060102 LifeNet

June-July 2002 Issue

HUDSON VALLEY COALITION FOR LIFE

INTERFAITH PRO-LIFE -NEWSLETTER

Dobbs Ferry - Now an Abortion-Free Zone

"We have kept the Faith Operation Goliath is officially ended "

So said Fr. Fidelis Moscinski at the end of the May 11 Commemoration Vigil. In June, 1990 Fr. Fidelis (then Chris Moscinski) joined 4 others in a sit-in style Rescue, featuring non-cooperation with the legal authorities.

One direct result, is that Tyler and his mother Tammy were saved from their abortion, which had been scheduled that day! Tammy and her family were helped by Fr. Joseph Irwin and Holy Trinity Parish in Mamaroneck. Tammy, Tyler, and his brother all look happy at this July 1991 picnic, held by the rescuers and other supporters.

In this Issue:

• Page 2 - Why the "Clinic" (sic) Closed.

• Page 3 & 4 - Copy of the Press Release we sent to 14 newspaper and other media outlets. An honest and complete telling of the Ashford Ave., Dobbs Ferry Abortion Clinic protests. Only The Enterprise used any of the material & we received no calls!

• Page 5 - The NY Times "slant" on the closing. Obviously, they didn't call us.

• Page 6 -- ... And a little bit more on Dobbs

Hudson Valley Coalition for Life                                             Good Counsel Homes

PO Box 494                                                          303 Madison Street

Ossining, NY 10562                                            Hoboken, NJ 07030

(914) 271-5144 1-800-723-8331

Why did the Clinic Close?

Because Kaali couldn't find a buyer for his going-concern abortion mill. And that's probably why he refused interviews with the press.

Here's what The Enterprise (local once-a-week newspaper for Ardsley and Dobbs Ferry; was very favorable to the abortion mill in the nineties) had to say:

"Literature from the Hudson Valley Coalition for Life, based in Ossining, says that local picketers were at the clinic almost weekly since the early 1970's The first large-scale demonstration occurred in 1988 and resulted in 179 arrests. A civil disobedience campaign started in June 1990, called "Operation Goliath" yielded more than 1, 000 arrests over the next four years. In 1994, the clinic was instrumental in the battle to uphold the right of women seeking abortions to have access to clinic doors, which resulted in the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law. Since 1994 both pro-choice and anti-abortion picketers have lined the sidewalk almost every Saturday.

While the local anti-abortion groups attribute the closing 'to a general drop-of in demand for abortion due to pro-life efforts, 'Katherine Lederer Plaskett, chairwomen of the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion, contended 'That is absolutely untrue. The reason for the closing, as I understand it, is that Dr. Kaali is retiring. '

Later in the Enterprise article Lederer-Plaskett is again quoted:

"... she stressed the importance of the clinic as a 'historic landmark' to the pro-choice movement. `This was a real symbol. Although the issue was decided elsewhere, it was really enforced here ... the clinic brought choice home; it brought choice to Westchester, ' she explained. 'Those of us who fight for choice are sorry to see it closed but Dr. Kaali deserves to retire. '

Lederer-Plaskett added that the reason another doctor didn't take over Kaali 's offices was most likely because abortion 'is not an exclusive service anymore. '

The Enterprise quoted our press release, but didn't call our spokeswoman for comments.

So the pro-abortion people are scrambling and desperate to downplay the closing!

The reality is, there are two related reasons the abortion chamber closed:

1. For a number of years the reported annual abortion level has been dropping - from a high of about 1.5 million abortions to about 1.3 million - a 14% drop.

2. The clinic is picketed by local Westchester residents - and the pro-abortion counterdemonstrators provide further disruption.

So - even if you are a totally unscrupulous physician/businessman, with no qualms about providing abortion "services" - why buy a business with declining demand that is being picketed? And where (you never know!) you have to be worried about civil disobedience returning to your location?

Not a great business model, is it? Who, looking to make "big bucks" (as Kaali certainly did!) is going to buy into that? And the pro-abortion people know it.

An interesting sidebar: we understand Kaali will be working part-time for Planned Parenthood (this is not confirmed). The small abortion mills are closing down, and the big operations (Planned Parenthood) are getting bigger.

Liberal Pro-abortion NY TIMES Misinformation...

The Times coverage was classic pro-abortion stereotyping (note the picture; only older men protest abortion!!), with comprehensive verbal engineering built around selective quotations. Funny how they left out that the only person ever arrested for assault (technically "disturbing the peace") was the "clinic" owner!

So why waste a page of our newsletter rehashing this trash? Do we need a reminder that the "progressive" media will do everything they can to misrepresent us while covering up the price of "choice"?

