“Yes, hello, Barb,” Doris would say to the patient whose number was on a form, feigning her best soft, caring, nurse voice. “Just checking in, Barb, to make sure you know your appointment time. Uh-huh. That’s right. And we’d also like to talk to you about the procedure.”
“Procedure?” This was the payoff. You tried to talk the woman out of it. Subtly at first, then hit them with the graphic stuff. Pretty slick, Doris thought.
“Did anyone talk to you about the procedure, and what it entails?”
“Not really.” They always said that. So first you just mention that they aren’t supposed to eat before the abortion, stuff like that. And then Doris would launch into a list of the risks of having the abortion, risks to the patient’s health and mental well-being. If the listener still hadn’t caught on to the ruse, Doris went for the jugular.
“And Barb, can you please tell us what you’d like us to do with the body?”
Silence.
“Barb?” Sometimes they got angry at this point. Doris would continue—calmly, clinically. “Well, there is a baby in there, Barb. We’ve got to do something with it. What do you want us to do? Flush it, or into the incinerator, or…?”
Click. Yes, Doris was a player. But then again, she had a life. Young children. Devoted husband. She could not be a warrior, could not pay the full price. Doris knew it, too, and felt guilt about it—guilt, and fear that one day she’d be called on the carpet by the Lord for her half measures.
Jim Kopp and Doris sat in front of the TV like old friends, although that was not quite true. Not old friends, but rather acquaintances who shared a passion for the cause. Jim would also chat with her husband, Pat, a Vietnam veteran, a former Marine, wounded in action. Jim respected that greatly. Jim and Doris watched rented movies. He enjoyed classics like Gone With the Wind, Wuthering Heights. Had the occasional beer, a Stroh’s perhaps. He was a “temperate” drinker, as he put it. To Doris, Jim was a prayerful, spiritual man, someone with no personal effects, and seemingly no passion beyond his faith in God and the cause. It made him more endearing. Doris mentioned his girlfriend. Well, she wasn’t really a girlfriend, but Jim did profess to being in love, grinning in that shy way of his. Jim led a monastic life in many ways, owning few clothes and washing them by hand, embracing celibacy, or at least monogamy. But he wanted to get married some day, have kids.
“C’mon, Jim, what’s her name, anyway?” asked Doris.
Jim kept smiling. Don’t go there. Pro-life women, thought Jim with a grin, they can’t keep quiet. Give them a chance, they’ll tell all. Doris enjoyed chatting with him. He was so well read, could talk about anything, with anyone. You started talking, and before you knew it, three hours had passed in the blink of an eye. She enjoyed feeling as though she was exploring philosophy and politics with him. She felt a connection and a respect for his convictions and quiet intelligence. But Jim Kopp wasn’t connecting, not in the same way as Doris. He adjusted his conversation to whoever he was with, playing whatever role was necessary, trying to make his audience feel good about their relationship. He was always playing.
Late in the evening Jim would rise from his chair and go outside for a long slow walk, gathering his thoughts, a solitary thin figure disappearing into the gloom. Was there anyone with whom Jim could truly connect, who could appreciate his intellect and reciprocate—and who could even look into the bloody abyss and not blink like the others? That was not the case with Doris Grady, sweet as she was, and as committed, on a certain level, as she was to the cause, the mission. No, Jim could not lower the mask for her.
For a time Jim lived in Binghamton, New York, where the headquarters of Operation Rescue was located, to do further work for Randall Terry. Jim was also affiliated with a militant group called The Lambs of Christ. But he didn’t last long with any one group. God love all pro-lifers, but did any of them feel the cause in the pit of their soul like he did? Ultimately, Terry, the public face of the movement for years, would go mainstream, even run for Congress, foreswear violence in the fight. He proudly proclaimed that he led the “largest civil disobedience movement in American history… Operation Rescue’s peaceful sit-ins resulted in over 70,000 arrests.”
Years later, Terry would say he remembered little about James Charles Kopp, other than he had been on his staff, and that he was devout. No, Operation Rescue did not suit Jim’s needs. Terry and the rescuers were, thank the Lord, engaged in the same cause. But there wasn’t extra room in Jim Kopp’s personal spiritual foxhole. He was disappearing, turning within himself, and to God, for direction. Before long, Randall Terry heard little of Kopp, and then not at all.
Amherst, N.Y.
Hanukkah, December 1988
The pro-life activists set up in front of Bart Slepian’s home in Amherst. Usually they wielded signs outside the clinic called Womenservices, where he worked in Buffalo. As an OB, he delivered babies and performed abortions at the clinic. But now they had taken the fight right in front of his home. They sang and jeered, called him a pig, a baby killer. Inside the house, Bart, his wife Lynne, and his young sons, Andrew, who was about five, Brian, three, were opening presents. Bart couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed a baseball bat and came out and smashed the window of a protester’s van. He was charged by police. He spoke to his old friend Rick on the phone later. Rick knew it would come to this, the harassment would escalate. They had talked about it before. It could get worse. Bart had to keep his cool.
“A baseball bat, Bart?” Rick said.
“This guy was on my property.”
“Bart, I totally understand why you did it. I don’t really blame you, but still, it’s stupid. You are the guy who got charged.”
“He was scaring my kids. It’s not going to happen.”
“Couldn’t you have found a little less dramatic way of dealing with it?”
“It’s not like I spent a lot of time thinking about it. It’s the only way I know how.”
The campaign against him reached bizarre proportions. Early one morning before dawn a white car with its lights off rolled down the Slepians’ street. Someone got out of the car, stole their garbage, and sped away. They were looking for billing records, phone numbers of women considering having an abortion. It turned out the trash thief in this case had been arrested four times for anti-abortion activities. He did it another morning. And another. Bart called the police, but he didn’t leave it at that. He waited inside the door one morning. At 6:15 a.m., he saw the car pull up. He sprinted towards it and got the licence number as it squealed away.
He talked to the media about it. “It’s kind of bizarre,” he said. “They must be looking for anything they can use against me. Hopefully they got the bag full of dirty diapers.”
In July 1988, the Democratic Party held its convention in Atlanta. Pro-life activists showed up to grab a share of the media attention. There were more than 350 people arrested and many spent several weeks in jail. Pro-lifers dubbed it “the siege of Atlanta.” Jim Kopp was among those arrested, for criminal trespassing at the Atlanta Surgi-Center. When police asked him his name, Jim, like others being arrested, repeatedly replied: “Baby Doe.”
While in jail, activists from around the country networked, gave themselves nicknames. Supporters of the Atlanta protests compared them to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, since pro-lifers believed they were spending time in the same jail where Martin Luther King was once held. It was here that the early pages of the Army of God Manual were drafted. The manual would become a bible for the radical fringe of the movement. It was never clear who authored the document, which underwent revisions after Atlanta. Some of the passages sounded like Jim’s voice: “Once an activist is married, and especially after having children, the constraints of parenthood are profound. Compassion for one’s own brood will curtail the level of covert activity—and a lot of other activity, as well!”