Clinic Defense

A group of anti-choicers are getting their asses kicked, but they don’t know it…yet.

By Daryle Lamont Jenkins

Capital Care is an abortion clinic in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and it is used to seeing anti-choice protesters outside its parking lot. Like other clinics across the country, they take the protests in stride, and do not allow them to hamper them providing abortions to women who make the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. There may be heated arguments, but each side respects the rights afforded each other. This, however has started to be tested recently.

Over the past two months a new crop of demonstrators have come to the clinic, and it has not been without incident. All in the name of God, there has been threats, insults, shoving matches, and in one case an escort was followed as she left the clinic. These new protesters are connected to the Army of God, the most violent faction of anti-choicers in the country. They believe violence in the defense of what they interpret as God’s law is justifiable, particularly the shooting deaths of abortion doctors and the bombing of clinics. As the situation escalates, many feel that it is only a matter of time before something tragic happens, but something is being done about it before it does.

In early March, Anti-Racist Action, along with the anti-fascist One People’s Project started to watch this group and the local anti-choice figures, and have been able to determine who they were and how much of a threat they were to not only Capital Care, but to other clinics in the area. Although not all of the protesters openly advocate violence, some are being influenced by those that do. That is what concerns locals.

The recent events outside the clinic began not long after a massive demonstration by Operation Rescue two hours away in Cleveland on Inaguration Day. This was followed a few weeks later by a firebomb attack at another Columbus clinic. The firebombing caused no injuries, left minimal damage and was not even reported in the local media, although the Feminist Majority released an alert to clinics all over the country on the incident. Within a course of a week the demonstrations outside Capital Care became intensified.

The mainstays at Capital Care have been until now two well-known anti-choice activists in Columbus, Fran Kempf and Don Schneider. With them, their way of operating had been attempting to counsel patients as they enter the clinic. Often there would be heated debates with Kempf, Schneider and the clinic workers, but no one felt that the two were planning something nefarious.

These new protests were different. There were threats to kill the abortion workers this time. A military-styled truck started making an appearence. One demonstrator videotapes those entering the clinic, tried to videotape inside through an open window, and there was one altercation in which he was spat at by a client supporter. In another incident, another demonstrator charged a patient hit him with his SUV as they were pulling into the parking lot. A shoving match ensued and the demonstrator, Tom Meyer was detained–not arrested–by police after repeated warnings to stay off clinic property. It became evident very quickly that there was a real problem.

HBO recently aired a documentary on the Army of God and law enforcement have been keeping a close eye on the activities of them as well. On January 21, 2001, the group’s main staple Rev. Michael Bray of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Bowie, Md. held something called the White Rose Banquet. This was pretty much a convention for the Army of God, and among the attendees were some of the most notorious anti-choicers. There was Rev. Don Spitz of Pro-Life Virginia, Neil Horsley, author of the Nurenberg Files website that lists the names of doctors and abortion clinic workers and supporters, crossing them out whenever they are killed, and Dennis Malvasi, fresh from a six-year stint in prison for the bombing of four New York clinics in the 1980s. Two months from this banquet he, along with his wife were arrested in New York for assisting James Charles Kopp while he was on the run in Europe from authorities in the U.S. charging him with the murder of abortion doctor Bernard Slepian. Rev. Bray, who once dated Kathie Lee Gifford, has his stripes as well. He served a four year stint in prison in the 1980s on two counts of conspiracy and one count of possesing an unregisered explosive device. Along with Horsley for his website, he was also being sued for putting abortion doctors on wanted posters, complete with their address and phone numbers, although a court recently ruled in their favor.

