Pro-life supporters oppose St. Paul abortion resolution

The seven-member St. Paul City Council took a stand on abortion when it voted March 4 at its weekly meeting to designate March 10 Abortion Providers Appreciation Day.

The 7-0 vote outraged pro-lifers, including Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and one group took action. Seven members of Students for Life of America visited with two of the resolution’s four sponsors March 11, right before the start of the council’s weekly meeting.

Five students and two staffers from SFLA, a national, Virginia-based college pro-life organization, presented a petition opposing the resolution with 804 signatures, then had a 30-minute conversation with council members Nelsie Yang, who joined the council in January, and Jane Prince. Members of both sides politely made their points, complete with personal anecdotes. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter did not sign the resolution. He could not be reached for comment.

Yang described being “really happy” about the resolution, and told a story about going with someone to an abortion clinic when she was 14. She said she grew up in poverty, and thinks abortion should be an option for women in poverty who have unplanned pregnancies.

SFLA’s regional coordinator, Tori Petersen, who drove up from Albert Lea in southern Minnesota, countered with her own pro-life story. Petersen, 24, said she was conceived in rape, and her mother struggled with a variety of issues that eventually led to Petersen being placed in the foster care system.

“I look at my mom as a hero because she chose life for me,” Petersen said. She described living in 12 foster homes and never being adopted by a family. She said that despite “a lot of suffering and a lot of adversity… every life does matter, every life does have intrinsic purpose because it’s a human being.”

Maddie Schulte, SFLA’s strategic partnership adviser, asked the two council members to consider creating a similar resolution to honor workers and volunteers at pro-life centers, a “Life Care Appreciation Day.”

After the meeting, Schulte told The Catholic Spirit a supporter of her organization is drafting such a resolution, and Schulte plans to present it to the council for a vote.

“We know that the abortion (providers) appreciation day probably will not be revoked (next year),” she said. “But, if we can counter that narrative and just make sure that the council members know that their constituents, the people of the city, don’t agree with it, and that there are actually people standing up for human beings, standing up for women, standing up for the vulnerable, the ones in poverty, the people Yang was talking about, the people she was saying need Planned Parenthood.”

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, made a similar declaration, designating March 10 as Abortion Provider Appreciation Day. Schulte and Petersen said they have no plans at this time to counter the Minneapolis action.

In St. Paul, the basis for the resolution, found in the minutes of the March 4 meeting, is “to honor the memory of Dr. David Gunn and the many other abortion providers and clinic staff … who support women’s patients’ reproductive choices.” Dr. Gunn was an abortionist in Florida who was killed March 10, 1993, by a lone gunman opposed to abortion.

Included in the full text outlining the resolution is a claim that “the National Abortion Federation’s 2018 statistics on violence and disruption found an alarming escalation in incidences of obstruction, vandalism, and trespassing at abortion clinics.”

Local pro-life activist Brian Gibson, executive director of Pro-Life Action Ministries in St. Paul, has a different perspective about the violence claim. For decades, Gibson, a Catholic, has regularly led prayer gatherings and done sidewalk counseling in front of abortion facilities such as Planned Parenthood in St. Paul.

“There has been zero violence — outside of the abortions taking place inside that building — at Planned Parenthood toward Planned Parenthood or any of its people,” Gibson said. “The violence that has taken place has been toward us — the sidewalk counselors, the prayer supporters, the (pro-life) people out there.”

He supports what SFLA is doing and came to City Hall March 11 to voice his solidarity with SFLA members. Meanwhile Schulte and Petersen left the meeting hopeful and energized for future pro-life efforts.

“We can do something about this,” said Schulte, a member of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. “Truth is on our side. God is on our side and we will prevail in the end.”