Early in my legal career, I represented nonviolent, anti-abortion demonstrators charged with petty criminal offenses: trespass, blocking public passage, disorderly conduct. The following article is one that I wrote after representing anti-abortion protestors who were denied access to the courts in Atlanta, Georgia, because they had identified themselves as Baby John Doe or Baby Jane Doe. I believe this piece is about 20 years old.
TANTALUS REDUX; OR, INSTITUTIONAL VIOLENCE IN THE COURTS AND THE SOLICITOR'S OFFICE IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA I remember the arrests from the first pro-life rescue action against an Atlanta abortion facility. A videotape of the incident was featured as a part of a CBS Evening News human interest story on the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. The feature examined the contrast between various protests at the 1988 Convention and protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. The CBS video bite showed rescuers seated on the stairs and sidewalk in front of an Atlanta abortuary. The rescuers were markedly pacific and bore a greater resemblance to a crowd gathered to enjoy a Fourth of July fireworks display than to the rock-throwing and epithet-hurtling participants in the 1968 debacle.
Chicago still smarts from the sting of embarrassment that grew out of the 1968 Convention protests. And that City's response at the time reflected an anger born of public humiliation. The City of Atlanta also reacted with fury when the imbroglio that began with the 1988 Convention stretched out through the remainder of the summer and into autumn. Indeed, that fury found expression in abuses by law enforcement officers, including acts of physical violence.
The more noticeable and notorious abuses have been reported: the stomping and kicking of rescuers by police; the deliberate dropping of passively resistant rescuers on fire hydrants. These and other impositions of havoc by police authorities found their way into the secular and Christian media. A more subtle, yet nonetheless terrifying tactic used by the authorities in Atlanta warrants close consideration.
On arrest, when asked to give their names, the Atlanta rescue participants identified themselves only as Baby John or Baby Jane Doe. Presumably, this tactic reflected a political statement of unity with the nameless victims of abortion. Atlanta law enforcement officials, however, were less than favorably impressed by this form of protest. They obtained a court order from Fulton State Court Judge Nicholas Lambros that actually prohibited any further proceedings concerning incarcerated Baby Doe suspects until such time as they confessed their "true names." The effect of Judge Lambros' order was such that those who had sought political and spiritual identity with the nameless victims of abortion succeeded in a measure -- they became nonpersons in the eyes of the courts and authorities of Atlanta.
When the court forbade further proceedings, its prohibition included formal charging procedures, arraignment, and release on bail. At one point, in fact, a man known as Baby John Doe 126 got within a hair's breadth of release. He was one door away from freedom when he was required to sign his recognizance bond. He signed the bond as Baby John Doe 126. Swift and sure, the wheels of Georgia justice began to spin and Baby John Doe 126 was on his way back to his cell.
Precluded, as well, were legal motions of any sort. Motions and petitions are the primary means by which courts are invited to exercise their authority. Judge Lambros' order seemed deliberately designed to thwart defense attorneys seeking relief from the gross impropriety and clear unconstitutionality of his order. Judges of the Fulton State Court, like other Georgia authorities, swear to uphold the state's constitution and laws. An order "locking out" anyone from the state courts is unconstitutional in all respects. Presumably, when he issued his "no further proceedings" order, Judge Lambros was cognizant of this provision from the Georgia Constitution:
No person shall be deprived of the right to prosecute or defend, either in person or by an attorney, that person's own cause in any of the courts of this state.Ga. Const. Art. 1, § 1, ¶ XII. Undoubtedly he was aware of the statutory right to bail in misdemeanor cases, guaranteeing bail on reasonable conditions to anyone charged with a misdemeanor, which right was granted by the state legislature. Official Georgia Code Annotated § 17-6-1. The only offenses the Baby Doe defendants were charged with, on arrest, were misdemeanors. And yet Lambros' order prohibited release on bail. Without question, the order was unconstitutional. Like Ass. Justice Blackmun's opinion in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), Judge Lambros' order was yet another exercise in "raw judicial power."
In defense of Judge Lambros, it must be said that Georgia courts follow a rule of procedure that requires all persons released on bail to provide their names and addresses. The Uniform State Court Rules, however, are merely procedural rules that insure the orderly administration of justice. Such rules cannot take the place of or derogate the constitutional and statutory provisions designed to prevent proceedings in the halls of justice from mimicking those in the Star Chamber. In these cases, the Uniform State Court Rules were used, not to insure justice, but to frustrate it.
