Chapter Fifteen

Selective Prosecution

““What a number of the dead we carry in our hearts, each of us bears his cemetery within.” -  Gustave Flaubert

Early in the morning of June 8, 1989, twenty-one pro-lifers carrying heavy chains and reinforced Kryptonite bicycle locks raced up the eleven flights of stairs of the Interstate Bank Building on Wisconsin Avenue near downtown Milwaukee. Huffing and puffing from exhaustion, we trudged down the long, narrow hallway and planted ourselves four rows deep in front of the door to Imperial Medical Services, owned by abortionist Dr. Milton Tarver. The activists sitting in the front row locked their ankles together in the U-shaped Kryptonite locks that we had reinforced by sheathing them in cast-iron pipes. Wendy Fulcher, a young, heavyset woman who had been arrested several times at other Milwaukee sit-ins, wore a 5/8-inch-thick industrial chain around her waist, which was looped through the same kind of chain worn by the activist next to her.

I had organized this sit-in. Many of those participating were new faces to me, people inspired by Randall Terry's Operation Rescue. But there were old faces too, such as Robert Braun, who had been arrested with me when Citizens for Life’s numbers were small and our mechanical methods less imaginative.

Soon the police arrived, and I saw another old face, blue-eyed Sergeant Moe. He remembered me and greeted me by name. Several firemen also arrived and hastily set to work drilling through the locks with pneumatic high-speed carbon-tipped drills. The chain of Wendy Fulcher’s partner was soon broken and he was immediately arrested. Still wearing her heavy chain belt, Wendy stepped over the remaining rows and stood next to me at the door, delaying her own arrest.

The carbon-tipped blades whizzed and orange sparks flew up onto the pro-lifers as the blade made contact with the metal. The high-speed knife cut through the locks’ metal shafts. The ankles of the pro-lifers were burned by the heat. A physician who later examined two of those who sat-in estimated their burns to be between second-and third-degree.

Pro-lifers who were not secured by locks or chains were arrested first. The police pulled them from their stations, bending the pro-lifers’ wrists downward in the now-familiar and much dreaded pain-compliance hold. The men cried out as they were forced away from the door, sending a wave of fear rippling through the rest of us. When Greg Gesch was arrested, the police officer held his wrist down so tightly that the bones in Greg’s hand cracked under the strain.

While we were upstairs blocking the doors, picketers and sidewalk counselors gathered in the parking lot eleven floors below. They were soon joined by the local news media. The police began loading the first pro-lifers arrested into the waiting vans. The ranks of pro-lifers blocking the doors began to thin. When it became apparent that those closest to the door would soon be arrested, Wendy Fulcher and I took hold of each other’s arms and hung on to one another. Robert Braun, who was lying on the floor in front of me, wrapped his arms around my left leg. Sergeant Moe and his partner Officer Melewski, a tall, distinguished, white-haired veteran like Moe, waded over bodies toward the door. Moe placed his hands on Wendy’s arm and began to pull.

“Monica, let go of her arm,” Moe ordered.

“I can’t let go, Sergeant. Babies are scheduled to die here.”

“I am ordering you to let go,” Moe commanded, his voice rising in frustration and anger.

“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m here to defend the unborn and I cannot let go.”

“If you don’t let go now, you’re going to be charged with obstructing an officer.”

This was not the Sergeant Moe I knew from our Bread and Roses sit-in. His kind and patient demeanor was gone. Today I was faced with an angry and determined officer of the law. Nonetheless, I remained silent and did not let go. It took Moe and Melewski only a few additional seconds of tugging to pry Wendy loose from my grasp. A moment later, two other officers came up and pulled me out of Robert Braun’s grasp. I let my body go limp in passive resistance and was surprised that my wrist was not bent to make me walk. The officers dragged me several feet down the hallway and left me there. I got up and began to race back to the door but, before I could get far, I was tackled to the floor. The police handcuffed me and bound my ankles together with a plastic “flexi-cuff” strip. Soon, with a handful of other protesters, I was lying on the floor of the elevator making the eleven-story trip down to the police van.

When the van was filled, we were taken on the short ride to the Milwaukee police station on State Street. I waited in the bullpen for about an hour before the door finally clanged open and a matron called out my name. I was led out and escorted down a long narrow hallway to the booking room. When I entered, Sergeant Moe was seated on a chair near the door. He was calm and relaxed now, completely changed from the gruff and angry sergeant of police I had seen at the clinic. Moe had reverted back into his gentle and sympathetic manner.

I thought about his apparent double personality. At the clinic, Moe was acting in his professional capacity, as a man of authority who had other officers under him. Whether or not Moe was sympathetic to our cause, he had to do his duty. But the inner struggle between the public man and his private feelings were there. Even when he was ordering me away from the clinic door, I could sense that turmoil. The arrest process may have been distasteful, but he did his job anyway.

