the Communist takeover of South Vietnam.

After persuading the initially assigned Judge, a Reagan-appointed federal Judge in Chicago (to where the case, originally filed in Delaware, was transferred) that the case should not be dismissed on purely legal grounds, SPLC took Scheidler’s deposition, placing him under oath and grilling him with questions about his tactics (the 99 ways of shutting down the abortion industry), as well as the tactics of those who had opted to bomb and burn abortion providers’ premises (which SPLC alleged, without benefit of even the slightest proof, that Scheidler supported or even directed despite his pledge of and advocacy for non-violence). AUL then asked Tom Brejcha to get out in front of the case, as its lawyers had never defended depositions, and Brejcha formally appeared in the case as Scheidler’s lead defense counsel.

When Scheidler repeatedly insisted, under oath, that he had nothing to do with the abortion provider arson or bombings but that he was non-violent both in word and deed, SPLC abruptly dropped out of the case, which had been transferred to Chicago. This was just before Thanksgiving, 1988. Patricia Ireland, then NOW president Molly Yard's general counsel and vice-president, took over and added federal racketeering (RICO) charges against Scheidler, Scholberg, Murphy, and the League. Ms. Ireland also added Randall Terry, his “Operation Rescue,” and others as defendants, while still pressing the antitrust charges as well as RICO.

While we will spell out the details of the vigorously contested legal proceeds in a later posting on this website, for now let us “fast forward” and point out that It took the defense lawyers all the way until Spring, 2001, for the defense to prevail in the trial court, and both the antitrust and RICO charges were all dismissed.  This was a smashing victory that won mention on page 1 of the New York Times. But it proved short-lived.

That hard-won dismissal after five years proved anything but "final" for the RICO charge. Although the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, based in Chicago, fully affirmed the dismissal of both antitrust and RICO charges, the U.S. Supreme Court granted NOW’s and the abortion providers’ petition for review of the RICO dismissal. Scheidler and AUL retained Professor G. Robert Blakey of Notre Dame Law School, who had been principal draftsman of the RICO law when it was passed by Congress back in 1970, to argue for the defense before the Supreme Court. Alas, the RICO charges were reinstated by a unanimous 9-0 ruling of the Justices in January, 1994, based on an interpretation of the RICO law that held its  broad terms applicable to non-profit, non-economic protesters equally as to mobsters running “rackets” for money or other forms of economic gain. In retrospect, despite the apparent contradiction implicated by the suggestion that “racketeers” could run a moneyless “racket,” what concerned the Justices was the public officials should still be held subject to RICO claims if their motives were solely to obtain political, not monetary, advantages. The truth remained, however, that all Scheidler and the other pro-lifers sought was the purely political objective of holding abortion illegal and restoring legal respect for human life in the womb.

Thus the case was sent back down for further proceedings before the lower courts. AUL dropped out of the case, and the Scheidlers were subjected to many stressful years of expensive "discovery" proceedings, which they could not even remotely afford. But they refused to give in to settlement demands of NOW's and the abortion industry's lawyers. As a result, depositions were taken from pro-life activists all over the U.S., as NOW and the abortion lawyers tried (vainly!) to prove that Scheidler, Terry and their co-defendants were leaders of a nationwide racketeering conspiracy -- a conspiracy which not only involved blocking of access to abortion providers and other forms of peaceable activism, but also included violence -- a claim to which they clung tenaciously even in the utter absence of proof. Finally, the trial judge rejected the claim that Scheidler was somehow connected with anti-abortion violence as totally devoid of evidence and baseless in 1997, when ruling on the abortionists’ motion for summary judgment (judgment rendered on paper submissions).

As the case headed to a jury trial set to begin in March, 1998, co-defendant and Operation Rescue Founder Randall Terry made a separate settlement with NOW and the abortion industry lawyers. The long jury trial set for March, 1998, went forward, however, against Scheidler and Operation Rescue, continuing through April, 1998, and followed by an injunction hearing in June-July of that same year. Triple damages over a quarter million dollars were assessed against Scheidler, his group, the Pro-Life Action League, and his helpers Andrew Scholberg and Timothy Murphy. A nationwide RICO injunction was handed down against all defendants and anybody acting "in concert" with them. The abortionists were claiming that Scheidler’s racketeering conspiracy comprised as many as “a million” adherents, thereby making it clear that by their lawsuit they were aiming to shut down the entire pro-life activist movement.

Scheidler was repeatedly advised to settle the case, as one expert after another urged him to face the ugly truth that his cause was hopeless, as the Clinton presidency was securely anchored in the nation’s cultural fabric, successive court challenges to Roe v. Wade had been rebuffed, and the political outlook was as bleak as ever with a pro-abortion decisive majority entrenched on the Supreme Court. But Scheidler refused to back down. He and his wife, Ann, pledged the equity in their home as bond for an appeal, which we pursued with vigor and hope. But alas, the verdict and injunction were affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals sitting in Chicago, without dissent, or even a single vote for “rehearing” by all of the Judges on that court.

Mirabile dictum! In April, 2002, however, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear the case on appeal for a second time. This time the verdict and injunction were reversed by a decisive majority of the Justices, 8-1, in Spring, 2003. Numerous “friend of the Court” briefs were filed by all manner and variety of American protest groups, including Dr. King’s own Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the fruit of Tom Brejcha’s many pilgrimages down to Atlanta where SCLC was headquartered on Auburn Avenue, just down the street from the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church. SCLC’s brief was largely based on a historical review of all the famous American protest movements throughout our history, which often – like Operation Rescue – had resorted to the tactic of what Dr. King called “peaceable non-violent direct action.” This advocacy arose during the oral argument before the Supreme Court when the late Justice Ruth Ginsburg asked U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson (who was arguing for the Bush Administration against the pro-lifers on the substantial question whether a pro-life “rescue” could be held to qualify as the crime of federal “extortion”, that is “obtaining“ of “property” by force, threat or violence by mere temporary blocking of access) whether that theory of extortion could have been used against the civil rights protesters back in the 1950’s and 1960’s Olson had to answer “Yes,” whereupon we suddenly felt uplifted with hope!  Indeed, we prevailed by 8-1 – a decisive rejection of the thrust of the abortionists’ case that rescues were acts of extortion!

Nevertheless, in a remarkable turn of events, when the case was remanded back to the same panel of the Judges on the Court of Appeals which had affirmed the verdict and injunction the Supreme Court had just reversed, Judge Diane Wood wrote an opinion ruling that the Justices had overlooked and failed to address or rule on some of the jury's findings that alone may have warranted reinstatement of the injunction. Judge Wood must have believed that the Supreme Court would not hear the case a third time. But she was wrong. The Justices did take the case a third time and reversed, again, this time unanimously -- but as Justice O'Connor had retired after the oral argument and her replacement, Justice Alito, had not heard the oral argument, the tally was 8-0.

Joe Scheidler was a friend, whose love for innocent, imperiled infants was huge and fierce.

Our hearts are still heavy with sadness. But we are proud to salute Joe's legendary service and lifelong achievements for the sacred cause we serve - the inalienable right to life with which we are endowed by our Creator - from conception all the way until natural death.

Joe died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family, after a bout of pneumonia. But he bequeathed a precious legacy to America’s pro-life movement, as pro-life activism remains a thriving means by which our fellow citizens may still go peaceably to abortion provider sites and both pray and advocate in favor of saving human lives in imminent peril. Thus the scourge of abortion can now be recognized, and confronted, and defeated!