(LifeSiteNews) — Fifty years ago, on the night of January 10, 1975, I was sitting in my mother’s house talking politics with my brother and our friend when the phone rang. It was 10:00 PM. My brother and our friend were the two leaders of Long Island Youth for Life and Justice, the young pro-life group I had joined just the year before. I had found there hearts that matched mine. They still match.
My brother took the phone call. It was from several members of our group who lived further east on Long Island. They asked if we would come with them to New York City that night for an all-night candlelight vigil at Beth Israel Medical Center. This would be remembered as a night of tragedy, a night of education in the treachery of our courts.
It seems that the pro-lifers had found out that there was a 28-weeks-pregnant woman demanding an abortion at Beth Israel Medical Center that night. She had, apparently, this late in her pregnancy, been given troubling news about the child she was carrying. It was something along the lines of the child being disabled.
We didn’t hesitate. It seemed to be a type of mission made for the committed young. We got ready for a New York January night—temperatures of 15 degrees Fahrenheit—and went off to meet our friends. We had all grown up during the anti-Vietnam war movement, and we had all seen vigils using candles as the symbols of lives lost. The anti-war movement even had a popular song, “Candles in the Rain,” which I remembered as our candles were blown by snow flurries. But no one sang for us that night. We sang and prayed to ourselves as the city that never sleeps and rarely cares went about its business.
As a newly minted pro-lifer, I was always trying to learn about the issue, and so I pondered the situation of this particular abortion. I knew the law in New York State prohibited abortions after 24 weeks’ gestation. I wondered where the advocacy groups for the disabled were. It seems like they should have been there. I already knew that pre-natal testing was often inaccurate in determining if a baby would be born with a disability. I knew doctors used them to cover themselves. I had not yet learned how alarmist our medical practitioners are in this country.
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There were about 10 of us there that night as a few of our friends from Brooklyn joined us outside the hospital. In the morning some other pro-lifers arrived to carry the vigil forward as we went home to bed. For the next few days shifts of pro-lifers, most from outside the city, kept vigil on the streets of New York City for that child.
Outside the hospital that night I found for the first time the ability to attach spiritually to a baby I’d never met. I felt the fear he/she felt; I longed for her/him to live as she/he longed; I loved as he/she loved. That night was the beginning of understanding the solidarity pro-life rescuers talk about.
The now-late, great pro-life attorney Larry Washburn had gone into New York State Court to challenge the legality of this abortion. Five years before, when the pro-abortionists were forcing the legalization of abortion through the New York State legislature, they assured the public that abortion would be made available only for the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. The New York law said abortion could be done after 24 weeks only if the mother’s life was endangered by the pregnancy. Pro-lifers warned then that this was a loophole that abortionists could exploit. And indeed, the woman’s lawyer presented to the court a statement from the mother saying she would commit suicide if the abortion was not done.
Ah, the playbook as it was being written.
The court made its decision a few days later, nourishing my growing contempt for America’s courts. The judge said the threat of committing suicide constituted a threat to the mother’s life so the abortion had to be done. Gleefully signalling their own contempt for the court, the hospital then announced that they had already done the abortion—several days before the Court’s ruling. And, in God’s mockery of our medical establishment, the baby was found to be without disability. This baby was completely healthy before she or he was killed.
Hey, America, make me respect your courts!
So the slaughter was loosed on third-trimester babies, with only a few subsequent, unsuccessful attempts to save them. I can draw a straight line from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City to Cesar Santangelo, his dumpster, and #Justiceforthefive of Washington DC.
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I cannot remember the exact sequence of events during those harried, hurried few days in January 1975, but shortly after the baby was put to death another blow fell upon us. Mr. Matthew Quinn, the father of the friends who had telephoned for our help was lost to his loving family. It was said afterwards that the pro-life movement had lost its first martyr. For during those frantic few days, in the strain of trying to save a doomed baby, Mr. Quinn had kept vigil at the hospital while also going to court to support our lawyers and transporting other pro-lifers to the vigil. All this had entailed travelling back and forth from his home to New York City, and his heart gave out as the baby’s was stilled. I hoped that our friends were comforted by the vision of their father presenting this baby to our Great Father in Heaven.
Lord, hear our prayer.
John Hinshaw is serving a custodial sentence for attempting to save the lives of babies in a late-term abortion business in Washington, D.C., an undertaking a court found was in violation of the FACE Act. Letters to John should be addressed:
JOHN HINSHAWRegister #93685-509FMC DevensFederal Medical CenterP.O. BOX 879Ayer, MA 01432