But now, as he sat across from me, he was calm. He smiled and looked at me fondly with his large blue eyes. The other officer in the booking room took my fingers, rolled them one by one on a glass covered with a film of black ink, and pressed each finger onto the white form. During the painless ritual I heard Moe remark to the other officer, “If I was ever in trouble, I’d want Monica to be around.”

I was stunned. Was this the same man who one hour ago yelled at me and threatened to charge me with obstructing an officer?

Later that day I was called out of the bullpen again. Moe and Melewski stood in the hallway outside and led me to another small room. Moe informed me that he was referring my case to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, recommending that I be charged with criminal obstruction of an officer. I was disappointed and a bit shaken. When Moe had made his threat, I was not entirely certain what he meant by it. I knew there was a city charge of resisting an officer and thought perhaps I would be in for an additional city ticket besides the expected citation for disorderly conduct issued to the other twenty pro-lifers.

“I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do,” Moe said in an apologetic tone. The criminal charge of obstructing an officer carried a maximum nine-month jail sentence and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. Moe’s large eyes and friendly, open face reflected a sense of regret, even a feeling of guilt that his role as an officer compelled him to treat me more harshly than others.

As he had done in the past, the pro-life Milwaukee district attorney E. Michael McCann recused himself from my case. And once again my nemesis, Jeffrey Kremers, was assigned as special prosecutor. A week after the sit-in, a pretrial hearing took place in a small room at the district attorney’s office. Sergeant Moe and Officer Melewski were present. I arrived with Wendy Fulcher and three others who had participated in the rescue. Kremers sat behind a desk, arms across his chest, his red, bushy eyebrows knit in a frown. Moe and Melewski stood next to the desk and the five of us squeezed into chairs in front of it.

Moe described the sit-in to Kremers: “I responded to a call regarding a disturbance on the eleventh floor of the Interstate Bank Building at Wisconsin and Eighth Avenue. We arrived on the eleventh floor and encountered a group of demonstrators blocking the doorway to a doctor’s office where abortions are performed. We informed everyone that they were trespassing and ordered everyone to leave. The protesters refused to do so.”

 Moe glanced through his bifocals at a small record book and continued:

“When I placed a Miss Wendy Fulcher under arrest, Monica grabbed on to her and would not let go of her. I told her to let go several times and she refused to obey my order.”

“Monica was not only holding on to me,” Wendy explained to Kremers, “I was holding on to her! We were holding on to each other!”

I then explained that many of those participating in the rescue held onto each other–that Robert Braun, for example, had held onto my leg. We also explained that several of the pro-lifers were locked together and that it took far longer to remove them than to pull Wendy and me apart.

“It’s unfair that Monica be singled out,” Wendy said. “If she’s going to be charged with a state charge, then so should everybody.”

A chorus broke out, “Yes, charge everyone that way–or give Monica a city ticket like us.”

Kremers smirked.

“But Monica’s different,” he said. “She was told to obey an order. She didn’t. Besides, no one else in this protest has a criminal record.”

“Robert Braun does,” I reminded Kremers.

Marshall Cheitlan, a young pro-lifer who looked like a computer geek, yelled at Kremers angrily: “You’ve already decided that you’re going to charge Monica. Coming here to try to convince you of anything was a waste of time!”

“No,” said Kremers as he shook his head, “I have not come here with my mind made up.”

 But you act like it is!” said another voice.

 "No. I’m here to assess the facts upon which to make a decision. I’m in the process of making up my mind.”

            “Then charge everyone the same,” Wendy urged again.

“Monica acted differently and she already has a criminal record.”

Again I reminded Kremers about Robert Braun.

“I do not have any authority to charge Robert Braun. I’ve only been given authority to decide Monica’s case.”

“You can get the authority to charge everyone, can’t you?” asked Wendy.

“Today we are deciding Monica’s case.” Kremer’s argued.

Marshall stirred in his seat with frustration as Kremer’s continued: “and I find that the criminal charge of obstruction of an officer is warranted.”

Marshall exploded. “You are an unjust man! You’re just out to get her!”

Kremers yelled back in anger, “Well, not only am I going to charge her with obstructing an officer, but I’m going to charge her with criminal disorderly conduct and criminal unlawful assembly as well!”

My friends and I sat stunned. I looked over at Sergeant Moe, but his face was expressionless. I do not think he expected this outcome. I had entered the pretrial conference facing a possible nine months and a ten-thousand-dollar fine and left it facing twenty-one months and a twenty-one-thousand-dollar fine. Kremers was painfully aware that blockades of abortion clinics had significantly increased despite his prosecution of pro-lifers. Now Kremers saw his chance to use all his powers to stop my leadership activity.