Among the hundred or so attendees to this banquet was Chuck Spignola, a street preacher living 45 minutes from Columbus in Newark, Ohio. It is he and his disciples who are making the Army of God presence at Capital Care. Spingola, 45, has a rather sorted history, coming here from California after serving a stint in prison for theft and claiming to have found God in 1979. He gained a bit of noteriety in 1999 when during the Gay Pride festivities that summer in Columbus, he climbed up the flagpole outside the Statehouse, tore down the gay pride rainbow flag the city flew for the occasion, and burned it, with a number of his cohorts cheering on. This put him in a national spotlight among anti-gay activists, and made him a celebrity. This also gave him a platform for his warped view of the Bible. To Spignola, God has decreed that those defying his law shall be put to death. That has meant homosexuals, abortion supporters, Episcopalians, etc. According to some sources, he was the most dynamic speaker at the White Rose Banquet, bringing with him not just his disdain of a woman’s right ot choose, but his vehement hatred of homosexuals. “My wife used to say ‘Honey, do you believe all homosexuals should be put to death?'” he told the crowd. “I said ‘No, dear, you get about a half a dozen of the activists, you kill them and the rest of them will go back in the closet.'”

Spingola’s group outside Capital Care includes a handful of cohorts. His son, 16-year David, is the aforementiones videographer, whose job has been to tape not only the faces of the workers but their cars and license plates as well. They have been able to get some personal information about the workers that way, but not much, and nothing questionable has been reported that could have been connected to that kind of information. Tom Meyer, who lives only six doors away from Spingola, brings his daughter to the clinic, and she was there the day he was detained for coming on the property. Every Wednesday, they hold Bible study/dinner with the others who come out to the clinic with them, Chris DiCenzo of Columbus, Howard Grimmett and Jim Smith, both of Westerville, and Dr. Patrick Johnston, a physician from Portsmith currently living in Zanesville and looking for a place in Columbus. During one of those meeting Spingola reiterated his statement at the White Rose Banquet about killing the most radical homosexuals, defending it with Leviticus 20:13.

Spingola’s group has been a bit of an influence for a second group of anti-choice protestors who come to Capital Care from the Holy Family Church, a prominent Cathloic church in Columbus whose pastor, Rev. Kevin Lutz was tapped by Rep. Deborah Pryce to represent the Central Ohio area in Washington D.C. and speak with President Bush during an April 25 conference on faith-based initatives. Holy Family Church works on the premise of returning the Cathloic Church to principles they feel it has abandoned of the past thirty years, making it more liberal. One of Holy Family’s flock is John Tuttle, who has been outside the clinic for at least three years and until the Army of God started to appear their most threatening protester. According to the clinic workers, he is infamous for making threats to them, and most reecently threatened to rip the head off one worker, who may take the issue further. Tuttle is a post office worker who was fired from his job when he wore a Postal Service baseball cap during a protest. He fought and won in court to get his job back with the help of a right-wing legal organization called the Rutherford Institute, and is out there along with the rest of his fellow churchgoers. .

A younger contiginent of protesters are now coming from Holy Family. Shane Pezzutti, a 24-year-old college student who has had run-ins with the law in the past, has been the main organizers from Holy Family. Pezzutti, the oldest of eight children, has brought family members and other friends, such as 23-year-old Martina Snell, who plays french horn in the Columbus Symphony, John Lisenfield, who is studying engineering in college, and a 19-year-old Cathloic convert named Casey to the clinic to protest. Although Pezzutti is comitted to his faith, he comes across as someone searching for an outlet, and when the Army of God came calling to Holy Family, he was all ears.

In March, Jim Smith and Howard Grimmett came to Holy Family Church to see if the church would be committed to acts of violence. They came away with the notion that the church members they spoke with were on the fence with the issue, but they saw potential in Pezzutti. Just days earlier, Pezzutti asked Rev. Lutz about the idea of turning to more agressive means such as violence. Although Lutz has participated in clinic blockades with Operation Rescue, and has been arrested in the past, he advised against it. Neverthless, Pezzutti’s agressivenes has increased during the time the Spingola crew has been out. Where once he had staged silent protests outside the clinics, within a matter of weeks he was yelling at the clinic workers just like Spingola’s group, calling for the arrest of the doctor as she entered the building. Indeed he was very eager at Smith and Grimmett’s suggestion to take down license plates.

