Rogers Students Face Abortion Protest Activists Pick North Side High School To Launch Campaign

The abortion debate hit the schoolyard when protesters carrying posters of mangled fetuses greeted students Monday morning at Rogers High School.

The north Spokane school was one of more than 100 targeted in a nationwide Operation Rescue campaign set to last through the end of the school year.

Teenagers stepping from school buses faced posters nearly as tall as the demonstrators, who also handed anti-abortion pamphlets to them.

Some students covered their eyes, a few shredded the handouts and still others opted for impromptu - and sometimes loud - sidewalk debates.

“I’m not killing your kids,” 14-year-old Rebecca Johnson said angrily, turning her back on the Rev. Dan Henshaw of Mountain View Assembly of God. “If we want to have an abortion, that’s our own problem. That guy can go preach in a church.”

Another girl greeted the protesters with a wide smile. “I don’t believe in abortion!” she shouted.

School administrators hovered nearby, occasionally moving sign carriers from the walkway and trying to hustle students inside.

“Don’t take it on; you don’t need to take it on. Just go on in the building,” said Maurice Paul, assistant principal at Rogers.

Paul is the first of many Spokane educators who will face the demonstrators, who vow to take their message to schools across the city.

“I hope it stimulates some classroom discussion. I think it will,” said Jerry Malone, pastor at Cheney Community Church, one of about a dozen protesters.

The group, Lifeline Ministries, pickets 10 or so times a month outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on East Indiana but recently decided to tackle a new audience. “Sometimes I think we spend too much time at our board meetings and talking,” Malone said.

Right now, too many students hear only the “Planned Parenthood-type message” that abortion can be a good option, said the Rev. Jim Anderson, founder of Lifeline Ministries.

Rogers was chosen for the first Spokane demonstration because some of the organizers’ fellow church members go there, Anderson said.

When the demonstrators first pulled their posters from a maroon van, a cluster of kids smoking cigarettes in the parking lot recoiled.

“That’s offending us, that poster,” one boy shouted.

“Bring on the hamburger,” another grumbled.

“Why’d you have to bring that?” asked Junior St. John, a 16-year-old sophomore who attends church with some of the protesters. “That’s pretty gross.”

Henshaw offered a quick response. “Sometimes it helps to see the reality of it.”

Jenny Kellogg, a 17-year-old junior, agreed. “For me, it’d make my decision not to have an abortion.”

Another girl rushed away in tears.

Similar scenes played out Monday at high schools in more than 120 cities nationwide, said Flip Benham, Operation Rescue’s national director.

“This is really just a kick-off for three months of activities, until the end of the school year,” Benham said Monday.

“We’re taking our schools back. This is what parents do when their kids are in great danger. They go and get them.”

Demonstrators were so pleased with Monday’s results, they’re going to continue gathering at schools throughout Spokane, Anderson said. He wouldn’t give details on when or where.

Larry Parsons, area director for Spokane School District 81, said he hopes to make the event a learning experience by talking with students “about free speech issues and how to deal with people you disagree with in nonviolent ways.”

But principal Wallace Williams said city officials should consider an ordinance to keep the protesters farther from school property.

What would happen, he asked, if groups such as the Aryan Nations began recruiting students from school sidewalks?

“To use students as a captive audience to do this is a concern,” Williams said. “Somebody has to protect the learning environment.”

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