I hired a young attorney, Bill Kerner, to defend me. Bill was a devout Lutheran and very committed to the pro-life cause. His commitment was reflected in his legal fees; for this trial, he charged me only a thousand dollars. Bill had very ably defended me in a sit-in case from 1987, and I was confident in his skill as an attorney.

He filed a complaint against Kremers for selective prosecution. A prosecutor is guilty of selective prosecution when, with malicious intent, he singles out for a more serious charge a defendant from other defendants “who are similarly situated.” Even if Kremers believed the obstruction charge was warranted, I had two extra criminal charges piled on top of me, when everyone else received only city tickets.

My case was assigned to Judge Lousie Tesmer, a former state representative with a comparatively good pro-life voting record. She opened the hearings on selective prosecution, but suddenly recused herself from my case, citing her pro-life views and the impropriety of continuing. My case was then assigned to Judge Dominic Amato, who also had pro-life sentiments. But he too quickly recused himself. I eventually wound up in Judge Charles Schudson’s court. He announced to us that his wife was "solidly pro-choice” and had even once or twice participated in the efforts of the Milwaukee Clinic Protection Coalition. This group of dedicated proponents of legal abortion regularly showed up at Milwaukee clinics to escort women who arrived for their scheduled abortions. Clinic escorts were a new feature of pro-choice activism as they felt driven to respond to the increase in pro-life sit-ins and our sidewalk counseling efforts. These “clinic defenders” aggressively interfered with pro-lifers' attempts to talk to women and persuade them away from their decision to abort. Bill Kerner could have filed a request for substitution of judge. Under Wisconsin law, every defendant is granted at least one substitution of judge for any reason. Schudson, a very short, slightly built man, appeared conscientious, thoughtful, and honest in his disclosure. We thought he would give me a fair trial.

Despite my initial satisfaction with Schudson, I was extremely frustrated with the attitude of the judges who were against legal abortion. It was very common for pro-life judges to take themselves off cases involving pro-life defendants, as if somehow their position disqualified them. However, judges who supported legal abortion, like Judge Patricia McMahon, in my experience never recused themselves. Somehow their support for abortion qualified them to hear abortion-related cases. The problem with pro-life judges who removed themselves from pro-life cases is that they left pro-lifers at the mercy of judges totally unsympathetic with, and at times even hostile to, our cause. A pro-life judge may not, by law, be permitted to allow pro-lifers a necessity defense, but judges have a great deal of discretion on penalties. Pro-life judges who did hear cases tended to be lenient in sentencing, while pro-abortion judges tended to be harsh.

Schudson set the hearings on selective prosecution for May 1990–nearly a year after the sit-in itself. Meanwhile, Edmund and I continued to work very closely. Together we planned a dedication service for a monument which was erected near the grave of the twelve hundred aborted babies at Holy Cross Cemetery. Donated by the Milwaukee Monument Company, the polished red granite stone stood five and a half feet tall. A picture of Jesus holding children was carved on the front of the stone. Auxiliary Bishop Austin Vaughan of the New York Archdiocese was our special guest speaker for the service. Bishop Vaughan, a white-haired, kindly intellectual, had by then participated in several sit-ins in New York and elsewhere on the East Coast. He had also served a three-day jail term for blocking the door to an abortion clinic. On August 28, 1989, about six hundred people gathered for the graveside service.

Just one month after the dedication service, on September 30, 1989–a beautiful, warm sunny day–Edmund and I exchanged marriage vows at St. Bernard's Parish, located in a suburb near Milwaukee. As Edmund and I prepared to walk down the aisle, dozens of pro-lifers led by evangelical pastor Matt Trewhella, founder of Rescue: Operation Milwaukee, piled themselves in front of the doors to Affiliated Medical Services. Pro-abortion demonstrators stood across the street from the downtown clinic. They held a large sign which read “Congratulations, Monica and Edmund: May Your Choice Increase and Multiply.” It was a very unexpected—if somewhat odd— positive sentiment from the opposition.

After the wedding, Edmund and I set up our household in my two-bedroom upper flat. Edmund was only twenty-nine years old at the time of our marriage, and I was an old maid of thirty-six. We had a three-day honeymoon, cut short by a trial scheduled for October 4, 1989, in front of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Thomas Doherty. Charged with disorderly conduct, we were on trial for a clinic blockade we had done on October 10, 1987 at Metropolitan Medical Services. Not only was our honeymoon cut short, but so was our time together as newlyweds.