No. But it's nice to be able to see this and say "Despite all their lies, the Clinic is closed!"

communities

Clinic Calls It A Day, and So Do Pickets

An End to Anti-Abortion Protests and Counter-Protests

By BARBARA STEWART

Dobbs FERRY- IT may take a month or two before the residents of Dobbs Ferry get used to Saturdays without protests outside the Women's Medical Pavilion. For the first time in decades, Ashford Avenue will be free of "Abortion Is Murder" and "Pro-Child, Pro-Choice" pickets. Children will be able to play in the Ashford Park without glimpsing pictures of aborted fetuses and police officers will have time to talk to downtown merchants and ticket double-parked cars.

"It's a relief," said Lt. Betsy Gelardi of the Dobbs Ferry Police Department. "I'm enthusiastic about the ways we can redirect our manpower. Saturday has always been a day dedicated to the clinic. In 14 years, no police officer has ever gotten married on a Saturday. Whatever their plans, they had to take the clinic into account."

Earlier this month, Dr. Steven G. Kaali, the longtime owner of the Women's Medical Pavilion, retired, shut the office and sold the building. Dr. Kaali could not

be reached. But village officials say the new owner plans to open a nongynecological medical practice. The closing of the medical pavilion also ends 30 years of tense, often aggressive and occasionally violent protests and counter-protests in this town of 10,000 people. During the early 90's,1,200 anti-abortion protesters - including many who had chained or glued themselves to the fence - were arrested in one week. The village spent hundreds of thousands of dollars guarding and arresting protesters, Lieutenant Gelardi said. From the late 1980's to the mid-90's, the anti-abortion movement's most aggressive period, judges from around the country flew in to help staff the beleaguered local courts.

The Dobbs Ferry clinic opened in 1911, when abortion became legal in New York state, 18 months before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal throughout the country.

"Lots of women came from out of state," said Catherine Lederer-Plaskette, chairwoman of the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion, a nonprofit organi zation. There were vans to take them to the medical offices and package deals that included hotel stays and tickets to a Broadway play along with an abortion.

Mary Mandry, a Dobbs Ferry resident and Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, said she heard rumors about abortions in the new medical office before it opened.

Deena Weintraub

Anti-abortion protesters were a regular sight outside the Women's Medical Pavilion in Dobbs Ferry.

"Imagine - right here in town," she said. When the clinic opened, she and her husband, Jerry, and a few like-minded friends were there. "We just walked back and forth, back and forth," she said. "Later, there was picketing. It went against our grain. But it was prayerful picketing."

The clinic, which offered a full range of women's medical services, was sold to Dr. Kaali about 20 years ago. By then, the protests were heating up.

"It became much more intrusive," said Mrs. Mandry. "There was much more hostility. For us, that was the turning point. We couldn't keep on doing it in that atmosphere."

In 1990, Operation Rescue, the aggressive national anti-abortion organization, made a target of the Dobbs Ferry medical office. "This is an experiment," said an Operation Rescue member at the time. "The idea is to concentrate on one clinic until there are no more abortions in town."

During that time, Dr. Kaali said, "If they think they're going to break me, it's a laughing matter." For a few years, Ashford Avenue was a center of rallies, where furiously angry demonstrators shouted back and forth.

"It's modern age stoning," Dr. Kaali told a reporter after two years of relentless demonstrations. Federal marshals guarded the medical office after Operation Rescue named Dr. Kaali one of its 10 most dangerous enemies. Protesters were attaching Kryptonite locks to his new six-foot chain-link fence.

Dobbs Ferry residents, whatever their feelings about abortion, grew weary of street-corner preachers haranguing them about Auschwitz on the Hudson and babies being murdered.

Gradually, by 1995 or so, the crowds dispersed. In recent years, few Saturday morning protests drew more than 30 people. Mrs. Mandry, who had quit demon strating long before, was raising money for Westchester shelters for single pregnant women. And there are now many other long-established abortion clinics and medical offices throughout the country.

The clinic paved the path for the abortion providers who moved in after, said Ms. Lederer-Plaskette.

"The Dobbs Ferry clinic was our Stonewall," she continued. "It brought the issues home to Westchester."

Press Release

Hudson Valley Coalition for Life, Inc., P.O. Box 494, Ossining, NY 10562 914-271-5144

For release: May 10, 2002

As reported in the local news media, both print and radio, the Dobbs Ferry abortion "clinic" has closed effective today.

The owner has retired and no one was interested in purchasing the "business" - we speculate because of the general drop off in demand for abortion due to pro-life efforts, and the continuous picketing and protests at the "clinic" for over twenty-five years.

