Monday February 12, 2007
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Daniel Heenan’s Account of Battling the Abortion Business and Washington D.C. Police
By Daniel Heenan
When I walked into the school where I work on Wednesday afternoon after having been gone for two and a half days, one child after another asked me, “Mr. Heenan, did you win?” I had to answer in the negative.
“How could that happen?” they inquired. “We were praying for you,” they added. The answer to their question was not easy to come by.
I had been gone from my work as a middle school religion and history teacher because I was in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia engaged in a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. The charge I brought against the abortuary’s security guard was battery. The verdict the jury returned was in favor of the defendant.
During my days at Christendom College I was a member of a group known as Shield of Roses. The mission of this informal organization was to travel the approximately seventy miles every Saturday morning to pray the rosary and offer assistance to women visiting the Planned Parenthood office just blocks from the White House. Since I first visited the abortuary, there had been a black line painted on the sidewalk leading to the entrance of the facility that pro-lifers had unquestioningly heeded as marking the distance beyond which they could not pass (20 feet). In April of 2004, this impression changed.
Because of the so-called “March for Women’s Lives,” (a debauched display of the darkness that rests at the foundation of the pro-abortion camp), there was a much larger number of pro-lifers present at the facility than was normal. Many of these individuals, I immediately noticed, were standing beyond the black line and in other areas we had thought were forbidden. After speaking to the leader of this demonstration, Patrick Mahoney, I realized that the line had been painted to mark an injunction against a single individual (Mr. Mahoney), and that it had been challenged and defeated in litigation. Therefore, because all the sidewalks in that part of the District of Columbia are public, our counseling did not have to be restricted by the line.
In the intervening week I verified the accuracy of Mr. Mahoney’s explanation and decided that I would counsel women beyond the black line.
When I arrived at the clinic the next week, I informed the lead escort of my intentions. He was not pleased and went inside and presumably informed the clinic staff. The first time I crossed the line I did so without incident. The escorts, however, were not willing to so easily abandon the lie of the black line which they had so long perpetuated. Instead, they linked arms and formed a human wall across the sidewalk, determined to bar me from approaching any nearer to the clinic.
When the next group of women approached, I began to counsel as I normally did. When we reached the black line, the escorts unlinked their arms to allow the women to pass through. In the process, I was also able to pass through their barricade. Once on the other side of the line, the door opened, and two individuals came outside. Before the woman I had been talking to entered the clinic, she stopped, turned to me, and accepted the rosary I had been offering her. Then, unfortunately, she went inside. At that very instant the plain clothes security guard who had emerged from the facility shouted at me, grabbed me, spun me around, and began to push me away from the building. When he had moved me several steps he then pushed me to the ground. My head nearly hit a raised concrete curb on the edge of the sidewalk. The security guard then fell on top of me.
While these events shocked me tremendously, what happened next was even more dismaying. A cop who had watched what happened told me I could not press charges. More cops arrived and clearly vocalized which side they favored. I was told that if I pressed charges then I would have charges pressed against me. I had not the faintest idea what infraction I could have committed. This was to prove just the beginning of the frustration involved with battling the abortion establishment.
Two weeks later when I was at the clinic one of the same officers who had been on the scene just after the aforementioned incident arrived. He said to one of my friends, “What if I got with your girlfriend? Then would you still want to keep the baby?” Later while I was standing all alone, not even beyond the sacred black line, he grabbed me, dragged me to a nearby fence, pinned me up against it, and threatened me with arrest. When I asked him to inform me what law I had violated, he responded by saying that he makes the law here.
That there was ever even a chance of justice being rendered for these events is remarkable. The case was at first thrown out by the Attorney General’s office because, in their eyes, there were two equal and minor claims of assault. (One, of course, was fraudulent). Fortunately a sympathetic officer stumbled upon the case and was given permission to reopen it. This, unfortunately, cost him much sacrifice because he stated in an email that he was more inclined to believe the testimony of Christian witnesses.
When the investigation commenced it was obstructed the entire way. The detective requested from the clinic their security video on multiple occasions, but they did not turn it over. When he was finally able to produce a warrant, it had conveniently been taped over. When the clinic manager was interviewed she said she did not see anything, but a photo that later turned up which showed her to be the second of the two individuals that came out of the door just prior to the incident. In other words, she was standing only a few feet away.
The matter finally did have its day in court. The security guard was arrested and there was both a criminal and civil trial. This does not mean, however, that there was justice. In both instances, the ruling was that the guard acted in defense of property and defense of others. This was due, in large part, to the caricature of me as a militant anti-abortion zealot that the defense was able to paint. Under oath, their witnesses alleged that I would shout and intimidate women, stand in their way, grab their arms, shove pictures of aborted babies in their faces, and even push them. I never did any of this.
The best answer I could give to my students’ innocent inquiries about how I could have lost these cases was based on the realization that the battle for life is, at its heart, a spiritual battle. As committed Catholics, honesty is important to us. As committed abortion proponents, deceit and dishonesty is part and parcel of their business. The very term they use to describe themselves, “pro-choice”, is the most poignant illustration of this fact. Is it realistic for us to expect true justice from a system that can rationalize abortion?
More alarming yet was the fact that during the trial all three defense witnesses, including the defendant, revealed themselves as being either Catholics or former Catholics. This was particularly embarrassing for me as I was being represented by a group of fervent evangelical Christians from the American Center for Law and Justice. This begs the question then, of to what extent is the proliferation of evils like abortion in our society at its root a failure of the Church to effectively carry out its mission? What would be the state of the abortion industry in this country if all the so-called Catholics were really Catholic? Could Planned Parenthood survive without the support of Catholics?
So often, and rightly so, we criticize the bishops for their failure to discipline the likes of Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry. But, should we really expect them to do so when the faith is not being taught on the most basic level to the extent that a security guard who admits to being raised Catholic can testify that his job is to put his life on the line to defend Planned Parenthood? Though these witnesses all know that the Church is opposed to abortion, they evidently do not think that is of much consequence. The battle is thus not merely a legal and political one. Demons like these can, perhaps, only be expelled through much prayer and fasting, as our Lord once said. For this to happen, true Christians zealously pass down and defend the fundamental teachings of the faith.
It was touching that my students were so interested in the trial. In our discussions about life issues in class they very innocently ask me how anyone could support abortion. I do not have an easy answer for them. It is my hope and prayer that what they are being taught now will continue to be reinforced as they grow older so that they will not also become casualties of the culture of death and moral relativism.
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