Art by Bob AulState Senator Bill Morrow probably thought it would be a walk in the park when he stood under a huge shade tree before a group of lotus-positioned teenagers in San Juan Capistrano's Cook Park on July 19. After all, the South County Republican was the Pro-Life PAC of Orange County's “Legislator of the Year” in 1995, and he was meeting with teens attending a summer camp organized by Operation Rescue, the nation's most fervid anti-abortion group. It'd be like singing to the children's choir.
But things went south when one girl gave Morrow a fetus in a jar to remind the legislator that he's against abortion. Then a hand shot up. Morrow was asked why, given his pro-life leanings, he voted for a state budget that included funding for abortion clinics and counseling. In typical politician fashion, Morrow danced around the question without answering it.
Another hand shot up. Morrow was again asked why, given his pro-life leanings, he voted for a state budget that included funding for abortion clinics and counseling.
“He's been pro-life all along, and we let him know how we feel,” shrugged Jason Conrad after the encounter. “We'll see how he votes next time.”
Conrad, 16, of Laguna Hills, was among about 40 teens who participated in the second summer Survivors Camp, which ended on July 25 in San Clemente. According to Troy Newman, Operation Rescue West's director of operations, it's called Survivors Camp because “there would be one-third more kids of this generation if abortion had not been decriminalized. If you were born after 1973, you survived the abortion holocaust.”
The teens view the anti-abortion movement like a generation past viewed the civil-rights movement.
“It's their generation that has been murdered,” Newman said. “It's their generation that has been dismembered in their mothers' wombs. These young people take it personally. One kid said to me, 'It was your generation that started this atrocity; it's my generation that's going to put an end to it.'”
“It has a deeper impact on us,” said Conrad. “These would have been people we could have been hanging out with. They would have been people we would have graduated with. They would have been our peers.”
Besides grilling Morrow, campers “counseled” women walking into abortion clinics, held huge posters of aborted fetuses at San Clemente Pier, and picketed the Huntington Beach office of Assemblyman Scott Baugh (thanks to a Weekly story that revealed the supposedly pro-life Republican accepted campaign contributions from one of the state's most prolific abortionists).
“Being active in pro-life work is not the politically correct thing to do, and it's not an easy thing to do. We take a lot of flak for what we do. It's not something where we go out and get a lot of praise from people. But I know what I'm doing is right, and God gives me strength through it all,” said Conrad, who's confident his generation will abort abortion on demand in the U.S.
Question: Where does one get a fetus in a jar?
“They're much harder to get than they used to be,” Newman said. “We've crawled in dumpsters behind abortion clinics and come away with dozens of little children. But now with fetal harvesting—thanks to Clinton and his administration—many of those fetuses are given to clinics, laboratories and universities. But they're still obtainable.
“Their bodies remain a testimony that they're not a blob of tissue. They're not a mother's body. It is a human being with a right to live just like you and me. So when Senator Morrow votes for a budget that contains millions of dollars for abortion funding, as well as millions of dollars for abortion counseling, what he is doing is signing the check to pay the assassin that kills the child.”
Oh.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.