On Saturday evening there will be a candlelight vigil from 6 - 8PM. - a Vigil of Commemoration and Remembrance for the estimated 75,000 human beings who were aborted from 1971 to today - and the women and men still hurting today from these abortions.

Co-sponsored by:

Right to Life of Southern Westchester - Mary Gormley 914-779-7671 Hudson Valley Coalition for Life - Brigid Faranda 914-271-5144 Expectant Mother Care - Chris Slattery - 917-763-8367

Background on the facility

The Women's Medical Pavilion is located at 88 Ashford Ave., in Dobbs Ferry, NY. Dobbs Ferry is a suburban community on the Hudson River approximately a half hour drive north of Manhattan. Local picketers have been going to the abortion mill since the early 1970's and in 1988 the first civil disobedience rescue took place, with 179 arrests.

In June of 1990 a non-violent civil disobedience campaign began there - called Operation Goliath (the abortion chamber and governmental support being Goliath; the protesters being David). The total number of arrests over the next four years topped 1,000. All the direct actions were peaceful, with rescuers either blocking the gates or doors to the clinic or going into the building and sitting-in in the facility.

A number of women are known to have changed their minds about their pending abortions when they arrived for their appointments to fmd the clinic closed and pro-life sidewalk counselors prepared too offer them life affirming alternatives. We can document several of these situations/happy endings.

The last large-scale rescue took place on Tuesday, June 21 st, 1994 when twelve women and nine men sat down in the driveway. The group included two Franciscan sisters, one priest, two young women aged 21 and 22, and one man in his 70's. They were charged under the then new federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law, which made civil disobedience to stop abortion a political crime. After court proceedings of about 18 months they were convicted under the civil portion of FACE and fined as a group. As most of the participants had no assets, the fine was paid by a handful of the rescuers.

This was the last large civil disobedience effort; there were at least two more actions by small groups of clergy, including retired Roman Catholic Bishop Most Reverend George Lynch.

Since 1994 protesting has continued with groups of 10 to fifty picketers and sidewalk counselors on Saturdays and smaller groups on Wednesdays.

The facility has a bad health history. On June 29^th, 1988 Dawn Mendoza died along with her unborn baby as she was being aborted 22 weeks into her pregnancy. According to the autopsy report she died in the Women's Medical Pavilion and the cause of death was "Amniotic fluid and chorionic villi embolism", a complication of second and third trimester abortions. The Dobbs Ferry hospital is one block away but no effort was made to transfer her to emergency facilities.

In 1989 Steven Kaali, the owner of the abortion facility, published a paper in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology titled "Frequency and Management of Uterine Perforations in First-trimester Abortions" in which he reported a nearly 2% perforated uterus rate at his clinic. In the last paragraph Kaali states "In conclusion, we feel that most uterine perforations during first-trimester abortions go unrecognized and untreated."

We can document malpractice cases that were prosecuted and frequently settled in the Westchester County court system.

In July of 1990 Kaali was arrested in his hometown of Greenwich, CT., after he assaulted a grandmother who had been picketing his private road. She and her sister were walking back to their car when Kaali drove past them in the back of a pick-up truck and dumped a bucket of liquified horse manure and urine on her. Kaali was arrested for "Breach of the Peace". Criminal charges were ultimately dropped after he served six months in the court's accelerated rehabilitation program. His victim filed a civil suit and an out of court settlement was ultimately reached.

The Hudson Valley Coalition for Life will supply documentation confirming all background information on the Dobbs Ferry abortion chamber, upon request. This includes abortion-bound women who changed their minds at rescues, the Dawn Mendoza autopsy report, and Kaali research paper. The malpractice cases and the assault case are documented on-line (http://bcsd.freeservers.com/A/01.htm). We can also supply Dr. Bernard Nathanson's (former abortionist and co-founder of NARAL, now known for his pro-life videos and advocacy) analysis of the Kaali paper, which Nathanson reviewed in the Bernadell Technical Bulletin.

Supporters at the last large scale civil disobedience rescue in Dobbs Ferry on June 21, 1994, include Liz Costanza, Pat Vasta, Fr. Glenn Sudano, Nick Terilli (young boy with the sign in the foreground), Maureen Terilli, and Angie DeFiore. They are watching and clapping for a small bus leaving the gate with some of the 21 people arrested that day, in defiance of the Federal FACE legislation. With the significant exception of two small Catholic clergy sitins (again defying FACE), demonstrations at the "clinic" for the next eight years consisted of picketing and sidewalk counseling.

We are still hoping to announce a Mass of Commemoration at some time in the future in Dobbs Ferry. In the meantime, let's especially remember to pray for those who worked at this abortion chamber, as well as those (like Maureen Terilli above) who worked to close the chamber, and are no longer with us.