Just three months after our wedding, Edmund and I were separated by jail sentences. On January 11, he entered the Community Correctional Center, a run-down, crowded jail at the corner of 10th and State that once was St. Anthony’s Hospital. We kissed each other good-bye at the door, and he began a twenty-day jail term imposed upon him by Judge McMahon on Good Friday of 1987 for the rescue he had done at the Milwaukee Women’s Health Organization, the clinic operated by Reverend Elinor Yeo. A week later, I entered the same jail to begin the 45-day term McMahon gave me for the first rescue in Milwaukee at Bread and Roses. For two years our sentences had been deferred pending appeals that had gone all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court as a challenge to the constitutionality of the Criminal Trespass to a Medical Facility law. When the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the law in a five-to-two vote, our attorneys asked a federal court to hear our case, but our petition was refused.

“Honeymoon Over” was the headline above society columnist Meg Kissinger’s article for the Milwaukee Journal that appeared the day before our sentences began. She described how Edmund and I, newly joined in marriage, were now separated by the start of his jail term. Edmund and I had work-release privileges and occasionally met in the early morning in the student cafeteria of Marquette University where I taught theology courses.

Robert Braun also began his one-month jail term for the Bread and Roses rescue on the same evening that I entered jail. When I arrived at the Community Correctional Center, I saw Robert in the parking lot. His wife Violet had just dropped him off, and I greeted him warmly. In my hand I clutched the same small crucifix I had laid before me on the defendants’ table during our trial. I passed the crucifix to Robert. “Here,” I said, “please take this. I want you to have it.” Robert, although a Protestant, took it from me, his eyes full of gratitude. He thanked me and nodded his head. Then he walked alone through the doors of the jail.

Having been arrested several times for blocking the door to abortion clinics, I had been inside jails before, but only in temporary lockups. This was my first real jail term. On a forty-five day sentence, with time off for good behavior, I would be out in thirty-four. The female dormitory was on the top floor of the prison, five floors up. After my belongings were searched, I was led up the elevator by two grim female guards, escorted to a room with lockers, and strip searched. I was then given a dark green prison uniform to wear, at least two sizes too big for me, and led to a bunk in a large room at the end of a narrow hall. I was given the upper bunk. The room was occupied by fifteen other prisoners.

After I settled myself in the dormitory room I decided to check out the jail’s day room. This was a large common space with chairs, tables, a couch, and a TV set. Standing near a window I saw a familiar person, the serene and gentle Carol Robbins, who had handcuffed herself to the Bread and Roses suction machine. She had entered the CCC nine days before me to serve the ten-day sentence handed down by McMahon. The sight of my good friend on the first night of my own incarceration comforted me greatly. However, I would soon be without her company; Carol was released from jail the next day.

That night I prayed as I lay down on my bunk—a stiff pallet that served as a mattress and a folded-up towel that served as a pillow. I decided that the only real way I would make it through the jail sentence was to accept absolutely everything about the injustice of it. I would not be bitter. I would not be angry. I would not wish that things were different. I would not act as if I had rights and they were being trampled upon. I tried to put on the attitude of Christ who, as God, as Justice and Truth Itself, had all the rights in the universe but gave them up to suffer for others. I found the key to enduring jail with peace: a total surrender of my will to the fact of being in prison.

Jails like the Community Correctional Center are extremely noisy places. For virtually every waking moment, a prisoner is surrounded by nonstop racket—the constant chatter of fellow inmates, the blaring television, metal lockers clanging open and closed. One of the most difficult aspects of prison life for me was the inmates’ incessant use of profane language. I always tried to avoid taking the Lord's name in vain and shied away from using obscene speech. I was suddenly taken from my genteel Christian surroundings and plunged into the world of the “f” word.”  It almost always preceded and followed every other word spoken in the jail. Crude speech about sexual intercourse was common. Under a verbal attack,  I tried to simply endure the language. My manners, demeanor, and lack of profane speech singled me out among my inmates. They sensed I was different.

On the first night, several inmates asked, “What’re you in for?” I told them I was in jail for trying to save babies from abortion, that I had sat down in front of the door to an abortion clinic. Nearly all the inmates were astonished and appalled that I was sent to jail for what they considered comparatively harmless actions. To those who committed crimes of violence or fraud, what I had done did not seem like a crime. “Man, you don’t belong here at all,” said one. “Those folks killing them babies belong here–not you! I hate abortion. I hate it!” The inmate’s real name was Karen, but everyone called her Black, the name she seemed to prefer. She had small, raised, crisscrossed scars on her arms and her front teeth were missing.

Black was a cocaine addict, in jail for selling drugs. She had been jailed three or four times before. For her, being released from jail and being incarcerated again was a way of life. Like several of the inmates, she was openly lesbian.  She spent most of her time in the dayroom smoking cigarettes and playing cards. One day when I was sitting near her in the day room, Black, dealing out a deck of cards, turned to everyone and announced loudly: “Hey! Monica’s white. I’m black. Monica likes men. I don’t like men. Monica don’t like abortion. I don’t like abortion. Hey, least we got somethin’ in common!” She laughed heartily, and I laughed too.