In short, the rescue participants were confined in jail. They were held without formal charges, as is the custom in Marxist legal systems. They were denied bail, despite the statutory right to bail in misdemeanor cases. And they were deprived of the right to legal defense. All these deprivations resulted from the rescuers' desire to display solidarity with the unborn dead.
The starkly brutal tactics worked. One by one the rescuers gave other names. Eventually only four Baby John Does remained in the jail. While Atlanta law enforcement authorities participated in a shocking combination to keep Baby John Doe 1004, Baby John Doe 1110, and Baby John Doe 1154 in the Fulton County Jail, attorneys risked contempt of court but succeeded in winning an arraignment for Baby Doe 126. A trial date was even set but was later cancelled by the court and was not rescheduled.
A cadre of attorneys began developing the legal strategies and arguments destined to win the release of these political prisoners. It was only after more than a hundred days of incarceration without a semblance of due process, that these brave holdouts finally gained their release. On December 6, 1988, Judge Thompson, of the same court as Judge Lambros, ordered Fulton County authorities to arraign Baby Does 126, 1004, 1110, and 1154. Judge Thompson also ordered that they be arraigned under their chosen names and that they be released from jail on recognizance bonds under those names.
Contemplating the predicament of the then-jailed Baby Doe defendants, I recalled the story of Tantalus from Greek mythology. Tantalus, one of the sons of Zeus by Pluto, was an initiate to the rights and secrets of the gods of Olympus. Particularly, I recalled the everlasting punishment inflicted on him in Hades. Ulysses reported the end state of Tantalus:
I saw also the dreadful fate of Tantalus, who stood in a lake that reached his chin; he was dying to quench his thirst, but could never reach the water for whenever the poor creature stooped to drink, it dried up and vanished, so that there was nothing but dry ground -- parched by the spite of heaven. There were tall trees, moreover, that shed their fruit over his head -- pears, pomegranates, apples, sweet figs, and juicy olives, but whenever the poor creature stretched out his hand to take some, the wind tossed the branches back again to the clouds.Homer, The Odyssey Book XI, ¶ 582. And so with the Baby Doe defendants. They had access to their attorneys. They had no end of access to the trappings of justice. But, thanks to Judge Lambros' order, as they bent to assuage the pain inflicted on them by continued detention without trial, justice fled from them. When they reached upward for relief from the illegal restraints worked on them by officers of the State of Georgia, fickle winds blowing from the Solicitor General's Office pushed relief out of reach. Such punishment is appropriate to one whose crimes can be likened to those of Tantalus. But could the "civil but disobedient" acts of the Baby Does be compared to the crimes of Tantalus?
Two accounts are given to explain the fate of Tantalus. In one version, Tantalus revealed the secrets of the Olympians. These were secrets with which Tantalus became conversant because of the trust reposed in him by his father, Zeus. In the other account, Tantalus's crimes are two. First, he killed his son, Pelops. Second, he invited the gods to a banquet and offered in disguise his son's body as the main course. No other purpose than to test the divine taste buds was served by the murder of Pelops, whom the gods restored to life sans a shoulder consumed before the nature of the repast was revealed.
The former explanation, then, is that Tantalus suffers eternal torment for his treachery and for revealing the secrets of the gods. The latter explanation suggests that his punishment flows from the indignity he visited on Zeus and his kindred. Perfidy and indiscretion. Indignity. These were the sins of Tantalus. Were the conscience impelled acts of the Atlanta Baby Doe defendants equivalent to the crimes of Tantalus?
On reflection the answer to the question posited seems to be "yes." Did the Baby Doe defendants visit indignities on the City of Atlanta? In fact, Operation Rescue and its Baby John and Jane Does visited three indignities on Atlanta last summer.
First, Operation Rescue chose the week of the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta to begin its summer campaign against abortion. The City of Atlanta had scrambled to the top of the heap in the battle to host the Democratic National Convention. The quadrennial conventions of America's two major political parties bring to their host cities more than hotel bookings, amply-filled restaurants, and bulging tour buses. To host one of the major conventions is to have a place in the sun, that is, a place in the sun of major television networks, as well as the American print media. It is an opportunity to showcase a city. Media exposure brings a host city to the attention of not just those attending a convention but also those millions who follow the event through television, newspapers, and magazines.
Operation Rescue deliberately chose the week of the Democratic National Convention because of this publicity factor. It was, as well, an excellent opportunity to expose the solidly pro-abortion platform of the Democratic Party. And in this way Operation Rescue and the Baby John Does who participated in the summer rescues in Atlanta inflicted an indignity on the City of Atlanta.
