Pro-life, Before There was Po-life

By J.D. Mullane
The Intelligencer


Before there was a pro-life movement in Pennsylvania, there was John Stanton, who launched it here in 1971.

That was two years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion.


For more than 40 years, he fought for the unborn, enduring assaults, ridicule and prison.

His fight ended on Jan. 31, when he died after heart surgery in Philadelphia. He was 86.

The son of Irish Catholic immigrants, the father of 12, the grandfather of 46, and the great-grandfather of 16, he lived in Jenkintown with his wife, Harriet, to whom he was married for 63 years.

He was a reader of this column, and my uncle.

He told me at a family gathering last summer that he knew in the late 1960s what legalized abortion would bring to America, and he could not stand by. He founded an organization known today as the Pro-Life Union Of Greater Philadelphia.

Over all these years, he stood outside abortion clinics and hospitals and prayed, sometimes alone, for the mothers and the children lost.

Counter demonstrators mocked and insulted him. He was slapped, shoved and punched.

Forty years before Pope Francis spoke of wanting a Catholic Church “that is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out in the streets,” John Stanton was bruised, hurting and dirty in the streets, witnessing the faith.

Once, he took on members of the Warlocks, the outlaw motorcycle club. Outside an abortion clinic in Center City, a trio of Warlocks kept kicking down his “Choose Life” sign. He went up to them and warned them not to do it again. He was a slight man, but had a powerful presence. The Warlocks rode off, leaving the sign intact.

After organizing Catholics to pray the rosary outside clinics throughout the area, and after pleading with women entering the clinics not to abort their children, he was indicted under federal RICO anti-racketeering statutes.

In court, the judge gave him a choice. Admit guilt, pay a fine and walk free, or go to prison. He chose prison.
Given these batterings, it would be natural to become bitter, but Uncle John never did.

Given these batterings, it would be natural to become bitter, but Uncle John never did.

When a counter-demonstrator lobbed a can of Mace at him, the demonstrator was arrested and charged with assault.  In court, Uncle John dropped the charges against him.  His faith commanded him to a difficult standard.  Mercy is shown to those who are merciful.

Long before anyone had heard of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, Uncle John had stood outside Gosnell's clinic in West Philadelphia for 11 years, praying.

Last year, when Gosnell was convicted and sent to prison for murdering three newborns and for the death of one of his abortion patients, Uncle John told me: "We pray for his soul."

Some years ago, on a winter afternoon over lunch at the Dallas Diner in Bristol Township, I asked him why he kept at it.  Why did he sacrifice so much of his life for a cause that seemed a goner in a regressive culture?  I've never forgotten his response: "Faith costs."

He paid the price, but not in vain.

The week he died, news broke that abortions are at the lowest levels in the United States since 1973.  While there are many reasons for this, among them wider use of birth control and loss of stigma for unmarried women to have children, a Chicago Tribune editorial cites an under-reported cause, and it sould give great hope to pro-lifers.

"Young people," the Tribune reports, "are also more likely to find abortion morally troublesome.  A Gallop poll last year found that Americans aged 18-34 are more likely than any other age groups to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

Sonograms and ultrasounds have a lot to do with this.  The stunning fact that one in three Americans has been aborted since 1973 is another.

But those lonely vigils outside clinics that John Stanton and people like him across the country have endured since Roe v. Wade are also the reason Americans are coming to their senses.