Operation Miscue

In the end, Newman’s and the Palmquists‘ disenchantment is probably best understood as indicative of an age-old American David-and-Goliath complex, of a Christian delight in persecution, or of the inevitable result of their impossibly absolutist expectations. Because even if the extremist wing of the movement they represent has been isolated and enfeebled, their cause has rarely looked brighter. If the public has repeatedly shown itself to be more pro-choice than not -- a fact illustrated by Richard Riordan’s and Elizabeth Dole‘s pragmatic stands on abortion -- it is nonetheless harder now than at any point in the last two decades to get an abortion in America. More than 800 clinics, hospitals and private doctors’ offices have stopped performing abortions. In most rural areas, there‘s simply nowhere to go: 84 percent of American counties lack even one abortion provider. What pro-choice activists call “guerrilla legislation” has been quietly passed at local, state and federal levels to deny public funding of abortion and slowly but effectively chip away at choice with mandatory waiting periods and parental-consent requirements. And of course, with Bush in the White House and the remaining pro-Roe Supreme Court justices aging rapidly, legal abortion is on shakier ground than ever.

Back at the beach, Jeff White is not holding his breath. “I don’t take solace in politicians,” he says. He is also steadfastly optimistic. “A lot of the pro-life movement is down in the mouth,” White admits. “I don‘t know why.” As if to answer him, a blond head leans out the window of a passing white pickup and screams, “Get outta here!” White shakes his head. “The last time I was here, there was a guy thumping me on the chest,” he says. It’s happened enough times that whenever anyone approaches, White says, he immediately assumes that they‘re going to try to hit him. “It actually happens far less than you would imagine.”

Either way, he doesn’t let the jeers and blows get him down. “Historically, it‘s when the other side appears as if they have all the cards that it can change in a flash, the whole center of the battle.” He points to the teens working with him a few yards away, all members of Survivors, which White says has been gaining momentum, growing “in leaps and bounds.” The kids are recruited at local churches, and it’s in the enthusiasm of these unusual teens, who are willing to give up a beautiful Saturday to be ridiculed by strangers, that White places his hope. He talks about the “high-intensity activist training camp” he runs for youth each summer, and about their tours of college campuses -- “the battleground for the hearts and minds of the next generation” -- where they do much the same thing they are doing right now, standing around in public places trying to win converts with their gruesome posters. “It‘s just a trickle now,” White promises, “but it will become a flood.”