It was not only the abortion connection that shamed the City of Atlanta. Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home church of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, is located in Atlanta. As Dr. King's home, Atlanta shares in the reflected glory of the movement Dr. King led. When Operation Rescue came to town, therefore, they were not content merely to block abortion clinic entrances, to gather in large crowds on sidewalks, and to make political statements through pleas of anonymity. They also invoked the Civil Rights Movement in the home court of its lead player.
Defending Operation Rescue's tactics by an analogy to, indeed a claim of succession from, the civil rights movement of the 1960's was a coup de gras. Atlanta is a city whose chief executive officer, Andrew Young, had a role in the Civil Rights Movement. The Atlanta city council includes members prominent in the unrest of the 1960's. Now the rescuers came to Atlanta, a city assuming mythic proportions as the home of the Reverend Martin Luther King, and said, "Receive us--we are following in your footsteps."
Yes, the Baby Doe defendants visited an indignity on the City of Atlanta. Operation Rescue chose to test its new brand of civil rights activism on the very soil where once walked the civil rights activists whose idealistic tactics now incurred the wrath of their former practitioners. The activists of the New Civil Rights Movement came to Atlanta and they stayed--in jail. Now Atlanta is certainly not the only city in America where babies are slain in their mothers' wombs. But Atlanta had grabbed for the brass ring of the Democratic National Convention. When the City found that the prize on which it had its eyes was defaced with pro-life graffiti, it decided to use the brass ring as a brass knuckle on those who had spoiled the City's fun.
In response to the abuses, Operation Rescue organizers declared that they would stay until the abuses stopped. They would stay until police officers stopped kicking protesters in the face, until police sergeants stopped dropping protesters on fire hydrants, until police captains stopped stepping on the hands of those who crawled from behind police lines and placed their bodies in jeopardy to prevent the death of unborn children. By staying and by being arrested in numbers that exceeded a thousand, Operation Rescue and the Baby Doe Defendants captured the attention of the entire country. Atlanta had made it to center stage, but found its co-star (accusations of the denial of civil rights to person born and pre-born) unpleasant company.
Certainly in the rage-red eyes of Atlanta's law enforcement system, the Baby Doe Defendants and Operation Rescue heaped indignities on Atlanta. The rescues marred the "lovefeast" of the Democratic National Convention. The brutality inflicted on these protestors flowed from the same vintage as that imbibed by the porcine farm council in George Orwell's Animal Farm. And in Atlanta, it seems that all civil rights activists may be created equal but those that ingratiate themselves into the political community acquire more equality.
Without joining the host of those who confidently identify the Apocalyptic Beast and False Prophet and Whore of Babylon, I will venture to note the similarity between the "slug-fest" enjoyed by the Atlanta police and John's Apocalyptic view of the Whore:
And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with a great wonder.The Book of Revelation 17:6. It is, I believe, too facile an answer that all the brutality vented against those who participated in the Atlanta rescues sprung merely from the embarrassments inflicted on the City of Atlanta. The mortifications endured by the City were undoubtedly contributory. The heat of Atlanta's fury, however, suggests more grievous wounds. I think that the City of Atlanta reacted so vehemently to Operation Rescue and to the Baby Does arrested in Atlanta because they felt as Zeus must have felt -- consumed by the anger that grows from a sense of betrayal and gross indiscretion. That is, the Baby John Doe defendants, as participants in American society, gained privileged access to certain truths, to certain rites and rituals. The Baby Doe defendants breached that societal trust: by acting to protect the lives of unborn children, the Baby Doe defendants made the sort of public revelation for which Tantalus was punished.
