Pro-Life Pioneers Home Attacked

Having had my home vandalized earlier this year for my Pro-life work, I was shocked & dismayed to come across this bit of news tonite. Last April I met Joe Scheidler when he was down at Cedar Rapids to help us protest the visit of Planned Parenthood President Cecille Richards. I repeat what I said in that post about my meeting him: " I have to say that I felt extremely priviledged to be able to talk to him. He is clearly 1 of the patriarchs of the Pro-life movement. & he has experienced hatred, attacks on his person & seen plenty of battles. Yet he remains a humble man who truly cares about saving lives." I continue to stand by what I said.

I will admit that reading about this latest attack on him made me a bit angry. Like Ann Scheidler, I am not a big fan of the "hate crimes" label. But this was clearly motivated by hate. Hate towards Pro-lifers by those who support abortion. &, yes, crazy is a good way to describe how that hatred can make them look.

I also can identify with the way the Scheidlers were treated by the police. I have to agree with Ann Scheidler that there may be more than a little coincidence that the Illinois Choice Action Team (ICAT) recently had some training near their house & this vandalism occurring. If things had been reversed, an abortionist's house attacked after a Pro-life training session, the police would have looked into it.

On their Facebook page, Iowa Right to Life posted the following about the attack: "As reports of violence against pro-lifers continue to escalate from Michigan to California to Kansas and beyond, what are we to do? Cease praying outside abortion mills? Stop confronting young women in love as they head in to make a deadly mistake? Set down our signs and head home? I daresay that such an attack against the Scheidlers will strengthen their resolve. That an act of cowardice under the cover of darkness will serve as a powerful reminder to them that they are standing in the gap for those who may lose their lives before they even draw their first breath."

I know my attack strengthened my resolve to continue. I know this will strengthen theirs. We cannot let their attempts to silence us suceed. For we are the voice of the unborn. As Jenifer Bowen of IRTL said, what they did was an act of cowardice. I speak again from experience in saying that i have found that Pro-aborts rarely reveal who they really are when they attack you or what you stand for. they either remain anonymous or create a fake name to hide behind.

Keep the Schindlers in your prayers. & keep the woman who attacked them in yours as well.

“Crazy Feminist” Attack on Joe and Ann Scheidler’s Home
Posted by Ann Scheidler (December 2, 2010 at 6:03 pm)

The broken window in the front of Joe and Ann Scheidler’s Chicago home [Photo by Ann Scheidler]

At a little after 2:00 AM on Thursday morning I awoke to the sound of breaking glass. My first thought was that a shelf must have fallen in the china cabinet. Then I heard it again. Joe and I got up and went downstairs to check out what had happened. We did not suspect anything particularly untoward. I didn’t have my contacts or glasses so I wasn’t seeing to clearly. Everything looked OK. We decided it must have been something outside, so we went back to bed.
Later in the morning when we were about to head to 7:30 Mass, Joe went out front to see if anything looked suspicious. At about the same time that he discovered shards of glass all over our front porch, I discovered a chunk of asphalt and lots of broken glass on the floor in the dining room.
A few minutes earlier I had noticed that the living room seemed a bit cold, but the windows are covered with lace shades so it wasn’t obvious that a window was broken. After finding the dining room break, I checked again in the living room. Sure enough on the floor was a plastic bag with a piece of asphalt and a note in an envelope.
Asphalt Accompanied by Cryptic Writings
I opened the envelope to find a message from a troubled woman (women). It started: “We are crazy, feminists bitches….” Clearly it was time to call the police.

Note that came with the asphalt chunks (click photo for hi-res version) [Photo by Ann Scheidler]

A very concerned Chicago police officer arrived shortly. He explained that it wasn’t technically a burglary because no one tried to break it, but since it wasn’t exactly a random act of vandalism, it might fall into the category of a “hate crime.”
Now here I must confess that I do not believe in hate crimes. A crime is a crime. And chances are if you rob someone or hurt him or throw a brick through his window, you probably don’t like him. I don’t think we need layers of crimes with special labels to try to keep order.
It turns out, however, that the “hate crime” label does not fit this particular crime. The explanation? The perpetrator didn’t hate us. She just hated what we stand for. Rather a subtle difference it seems to me. The upshot is there won’t be much investigation unless it happens again.
Fortunately while the police officer was still at our house, a handy man pulled up. He was there to fix a door. I asked him if he was pretty good at windows too and he set about to replace the broken panes and get the storm window repaired.
Deathscort Training Session Same Night. Coincidence?
A few hours after the police report had been made, I recalled that the Illinois Choice Action Team (ICAT) had scheduled a training session for clinic escorts to work at Albany clinic where we regularly pray and counsel. The training was held about twenty minutes from our house. Did the ICAT announce our home address to the recruits, or did they come away from the training session in such a frenzy to stop pro-lifers that they decided to pay a visit to the Scheidlers? Who knows.
I called the police station to give them the new piece of information, but the officer on duty thought it was irrelevant because there would be no way to prove that someone from the training was the brick thrower. True, but it certainly seems likely.
A brick through your window is a pretty small price to pay for your beliefs. But there’s no guarantee that that’s where it stops. We are blessed that so many people pray for us on a regular basis. And we have received many calls from pro-life friends with assurance of their prayers. That’s why we aren’t especially unnerved by this act of vandalism. And that’s why we will pray for the post-abortive women who paid us a visit and tossed a couple of bricks. Maybe no one else is praying for them. I hope you’ll join us.

Additional coverage:
Pro-life pioneers’ home damaged in middle-of-the-night pro-abort attack
Pro-Lifer Joe Scheidler’s Home Hit by Pro-Abortion Vandalism
Pro-life Pioneer’s Home Damaged in Cowardly Pro-Abortion Attack
Thick as a brick: Home of pro-life leaders vandalized

Post I did on Joe Scheidler: Joe Scheidler - Pro-Life Hero