One thing I was totally unprepared for was the pervasive lesbianism I found in the jail. Several inmates were quite open about their sexual preferences and had lesbian lovers. One night the woman who occupied the bunk below mine invited another woman in the dorm room to share her bed. I did not think my bunkmate was a lesbian. She talked often enough about her boyfriends and had no problem bragging about her very active sex life. I had no idea why she arranged this encounter. Maybe she wanted to imitate jail behavior. Maybe there was some advantage or status in it for her. Maybe she just thought it was the cool thing to do. Whatever her reason, I was overcome with the thought that a lesbian encounter was about to occur three feet below where I lay. I did not care what the consequences to me might be; I was not just going to lie in my bunk and pretend nothing was happening. So I said in a loud voice:

“Get that woman out of your bed or I’m going to call the guard.”

“F--- off!”

In a flash I climbed down from the bunk and took three brisk, determined steps toward the door of the dormitory.

“Where the f--- are you going?’ my bunkmate asked, a certain shakiness in her voice.

“Is she going to get out of your bed and go back to her own, or not?” I nearly shouted.

“All right. All right.” My bunkmate could see I was completely serious about going to the guard. A shadowy figure got out from under the covers and slipped back across the room to her own bed.

My bunkmate was an emotionally volatile woman, twenty-three years old, and, like most of the other inmates, was jailed for possession of drugs. I tried very hard to get along with her, but in the days following my threat to report her to the guards she went out of her way to annoy me, rocking the bunk while I was trying to read or playing her radio loudly. Once during a bunk-rocking episode, I leaned over the side of my bunk and said, “Tanisha, knock it off.” She proceeded to rock even harder. “You just be careful. Sometime when you’re not lookin’, I'm gonna get you. Oh yeah–we’re gonna have ourselves a real blanket party.” A blanket party, I later learned, was when inmates who wanted to frighten or get even with another inmate would catch their victim off-guard, often in the dead of night, throw a blanket over her head and beat her mercilessly. With her head covered, the victim would have no way of knowing who did the actual beating. Perhaps I should have taken my bunkmate’s threat seriously, but I did not think she had it in her to resort to such a thing. In any event, nothing ever happened to me.

I had a lot of respect among the guards as well as the inmates. Many of them treated me with an unusual deference. Many inmates told me they were against abortion and respected me for “bein’ in jail for doing somethin’ good” and for “standin’ up for what you believe in.” One of my dormitory mates was a tall blond woman, a topless dancer who was serving a sentence for drunk driving. I was amused that her judge had given her work release privileges so she could go to her topless dancing job. One day she told me, “This place is called the Community Correctional Center, but Monica, you don’t need any correction.” Another inmate, jailed for prostitution, came up to me in the hallway. With a perplexed look on her face, she shook her head and asked, “What are you in here for?” She peered at me intensely. “You look awfully innocent.”

When I opened my locker one morning, I found that a letter had been dropped inside. I opened the envelope and unfolded a piece of yellow-lined paper. With misspelled words and bad punctuation it stated:

Dear Monica,

Well I don’t know if I’ll see you befor I leave or not. So I thought a short note would have to do. I hope your time in here passes quickly, and all your other cases in court are droped and you have no more time to do in here. . . . I know I’ve only known you a short time but you have given me a new insight into my life. Thank you so very much. . . . Maybe someday you can take me to mass?

Keep in touch. . . if you want. You’ll be in my thoughts.

                                                Your’s, Mary

P.S. I wouldn’t mind to help you in your rescue efforts.

Mary was the topless dancer. She had been released the night before. When I read her words, joy spread through me. Before I left the jail, I would receive another letter from a woman in her late forties, Sandy. A cocaine addict, she was in the CCC on a three-month sentence for drug possession. She was an intelligent woman and possessed a great sense of humor. She and I had several discussions about God, the Bible, and the Church. She was a Catholic who had not practiced her faith for many years. I encouraged her to go to confession and to go to Mass. She was nervous about going to confession, since she had not gone for many years. I suggested she see Father Bill Kurz, a Jesuit at Marquette University, who was a kind, understanding, and devout priest.

Sandy was released several weeks before me. After she got out, she visited another dormmate who was on work-release at a restaurant. Sandy wrote me a note on a napkin and gave it to the inmate, who handed it to me when she returned to the CCC that night.

Hi Monica,

I hear you’re down in the dumps. Smile cuz I saw Fr. Bill tonight and I feel great and I want you to feel good also. Cuz you had a lot to do with it. I know you’re used to saving babies but you saved a big one! Me. Smile! I write soon. Hang in there.

                                                            A friend always,

                                                            Sandra

P.S. I’m doing good.

