Teens Give New Life to Operation Rescue

The 25 teenagers, tanned and tired after a full day of summer camp, crowded around the fire pit at San Clemente State Beach to sing Christian hymns. “Make it personal,” the guitar-playing minister exhorted.

With these campers, it’s always personal.

There was 16-year-old Brenda Strattman of Binghamton, N.Y., who once drove 2 1/2 hours to rip up books she said were child pornography by photographers David Hamilton and Jock Sturges at a Barnes & Noble.

On the other side of the pit was Jesse Slovenec of Cleveland, who says she’s been an anti-abortion activist since she was a child. She’s now 17.

And sitting together were Rayna Sullenger, 14, and her sister, Brenna, 16, of San Diego, picket-line veterans who not only protest at abortion clinics, but also at appearances by politicians such as Vice President Al Gore. “This has basically been a part of my whole life,” Brenna said.

There were thousands of camps this summer for almost every interest a child could have--from horseback riding to math. But this one was run by what is left of Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion movement that gained notoriety a decade ago by organizing massive protests around abortion clinics, trying to block pregnant women from entering, and harassing clinic doctors and employees.

These teenagers, with their baggy shorts and boogie boards, are being groomed to be leaders of a resurrected movement.

“Since our elders aren’t doing anything about it, I think we should, since it’s our generation being killed,” said camper Danielle White, 15. Her father, longtime Operation Rescue leader Jeff White, ran the camp.

White’s great hope is to return Operation Rescue to the visibility it had in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, before the group flamed out from internal bickering and bad publicity over abortion clinic violence. Despite its high profile, Operation Rescue was never more than the fringe of the anti-abortion movement, but the group made its name with in-your-face tactics that included giant posters of bloodied fetuses.

White is now betting on troops from the generation to come of age since the Supreme Court made abortion legal with the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1972. The lives of most of the youths at the camp--age 14 to 18, with one 24-year-old-- have revolved around the anti-abortion movement since they were in elementary school.

Nearly all are home-schooled or attend conservative Christian schools where the anti-abortion message is hammered in. Their families are fighters in the movement, their friends are anti-abortionists and many of them have been arrested at demonstrations.

“It’s become a way of life,” said Jason Conrad, 15, of Laguna Hills, who has gone to meetings and demonstrations with his mother for years. “I know that one-third of my generation has been killed by abortions. I think of all the kids who would have been in my grade.”

Flip Benham, leader of a Dallas splinter of Operation Rescue, looked almost gleefully toward the time the next generation takes over the anti-abortion movement. “Parents must throw themselves on barbed wire so kids can run on our backs and advance on the gates of hell,” he said. “If you think we’re radical now, you haven’t seen anything. Wait until you see our kids.”

The kids are what Dallas Blanchard, a professor at the University of West Florida who studies the anti-abortion movement, calls “encapsulated,” isolated from the broader world, and constantly having their views reinforced. Even exposure to different ideas on TV or radio strengthens their beliefs as they react against it.

The camp’s two-week run in July--where the youths spent days picketing abortion clinics and politicians and listening to lectures on morality--was just the beginning of White’s plan to revitalize Operation Rescue.

Starting in January, he hopes to send groups of 15 youths to colleges and universities throughout the state for a week at a time to spread the anti-abortion gospel. White and his advisors also are deciding whether to send a brigade of 100 youths to Washington, D.C., in the spring.

“One of the things we want to do is take a tour of the Senate buildings with pictures of aborted babies on our shirts,” he said. “D.C. is so ripe.”

Feuding Within Organization

Operation Rescue’s viability began to slide when police and abortion clinics refined their tactics of dealing with demonstrations, and more protesters were arrested. Its leaders, including White, feuded. When anti-abortion fanatics killed and wounded several doctors and nurses and bombed clinics, the violence tarnished Operation Rescue. Not only did it push away some sympathizers, Congress was spurred to make it a serious crime to harm, threaten or harass anyone entering or leaving an abortion clinic.

More recently, federal authorities have used an anti-racketeering law to stop campaigns against abortion clinics, and groups such as Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women have sued Operation Rescue leaders and seized their assets.

Even Randall Terry, Operation Rescue’s founder, left the organization. He is now running for Congress in upstate New York on a Christian-based platform that calls for outlawing abortion and ending welfare, Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service. He has founded a group of congressional candidates called the Patrick Henry Men, which propounds that women are subservient to men, homosexuality is a sin and that property taxes should be abolished.

