On August 5, 1986 he was in Pensacola, Florida. He was anxious to show his support for the woman whose reputation within the anti-abortion movement was reaching heroic proportions. Her name was Joan Andrews. It was back in March 1986, in Pensacola, that Andrews cemented her status as “patron saint of the rescue movement” at the Pensacola Ladies Center. Along with another protester, Reverend John Burt, and his two daughters, Andrews walked inside the clinic and, with police in pursuit, tried to unplug a suction abortion machine. Police cuffed her, then arrested the others. Andrews grabbed the edge of the machine behind her cuffed hands, yanked and toppled it over, disabling it. There were no abortions that day. The trial made her a star within the movement, she was sentenced to five years at the Broward Correctional Institute, Florida’s toughest maximum-security prison for women.
Jim Kopp and 300 others from far and wide made the trip to Pensacola, stood outside the clinic to protest the outrageous injustice done to Joan Andrews. It was heavenly for Jim to be among so many like-minded souls. He decided that, from that moment on, he would no longer go to jail angry, but with a cheerful heart. Among the group in Pensacola was a 58-year-old professor of philosophy from Fordham University in New York. His name was William Marra.
“We’re not eccentric, or extremist, but we’re here to see Joan Andrews free,” Marra told a reporter.
William Marra had a daughter named Loretta. She had just turned 23, studied philosophy at Fordham, and had, like her father, embraced the pro-life cause. Jim Kopp instantly felt great respect for William Marra, who had, like Jim’s father, served in the military. As for Loretta, Jim would, in time, make a connection with her that would grow stronger and stronger and ultimately, change his life.
Kopp headed back to California, and more protests and charges. September 6, in Richmond, trespassing. October 25, in San Jose, he invaded a clinic with another man and chained themselves to an examination table as 15 others protested outside. November 22 in Alameda, trespassing, causing injury, damaging property. He again headed for Florida. On Friday, November 28, the day after Thanksgiving, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest at the same Pensacola clinic where Joan Andrews had been arrested. Jim and others blocked the clinic doors with a truck. That same weekend a meeting was held at the Western Sizzlin’ steakhouse in town. One of the organizers was a man named Randall Terry. Terry unveiled his vision for a new, national, direct action campaign inspired by the impromptu assaults on clinics that had taken place. Terry called it “Operation Rescue.”
Among pro-lifers there were differences of opinion on tactics, on means and ends. Save the preborn, but how? What was the time frame for political change? What kind of action? Jim Kopp was part of the movement, had found a group to connect with—but how long could it conceivably last? He joined Randall Terry’s staff, but he would last only six months. His thinking was evolving on the utility of violence in the cause, and the distinction between man’s law and God’s law. Was history not replete with examples where man’s law required trumping by those willing to carry the torch, and weapons, for God’s law? Slavery was one example that pro-lifers most frequently cited. Jim listened to mainstream pro-life leaders take great pains to denounce violence in the cause. He felt they were not practicing Gandhi’s true satyagraha—civil resistance —which Jim thought should be active, outcome based, and sacrificial. He had a name for people who abused the concept: cowards.
Chapter 6 ~ Romanita
On December 16, 1986, smoke filled the Manhattan Planned Parenthood headquarters at Second Avenue and 22nd Street in New York City. One of the bombs was relatively small. No major damage, the carpet caught fire. But police found a larger bomb as well with a detonator designed to be triggered by the smaller explosion—it had not gone off. It was made of 15 sticks of dynamite, powerful enough to collapse the entire building and break windows blocks away. Bomb squad officers examined the blasting cap, timer and battery. Pro job. And there was something else stuck among the sticks of dynamite. It was a medal of St. Benedict, with the likeness of a monk on it, and the phrase Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur (may we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death). A bomb squad officer gingerly defused it. No one was caught.
In February, Cardinal John O’Connor appeared on TV urging the bomber to turn himself in. A 37-year-old ex-Vietnam Marine named Dennis John Malvasi surrendered. Malvasi was also involved in a bombing in Queens in November 1985. “If the Cardinal says something and you don’t listen,” he told a newspaper, “then when you stand before the magistrate in the celestial court, you got problems. And I got enough problems without God being mad at me.”
Malvasi had fought in the bloody aftermath of the Tet Offensive, serving as a field radio operator. He later told the New York Times that he never felt more alive than when under fire. After the war, he trained as an actor at workshops on the Lower East Side, worked as an entertainer on cruise ships. He was reportedly arrested in September 1972 for stabbing a man in a traffic altercation and sentenced to five years’ probation. In 1975, two months after early release from probation, he was arrested for carrying a .25-caliber pistol and jailed for two years. He went underground upon his release, using at least five aliases. In 1984, he was thrown in jail again for two years in Florida after attempting to buy firearms in that state.
Malvasi pled guilty to the Manhattan Planned Parenthood bombing. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years’ probation. Two other men received jail terms as well, including his brother-in-law. Malvasi told authorities where he had stored his explosives, and police found 78 dynamite sticks, black powder, and electric detonating plastic caps. Malvasi had a sharp, angular nose and dark eyes. He was a small man, perhaps a generous fivefoot-seven, but an angry intensity radiated from him. Upon his release from prison he began dating a woman he met in the pro-life movement. She too was Catholic, and not only shared his pro-life beliefs, but also his belief in taking action to further the cause. She was 13 years his junior, and her name was Loretta Marra.
On January 5, 1987, Jim Kopp was arrested in San Francisco for unlawful entry, obstruction, resist arrest, trespass. As was now routine with pro-life agitators, he was released. The next day, he was arrested again. February 25 he was arrested in Oakland, and two days later, in Woodbridge, New Jersey, for criminal trespassing and burglary. March 11, he was tried in Florida for breach of the peace. July 25, Manchester, Missouri, and later in Houston, charged with criminal trespass, fined $500 and jailed for two weeks. On August 22, 10,000 pro-lifers rallied at the Washington Monument, and nine people who entered a clinic in the city were arrested. Jim was among them.
During lulls in protests and rescues, Jim did odd jobs, construction and welding work. He had by the late 1980s made friends in the movement across the country, there was a light in the window for him when he needed a place to stay. In Pittsburgh, that light was at Doris Grady’s place. Doris was active back then. On more than one occasion, she and her pro-life friends raided trash cans behind a health clinic in the city. Some clinics had spotty privacy protocols in place back in those days. It was a typical tactic of hardcore pro-life activists to gather up piles of garbage and see what the abortionists were up to. Doris stuffed several bags to take home. Sometimes the city garbage guys would be there, and would let them rob the trash in exchange for a case of beer, you know? So Doris got home, sorted through the stuff. The golden items were billing records, they had the phone numbers on them. Doris made some calls.