                                    ***********

On a cold, dreary January day I was rudely awakened by one of the guards. “Come on Miller, you’ve got a court hearing today.” As I walked sleepily through the day room, I saw the clock on the wall. It was four-thirty in the morning. I knew I had a hearing in front of Judge Schudson, but it was not scheduled until eleven o’clock that morning. I quickly tried to get ready even though the darkness outside seemed like the dead of night. Two other inmates also had court appearances. I asked one of them why we had to get up so early. She said, “I dunno. That’s when they takes you and when you gets over there you sits and you waits.”

The policy did not make any sense to me, especially since the place we were being taken was the Safety Building directly across from the jail. I was trusted with work-release privileges and could come and go to Marquette University on my own, yet I was not permitted to leave the jail and walk across the street to attend a trivial court-business hearing.

After we ate a quick breakfast, my two companions and I were handcuffed and herded into a sheriffs’ transport van. Several other male inmates, already seated inside, hooted and whistled as we climbed aboard. Amused, I laughed quietly to myself. A county trooper started up the loud rumbling engine and drove us the one-minute journey to the Safety Building, which housed courtrooms, the county clerk’s office, and the district attorney’s office. The top floor was a jail.

We were taken to the jail by an old, creaking elevator. A female guard escorted us to a small room and removed our handcuffs. Then she left, locking the heavy metal door behind her. The room had a long wooden bench against one wall, as well as two large, heavy office desks, one wooden and one metal, stacked on top of each other. It seemed as though the desks were put there for storage. It seemed that we had been put into the room for storage as well; there was absolutely nothing to do but sit and wait. And we waited there for hours.

My two companions were young African Americans who talked to each other and occasionally talked to me. They had been convicted of selling drugs. One of them found a book of matches in the cell. Together they amused themselves by a trick in which somehow when two matches were lit they separated in a way a woman's legs might part in sexual intercourse. In my whole life I had never experienced a more tedious passage of time.

I prayed for a while and tried to sleep on the hard bench. Failing that, I chatted with my companions about their families, their children, their boyfriends, and their drug addictions. Finally the door opened, and the same female guard who had locked us in the room now ushered us out. We were taken down a long hallway to a foyer area that preceded two large double doors. Male prisoners were also brought in to join us.

To our right was an open door to another room. I peered inside. A male prisoner wearing the usual orange jumpsuit was sitting on a stool. His bare foot was shackled with a handcuff to a metal ring on the floor. I was completely unprepared to see a human being bound this way. I had never seen such a thing except in movies or television. The whole room was lined with tiny cubicles with stools and each space had a ring on the floor to bind the prisoner. More than anything I had experienced in jail, this sight overwhelmed me with the reality that I was indeed in prison–that I was in a totally different world, a world set apart, a world underneath the world I had known: a world for criminals, cold and sometimes cruel and full of humiliation. My eyes caught the eyes of the young man shackled there, and he seemed to sense my shock and my pity.

I heard the sound of chains clanking together and turned around. Male guards were approaching our group holding ropes of chains in their hands. We were told to stand in a straight line front to back with female prisoners first. I stood third in line behind my two companions and in front of a black male prisoner. Our hands were bound together with cuffs and a chain was looped around our waists. Another long length of chain was threaded through the chain belts we wore binding all the prisoners together in a row. As the guards chained us together, I was surprised to see a familiar face. The attorney Jerry Boyle stood two feet away from me in front of the door to the room with the shackles. I realized then that the room was for lawyers to meet with prisoners and that Jerry was there to meet with a client. Jerry’s presence caught me off guard. He recognized me. I smiled and said hello as pleasantly as I could under the circumstances. We were both embarrassed, but I was also rather stunned. It seemed incredible to me that he and I should meet just then, as I was being chained to a line of prisoners.

Jerry was a famous Milwaukee defense attorney. He took quite a few notorious cases. He was the defense attorney for Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who had spoken with Carol Robbins outside of Metropolitan Medical Services. After our arrest at Bread and Roses, Jerry was the first attorney I approached, having heard that he was a devout Catholic and very pro-life. I asked Jerry if he would take our case pro bono, as we had very little money for legal fees. I asked him to volunteer his services for the sake of the cause, and for the unborn denied recognition of law.

 “Well, I don’t see it that way,” he had responded. “Look, you and the others are no different from anyone else who got themselves into trouble with the law and who need an attorney. Even if Christ Himself came to me the night He was arrested and asked me to defend Him in front of Pontius Pilate, I would have charged even Jesus a fee.”