The remnants of Operation Rescue, meanwhile, have split into the group Jeff White runs out of Blue Jay, near Lake Arrowhead, and Benham’s group in Dallas.

Neither group causes much concern for the pro-choice movement. “For quite a while they’ve kind of had the breath knocked out of them,” said Fred Clarkson, author of the book “Eternal Hostility,” about the religious right.

But while much of Operation Rescue’s support may have faded, its militant core remains active. “They have given their whole lives to this issue. It’s what they eat, sleep and breathe,” said Anne Bower, editor of the pro-choice magazine Body Politic. “They have to do what they have to do, and I don’t see them stopping.’

Still, the dwindling of Operation Rescue’s support has been dramatic. White said the number of people turning out for Operation Rescue events has dropped 90%. And his group, variously known as Operation Rescue California or Operation Rescue West, has seen its contributions fall from $70,000 a month to $22,500.

That’s why White has turned to a younger generation.

“The average age of a pro-life activist is a grandmother who’s 50,” he said. “That’s not really relevant in the everyday lives of people having abortions. I believe we have to become relevant, and I think these young people are going to have to do it.”

White, 40, has nine children, ranging from a newborn to 16. “Every two years, like clockwork,” he said. He doesn’t believe in birth control, noting “Children are blessings from God, so he’ll meet your needs.”

White owned a BMW parts distributorship near San Jose until he sold the business and his home in Santa Cruz in 1988, using the money to support his family while he worked for Operation Rescue.

His anti-abortion activities have taken their toll. He’s served a total of 1 1/2 years in jail and owes $1.5 million in civil judgments. Others own the house he lives in and the RV he used as an office and bedroom at the summer camp. His salary comes from contributions.

White said he has registered several names for his anti-abortion group so that whenever the assets of one are seized, he can tell contributors to send their money to the new group.

“I believe I will see an end to legalized abortion in my lifetime,” he said. “I believe it is absolutely a winnable fight. That is what keeps driving me to try different tactics.”

The latest is the camp, which was called “Survivor Summer ’98.” Black T-shirts explained the name. They show a drawing of a skeleton fetus and say, “If you were born after 1972, you’re a survivor! 1/3 of our generation has been killed before birth.”

“We have to stand against what is evil,” said Brenna Sullenger, speaking with the passion of most campers. “We need to expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness.”

Many campers or their parents knew White from Operation Rescue activities. Jesse Slovenec’s father, Joseph, was the leader of the group’s chapter in northeast Ohio, and he and White were arrested together in Buffalo. Slovenec is running for Congress on the same platform as Terry.

Two of White’s children are campers. They also work in Operation Rescue California’s office in Blue Jay. His 13-year-old son ran the office during the camp.

Another camper, Grace Conedy, 17, of Crestline, also works in the Operation Rescue office, using the flexibility that comes from being schooled at home. Her family and church are anti-abortion. “That’s what I grew up around,” she said. “That was the foundation.”

Divine Guidance

Brenda Strattman, sporting three earrings on each side, said she prayed until she felt God leading her to the anti-abortion movement. Last school year, she spent each Wednesday preaching the gospel and the evils of abortion outside Binghamton, N.Y., high schools.

Christine Reeves, 15, from Sacramento, is part of an anti-abortion group for teenagers back home. She wore a necklace that says, “True Love Waits.”

“I’m going to wait for God to give me the right man,” she said. “The right husband.”

The adults at the camp included the Rev. Joseph Foreman, who headed a group called Missionaries to the Pre-Born and helped write a petition endorsing anti-abortion violence, although he later renounced it. Carla Bultsma and Cheryl Conrad spent a year taking Operation Rescue literature and fetus posters to every high school in Orange County.

Despite the dwindling support for Operation Rescue’s tactics, White still revels in confrontation. Not only is he teaching the campers ideology, he’s teaching tactics.

A typical day in San Clemente began with a speaker talking about subjects such as sexual purity or fetal pain. Then came political activism, whether picketing abortion clinics or driving 63 miles to picket Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gray Davis’ office in Los Angeles and stopping at Laguna Beach on the way back to do “street ministering.”

The group even set up shop outside the offices of Orange County state legislators Curt Pringle and Scott Baugh. That may have been a first, since both oppose abortion. But the Survivors were angry they had accepted campaign donations from a doctor who owns an abortion clinic.

“We’re either going to be sitting at a table with you or picketing you,” White said. “There is no middle ground.”