The clinic takes these threats seriously, especially after finding out who these people were. Most of the people that revolve around Spingola have had troubles with the law in the past, and when the threats came with threatening actions, clinic workers felt the line was crossed. Jim Smith’s military truck and the physical confrontations were bad enough, but the most alarming momment was when Smith, in a regular vehicle this time, with Chris DiCenzo, another from Spingola’s group, following behind him, followed a clinic escort as she drove from the clinic. The police who were assigned to special duty immediately went after the trio of cars, but no one was stopped, no arrests were made, and the most contact made by police with protesters, was a warning that if it happens again some folks will get arrested.

This however, brings up the question as to how eager the Columbus police are in dealing with the more voltile protesters. Not one incident, from the communication of threats, even immediately after being warned, to the physical confrontations, to the tailing of workers from the clinic, has resulted in any action being taken by local law enforcement. Smith’s military truck, for example was being driven illegialy. There were no plates on the truck ,which since it was decommissioned and therefore not considered a military-owned vehicle could not be driven. Smith had plates however, but they were expired. the first inquiry from officers on the scene was not about the plates, but how to get a vehicle for themselves. That officer even stated at that point that he was on the side of the demonstrators. The one officer who did want to arrest the demonstrators when the stepped out of line was removed from this post after complaints from one of the demonstrators. That made the clinic workers even more alarmed, and it was time to up the ante.

The ante was already being upped in the meantime. Anti-Racist Action began videotaping the protests early March, and were able to compile not only pictures of the protesters but through further work, the names, addresses, phone numbers, and other information on them. Their videotaping sessions have not gone unnoticed, either. The anti-choicers have also began videotaping and taking pictures of them. Shane Pezzutti and John Lisenfield has attempted to engage some of them in debate. When talking to them, Pezzutti elects to refer to himself as “Servant”, not realizing that they already know who he is.

The surveillence has not been without it’s effect. There has been a marked decline in the more threatening gestures outside the clinic, as if the anti-choicers are learning to guard their words and deeds lest they find themselves implicated in somehting that happens. Dr. Johnston once said as much when he noted that if anything happened at Capital Care the first people they will question will be them. Of course that could only mean that they are circling their wagons.

The allegedly “more responsible” anti-choice activists around the country publicly have denounced the violence done to abortion. These denouncement, however come not in their proclaimed spirit of defending life but more in the spirit of defending their political agenda Father Frank Pavone of Preists for Life, who recently came to Columbus to speak, has put up a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those who commit acts of violence against abortion clinics and their workers (he recieved the “Neville Chamberlin” Award by Don Spitz’s Pro Life Virginia for this). His reasons for opposing abortion violence is because of the damage he thinks it does to anti-choice demonstrating.

“You will hurt the pro-life movement,” he once wrote. “What you will do is turn public opinion against our movement and delay the day when we can finally stop the killing completely.” He then turns and suggests that because anti-choicers feel they have been denied their right to be a “sidewalk counselor” as Fran Kempf positions herself to be, or barred by the Freedom of Access to Clinics (FACE) Act from blocking entranceways to clinics the violence escalated in its wake. “Could it be that the recent violence is, inconsiderable measure, a result of the supression of peaceful prayerful protest outside of abortion facilities?” Pavone wrote. “Could it be that if that ‘protctive ring’ was still there, that these tragically unbalanced, unstable, atypical individuals would have been ‘caught’ counseled, cooled off, sterred away, prevented from doing what they planned?”

In Columbus, there is a chance for those “more responsible” anti-choicers to do what Pavone suggests. Not only have they not taken the opportunity, they are increasingly following the lead of the more voltile demonstrators. Sadly, if there is one thing everyone on all sides involved agree on is that sooner or later, this is going to culminate into something ugly. If something does, a lot of people will have to answer for it, From Chuck Spingola, to Rev. Kevin Lutz, even Rep. Deborah Pryce for not recognizing the problem among those she choses to prop up. The anti-choicers protesting outside Capital Care as well as nationwide are not about defending life, they are about building a political agenda that runs counter to what we want as a people. They could care less about the rights and priviliges we have. They are going to learn the hard way however, that someone does.