Rev Patrick Mahoney/www.life.com

For years, the walkway to the front entrance of Planned Parenthood’s family planning and abortion services facility at 1108 16^th Street, NW was open to the circulating knots of pro-life sidewalk counselors, “prayer warriors” and pamphleteers—and, of course, customers—that gathered there Saturday mornings to encourage abortion-minded women to reconsider their choice.

By G.M. Corrigan

 Sometimes declaiming “Give your baby a choice,” “We have non-violent alternatives to abortion: adoption services, financial support” and “Think about it. This is one choice you’ll never be able to undo,” the anti-abortion partisans—some of whom make the logical point that they’re the true pro-choicers, in that they agitate for the choice of the child in the womb—could ply their pitches and press their pamphlets on incoming tens of women right up to the facility’s Corinthian pilaster-bordered security door.

 On May 1, however, all that changed.

 When activists and community organizers from groups ranging from Maryland-based Defend Life, Virginia church groups and D.C.-headquartered WAKE UP (Women Against the Killing and Exploitation of Unprotected Persons) arrived for their regular Saturday morning vigil of exhortation, prayer and buttonholing, a sturdy, black wrought-iron fence cordoned off the double-wide trailer-size patch of lawn and sidewalk leading up to the facility’s front door.

 More importantly, that fence, which sported ominous-looking “No Trespassing” signs, had a gate, and the gate was latched to all, save entering customers and their self-appointed “clinic escorts.”

 At least half of the pro-lifers’ buttonholing and entreaty zone had been eliminated in one, anti-choice swoop on April 28.

 There was one, small problem, however.

 The Reverend Patrick Mahoney, director of the activist, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition and a minister in The Reformed Presbyterian Church, believed the now-off limits walkway and lawn were on public property—and he was willing to go to jail to prove it.

 “When I was arrested here on June 8 [praying on the grounds], my arraignment was set for June 29,” the wiry cleric with the salt-and-pepper beard recently told ContinentalDivide. “But the U.S. Attorney didn’t even show up. They gave me a citation for unlawful entry, but they filed no formal charges against me, because they know they would not stand.”

 Mahoney only spent 12 hours in jail the day he was arrested—a veritable cake walk for the middle-aged, former Operation Rescue minister—but there was a First Amendment principle at stake that he wanted concerned Christians to weigh in on, so as to “live out their faith,” as his CDC charter has it, “in the public square.”

 He formed an ad hoc group, called A Time To Stand, and issued a nationwide alert to his 50,000 allied activists that August 14 would be the day to make their presence—and resistance—known.

 “But on August 12,” Mahoney added, “the city called me and said, ‘this sidewalk, which Planned Parenthood said was private, is public. This is public property.’ And so [we were handed] a huge victory, because for the first time ever prayer and the First Amendment [had been] banned on a public sidewalk in Washington, D.C., just blocks from where the White House is.”

 Likely as a consequence of this reversal there were only about 30 protestors—and a handful of D.C. Metropolitan police officers (one videotaping everything) and escorts—milling in front of the facility August 14.

 “I was here when the pastor was arrested,” said Commander H.B. Burton of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Special Operations Division, August 14, “because at that time the sidewalk, according to our city attorney, had been designated private property. Since that time, they’ve done more research and they’ve come up with another legal opinion that the sidewalk going up to the front door of Planned Parenthood is public space.”

 Asked why, after years of undisputed access to the facility’s doors, the walkway would suddenly be deemed private property, Burton shrugged. “When the fence was erected, there was some belief that it negated some of the public space issue, [making] this private property. That’s what made this whole issue come up again….If this continued to be open space, then it would not have been an issue.

 “We’re doing our job as deemed correct by our city attorney,” Burton went on, “and we want to be respectful and appreciate everybody’s First Amendment rights—the rights of the clinic, the rights of the people out here to express themselves—and that’s how we’re going to go with it.”

 That’s apparently not how it went down, however, in the run-up to Mahoney’s June 8 arrest.

 “I believe [D.C.’s attorneys] knew it was public property,” said Jim Henderson, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and Mahoney’s attorney, “and they were trying to come up with some legal theory under which they could treat it as though it wasn’t. And that’s why they went ahead and directed [the police] to enforce the unlawful entry complaint filed by Planned Parenthood….I know that [the District’s Public Spaces Branch]—and anyone to whom this branch reported—knew that their data base showed this property was publicly owned.

 “The legal issue was whether or not,” Henderson explained, “while retaining title to this property, the District of Columbia could allow Planned Parenthood to assert that it had an ownership issue that allowed it to prohibit use of the property by the public—excluding some individuals and not others—with a right to prosecute for trespass.