The metal double doors of the jail hallway opened and we were led to an elevator. We descended in silence. The only noise was the hum of the elevator’s motor. It stopped with a small jolt, and its doors opened suddenly into the bright hallway of the sixth floor of the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Years before, when I was on trial for the rescue at Bread and Roses, I saw for the first time uniformed prisoners bound in chains paraded through the courthouse hallways. I was shocked and disturbed by the spectacle. Now I was a prisoner like them. Led down the hall,  I was so aware of the rattling of chains. 

                                                            ***********

I was released from jail in the middle of February 1990. Edmund and I were happy to resume a more normal married life. A few months later, in early May, the hearings for the Imperial Medical Services case began. It was brought out that of the twenty-one people arrested, I was the only one who received criminal charges, even though several other rescuers held on to each other and had to be pulled apart. The Milwaukee County District Attorney, E. Michael McCann, took the stand and testified it was the policy of his office that demonstrators would not be charged criminally unless there was a possibility of violence. He also testified that no one in Milwaukee County had been charged with unlawful assembly for twenty years–not since the Vietnam War–and only then if an antiwar protest turned violent or there was damage to property. This was significant, since according to standards set by the American Bar Association and accepted as Wisconsin’s legal policy, a prosecutor was supposed to consider the prolonged non-enforcement of a statute to be “non-enforcement with community acquiescence.” McCann also testified that it was the policy of his office that the charge of obstruction of an officer not be made “except for those cases in which the defendant directs force at the officer which results in injury to the officer or tearing of the officer’s clothing.” According to this standard, I should not have been charged with that either.

In an unusual move, my attorney called Jeff Kremers to the stand. Kremers testified that he “did not see any need to consider the policies or guidelines used by the district attorney’s office in the charging of the crimes.” Kremers believed he had the authority to act independently, as he alone saw fit, without reference to the usual policy of the district attorney’s office, even though he was acting as an assistant prosecutor within that office.

Bill Kerner tried to show that Kremers was not simply interested in prosecuting crimes, but that he was ideologically motivated to bring these charges against me–in other words, that his own commitment to legalized abortion clouded his sense of fair and just application of the law. Kremers never hid his anger and contempt for me and other pro-lifers. If he was not ideologically motivated, then why take all these cases as a special prosecutor and slam me with three criminal charges, all so contrary to the usual policies of the district attorney’s office? Why did it matter so much to him that I should receive, at his hands, three criminal charges while those who blocked the doors with me, and delayed their arrests even longer than I did, received only city tickets? If I had any doubt that Kremers was indeed a supporter of legalized abortion, those doubts were laid to rest when Kremers took the stand in the selective prosecution hearings. My attorney asked him: “Do you have any strong feelings on the issue of abortion and whether or not they should be available?”

Kremers responded: “I believe it is the private right of a woman to decide for herself whether or not she should have to carry a pregnancy to term and that the state has no business legislating or impacting on that woman’s right up to some period of time–I’m not prepared to say when in the pregnancy–that the rights of the unborn person supersede the rights of the mother.”

On May 6th, Judge Schudson ruled against our motion on selective prosecution. He said Kremers was not guilty of acting without due discretion in charging me, that there was no real evidence to show he intended to suppress the free-speech rights of pro-lifers or that he acted out of personal vindictiveness. My trial on the three criminal charges was summarily set for the following November.

I was frustrated once again by the legal system. I could not shake the feeling that something was horrifically out of balance—indeed unjust—with Kremer’s charges, and Schudson had done nothing to correct the imbalance.

But something else was out of balance. I was not just upset, I was exceptionally upset. There was a reason for my exaggerated emotion: I was pregnant. For the first time in my life, and just shy of my thirty-seventh birthday, I was having a baby. On the day Schudson made his ruling I was about a month into my pregnancy. Although I did not understand it at the time, my hormones were having their way with me.

Edmund and I were extremely happy about the baby. The day I learned I was pregnant, I entered the room that we used as a study. It was late at night. The room was totally dark. I sat in a chair, closed my eyes, and reflected upon the presence of this new, hidden someone growing so quietly and mysteriously within me. A new life was in the world–our child. I thought how ironic it was for me to sit there now, with my own hidden baby in the very room where I once housed the bodies of the rejected unborn.

Over the next few weeks, however, I was dogged every day with a grim premonition. I felt somehow that our baby would not live. I was pursued by this unshakeable feeling, almost as though I could not believe or imagine that I would have a living unborn child. After so many months of living with, touching, and burying the dead unborn, I could not fathom that this child would actually live and be born. I was so used to the dead that I expected our child would die as well.

On May 12, Mother’s Day, I began to feel a slight cramping. I tried to deny that this minor physical pain meant anything and hoped that everything was alright. Five days later, on May 17, I experienced severe cramping. It was my thirty-seventh birthday. Edmund prepared a special birthday dinner. I sat down to eat the meal. I had not yet told him of the severe cramps that were becoming more painful by the minute.