It is, in fact, common knowledge in the United States that the life existing prior to birth inside a woman's belly is a human person. The popular press provides, frequently and unintentionally, proof of this knowledge. Consider, as a token of this knowledge, a photograph caption found in a recent issue of People: "Corbin Bernsen and his wife Amanda Pays brought their first child, due in March." (Vol. 31, No. 6, at p. 56) (emphasis added). Indeed, our medical and scientific communities told us long ago that unborn children are both alive and human. The nature of the process of conception has been known and understood since the early part of the last century when it was first observed by microscope. That the unborn child is a human being was well-established medically by 1871, when the American Medical Association adopted its position statement in opposition to abortion. In that statement, the AMA said,
`Thou shalt not kill.' This commandment is given to all, and applies to all without exception . . . notwithstanding all this, we see in our midst a class of men, regardless of principle, regardless of all honor, who daily destroy that fair fabric of God's creation; who daily pull down what he has built up; in antagonism to that profession of which they claim to be members. . . . . These modern herods like their prototype have a summary mode of dealing with their victims. They perform the triple office of legislative, judiciary, and executive and to crown the tragedy they become the executioners. The language is clear. The AMA, the professional association of doctors in America, understood that abortion destroys a human life. Those gentlemen knew that it was one of us, created in the image of God, whose life was taken in abortion. The AMA statement goes on to say:
Yet these monsters of iniquity are permitted to stalk abroad in open day, carrying worse than contagion with them, poisoning wherever they are permitted to touch, invading the very sources of life, and fattening on the blood of their victims. And yet the profession of medicine remains inactive -- that profession which is styled a honorable one; that profession so far famed for its charity and benevolence, whose mission on earth is to do as much good and as little evil as possible to the human family -- that profession, in the face of these evils, tolerates in its midst these men, who, with corrupt hearts and blood-stained hands, destroy what they cannot reinstate, corrupt souls, and destroy the fairest fabric that God has ever created, and yet all is done under the aegis, under the cloak, of that profession. For those who did not know that a child before birth is yet a living human being, photographic essays such as that featured in Life magazine ("Life Before Birth," April 30, 1965) should dispel any doubts. Incredible photographs of life before birth, the sort which also appear in Nilsson's A Child is Born, show beyond cavil the humanity and vitality of the unborn child.
The Baby Doe defendants knew these secrets, but they would not leave the secrets unspoken. They knew, as well, that society fully understood that its abortion victims were living human beings. They witnessed society deliberately turning a blind eye to the murder, to the carnage.
When the fabled emperor shamed himself in a grand parade, society turned a blind eye to his nudity because of its vanity. Like the little boy who failed to realize that polite people do not say such things, however, the Baby Doe defendants proclaimed the naked truth. The Baby Doe defendants recognized the obvious humanity of prenatal children and refused to stand in respectful silence as society conspired to destroy them. On the contrary, they loudly called the attention of the nation to the shameful truth, so that no one might any longer feign ignorance.
It is expected nowadays that deans of medical schools, professors of medicine, and so-called medical ethicists, will deny that science tell us whether that which is destroyed by abortion is a human living being. The medical-ethical cabal, backed by our legal institutions, dictates that the matter can be answered only by looking to faith, to religion, to philosophy and to humanistic studies. Such fields, however, the abortion apologists conveniently demur, lack the capacity for quantitative analysis and certainty of determination sufficient to justify imposing on the diverse American public a uniform prohibition on prenatal homicide.
The United States Senate hearings on the Human Life Bill, chaired by the late Senator John East of North Carolina, offer a case in point. In the face of accusations that the hearing panels on Senate Bill 158 were stacked in favor of the pro-life viewpoint, the committee extended the hearings to allow for testimony from the opposite side. Senator Max Baucus, minority member of the sub-committee holding the hearings, requested written opinions of the deans of nearly every American medical and law school. The responses to his requests form an appendix to the committee hearings fully as long as the transcripts of the hearings themselves.
And so we find Robert W. Berliner, M.D., Dean of the School of Medicine at Yale University, in a written submission on the Human Life Bill, saying that medicine and science cannot tell us when human life begins; whether that which is destroyed by abortion is a human being; and whether the unborn child is alive. This opinion was given despite the high probability that anatomy, physiology, and embryology courses being taught at Berliner's medical school either now use or recently have used texts such as Greenhill and Friedman's Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics, texts containing observations such as "The term conception refers to the union of the male and female pronuclear elements of procreation from which a new living being develops," or "The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life."
Not only did the Baby Doe defendants commit treason by revealing American society's secret knowledge of the unborn child's humanity, they compounded their treachery by using a means of protest both likely to gain national attention and to stir national debate. Atlanta was exposed (or should I say, exposed itself) as no friend to civil rights. Further, the City was shown to lack any notion of restraint in law enforcement or compassion in the administration of justice.
And so it was with the wrath of a pagan god smarting from a sense of betrayal and with the royal indignation of a humiliated emperor that the gods and emperors of Atlanta seized on their revenge: they locked up the Baby Doe defendants and threw away the keys
Comments (1)
well, i definetly agree with you on obama. everyone else on xanga loves him