 “In the downtown D.C. corridor, however, almost all property leading up to building fronts falls within [public property]. In this particular area on 16^th Street there is a right-of-way owned by the District of Columbia that is 150 feet wide and it sits centered on 16^th Street. In effect, that means that from the curb face on the west side of 16^th Street…heading toward Planned Parenthood’s building, a swath of 50 feet falls within this right-of-way….carrying virtually right up to the face of the building….up and down the street.”

 But perhaps Planned Parenthood didn’t know this.

 “Planned Parenthood had to have known [this],” Henderson rejoined, “because, in order to put up that fence…they had to get a public spaces permit from the Public Spaces Branch of the District of Columbia’s Department of Transportation. And the only time you have to get that permit is if you’re going to erect something in public space of the District of Columbia.”

 Asked about Mahoney’s intentions, Henderson said, “Although the city has backed off, it did in fact inflict an injury on Reverend Mahoney—they took his First Amendment rights from him, they incarcerated him for a period of several hours. And, absent some resolution satisfactory to Reverend Mahoney, I believe this ultimately will be litigated [under D.C. tort and federal civil rights laws].”

 Contacted for its comment, Planned Parenthood’s media spokespersons did not return ContinentalDivide’s phone calls.

Questioned on their role at the site, several clinic escorts, which pro-lifers accuse of interfering with their free speech and assembly rights, declined comment—save one.

 Dave Spalla of Washington, D.C.—against colleague urgings—said: “When you see our guys pacing back and forth, it’s just to make sure the sidewalk stays clear in case someone has to get into the clinic. What we try to do is create personal space between the men and women going into the clinic and the sidewalk counselors. If they want to stay out here and talk, they’re more than welcome to. But if they look like they’re turned off or that they don’t want to converse with them, then we try to create a personal space for them.”

 Asked if the escorts block pro-life sidewalk counselors from legally approaching prospects, as pro-lifers claim, Spalla said, “Well, we’ll slow down the protestor as [the customers] are going into the clinic.”

 David Bereit, national director of the pro-life 40 Days for Life campaign had a different take on fence and escorts, however.

 “The fence [and escorts] are trying to keep women from hearing the truth from sidewalk counselors and prayer volunteers,” he said, “and that’s what Planned Parenthood tries to do: silence the truth [so] women know about only one option, and not provide true choice, where they can choose to protect life of their children. The fence is very symbolic of what this struggle is all about.

 “The fence is also symbolic of how Planned Parenthood sees they are above the law.” Bereit added. “They tried to keep public property from being accessed by people who have a different viewpoint than they do—people who advocate for human life. And we’ve seen Planned Parenthood arrogantly break the law many times elsewhere in the country—whether it’s the hundred-plus criminal charges filed against them in Kansas, the Medicaid fraud [charges] in California [brought] by one of their former financial executives…or whether it’s the cover-up of the sexual abuse of minors. Planned Parenthood feels it’s above the law.”

 If that’s the case, Bereit’s and others’ efforts may be bringing publicity’s famed sanitizing sunshine to the matter.

 “Our son is here today with the [pro-life] Crossroads Walk, having walked from San Francisco to D.C, and we wanted to support him,” Lisa Everette, of South Bend, Indiana, said of her son, Nick.

 Nick’s three-month, cross-country awareness trek terminated August 14 at the controversial, downtown Planned Parenthood site.

 “Abortion is the civil rights issue…because if you don’t have the right to life, none of the other civil rights is possible,” Everette, who works for the Catholic diocese of South Bend, added. “So, it is the linchpin of a free, civil, democratic society, and it is the ultimate human right. And that is what these young people [of the Crossroads Walk] are trying to peacefully, prayerfully bear witness to.”

 “Whether it knows it or not, America is overwhelmingly pro-life,” Nick Everette said, drawing on his recent cross-country experience with nine other walkers. “It was an eye-opening experience.”

 The group, which had counterpart bands coming from Los Angeles, Seattle and Canada, regularly paused at en route abortion facilities to pray and witness to their cause, Nick Everette said, and where they contributed to numerous [baby] “saves.”

 “We’ve saved 26 babies since the fence went up,” echoed sidewalk counselor Dick Retta of WAKE UP, who is a regular at the downtown Planned Parenthood site.

 Questioned about his CDC ministry, Mahoney explained that his organization focuses on life, abortion, human rights, free speech, religious liberty, and social justice issues, such as poverty and racial reconciliation issues—and then “challenges the church to walk in radical Biblical obedience.”

 Asked, then, if he is encouraged in his work, the multitasking minister replied, “I’m encouraged with this younger generation. A Gallup poll of people 55 years-old and older found that only 32 percent thought that abortion was immoral. With 18 year-olds and under it was 72 percent. So, we’re seeing a generational shift on the issue.

 Corrigan is a Maryland-based freelance reporter who is finishing his first novel.