I put one bite of food in my mouth and swallowed it. I stared at the plate and could not eat more. I was overcome with grief and burst into tears.

“Edmund, we’re losing this baby.”

He looked at me, his eyes full of pity. I walked into the bedroom and collapsed in sorrow and physical pain. Tears streamed down my face. Soon I began to pass blood in heavy clots and reddish, spongy-looking placental tissue.

My miscarriage was in full swing. I went into the bathroom. I tried to save everything, not knowing if a small, perhaps even invisible part of our child might be there. Because of my experience with the aborted unborn, I was ultra-sensitive that no part of our baby, no matter how small, would be disposed of in the toilet and find his burial in a sewer.

I passed several clots and bled profusely. I began to feel weak. Since I had never been pregnant before, much less miscarried, I did not know what to expect. My physician, Dr. James Linn, a very pro-life obstetrician, was on staff at St. Mary’s Hospital on the east side of Milwaukee. Edmund drove me there. At the emergency room I changed into a gown and lay down on a narrow bed that was little more than an examination table. I was still bleeding from the miscarriage. A nurse took my blood pressure. It was a dangerously low 80 over 40.

Dr. Linn came into the small cubicle and explained to me that there was a small chance of infection if the body parts and placenta did not pass through. He suggested a D&C. I consented.

A few moments later a suction machine was wheeled to the end of the cubicle. The sight of it startled me. In my mind a suction machine was synonymous with abortion, and now this same instrument was going to be used on me. I had to make a deliberate mental effort to separate the suction machine from killing. I was given a local anesthetic. Nevertheless the D&C was extremely painful. If this was what a suction abortion felt like, it was anything but a “gentle suction” I had read about in abortion clinic literature. Dr. Linn turned off the machine and told me that he had extracted some tissue.

When the suctioning finally ended–when the noise of the machine cut off–the room was filled with silence, the silence that marked the end of my pregnancy. I was now utterly empty of all traces of that dearly wanted baby. My deep sorrow burst forth in a profound sob of anguish. Edmund laid his head on my chest and wept also. I had a child. Now I did not. I had life within me. Now I did not. The hidden person had died and was gone from my body. I thought I had known the depths of sorrow when I took the broken bodies of the aborted unborn out of the trash. I was wrong. The loss of this child was a deeper grief for me. Perhaps, though, the loss of our own baby would not have caused me such a sense of being bereft had it not been preceded by all those other losses–the children of other women.

When the physical ordeal was over and I was ready to leave the emergency room, I had to sign a medical form. It listed the reason I had been admitted to the hospital. I was jarred by the words: “incomplete abortion.” I had to pause while my rational mind beat back the furious sense of insult. Even though I knew it meant I had a spontaneous miscarriage that required a D&C, the word “abortion” had become in our culture simply too loaded a term.

A few days later, Edmund and I went to the pathology lab of the hospital to pick up the remains of the miscarriage. Although no discernible body parts could be found, Edmund and I were perhaps overly scrupulous to bury whatever remains we had. We received a paper bag that contained a small plastic jar. On the jar was written “POC”— products of conception—the same letters we had so often seen written on the bags that contained the well-formed miniature children killed by abortion.

On a warm day in May, Edmund and I walked past the grave makers of the infants buried at Holy Cross Cemetery until we came to a newly dug grave. The freshly opened earth lay but a few feet from the large grave of the twelve hundred aborted babies. Edmund placed a small cedar box into the grave. Father Kurz officiated at the short ceremony attended by another Jesuit priest, Fr. Earl Muller. Our pastor Msgr. Bruskewitz, Marquette philosophy professor Mary Rousseau, Matt Trewhella, Sandy Schultz, Christine Le Blanc, and a few other friends gathered at the gravesite.

I knew that it was entirely possible that we were not burying any actual fetal body parts at all, but Edmund and I had another reason for the grave. This little plot of earth was a mark in the world that our little unseen child did live once and will forever remain a part of us. We named the child Gesu-Marie. The stone that was soon set on the grave bore the name of the child, the date of the miscarriage, and an inscription: “Our Unborn Child–We will see you in Paradise.”

Our wanted baby shared the earth with those unwanted. The earth bound them together. The memorial stone that had been dedicated on that hot August day nine months ago towered behind the graves. After the earth covered over the place for Gesu-Marie, I once again read the memorial stone’s inscription: “This monument stands as a testimony to the sanctity of human life. Among these graves of children are included preborn babies, victims of abortion.” Beneath this was a quote from 1 John 3: “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. . . . We are God’s children now.”

The words on the stone were now carved into me as Edmund and I laid what remained of our first child into the earth. This unseen child, now a neighbor to the unwanted unborn, bound us to them forever in a way not expected, in a sorrow never dreamt.

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