Journal Gazette, The (Fort Wayne, IN)Tactics change
mission doesn’t
Abortion foe’s return stirs questions
Rosa Salter Rodriguez The Journal Gazette
Published: May 27, 2007
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when abortion-rights opponents demonstrated in front of a center-city abortion clinic, a bespectacled young attorney-to-be from New Haven was in their midst. His name: Bryan J. Brown. Often Brown was the one who approached police to reassure them it would be a peaceful protest, says Wendell Brane, a fellow demonstrator who is now pastor of Trinity Evangelical Church in Fort Wayne. “We sort of appointed him the police negotiator. When the police arrived, and they always would, he would tell them what our intentions were, and … how we would behave if they tried to arrest us. We tried to have a smooth association with police,” Brane says. “He was good for that because … Bryan has a very charming personality. He connects well with people and he has a way about him that puts people at ease. He knows how to use humor to defuse a situation,” Brane says. “He’s not going to back down on his convictions, but he’s not going to walk away if threatened with arrest.” Indeed, the protests led to Brown, then affiliated with Northeast Indiana Rescue, being sued, fined and banned by a court from the abortion clinic for a time.
The charges and fines were nullified when, after a lengthy battle, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled federal racketeering statutes could not be applied against people exercising free-speech rights in abortion protests.
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The property has not been occupied as an abortion clinic since June 2006, when Fort Wayne Women’s Health Organization moved those services to 2210 Inwood Drive. An entity called the Donegal Corridor, with which Brown is affiliated, has a one-year-option to buy the property, {snip} Brown says his new endeavor, the ArchAngel Institute, is an extension of his religious convictions and career. It also signals a turn in tactics within the movement, he says. Recent federal laws carry high penalties for interfering with access to abortion clinics, he says. So those who oppose abortion on moral grounds are turning their attention elsewhere – to changing people’s attitudes and defending those who challenge society’s acceptance of abortion, from protesters to pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for abortion-inducing drugs on religious grounds. “I, and people who are aligned with me, think that what the nation needs at present is more than a political change but a cultural change,” he says. “Policies and politics will follow.”
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Brown says the role of his new center downtown will be “commemoration, communication and litigation” in support of pro-family issues. The building was blessed a week ago, and he says he will raise additional money for its purchase. He declined to name his financial backers. Brown says he plans a memorial to the aborted and is seeking input from supporters for additional uses of the building. Brown also has invited the public to tour the former clinic beginning at 2 p.m. today and Sundays in June and says abortions were performed there in less-than-ideal conditions. He says the interior was dirty and parts of the building were in disrepair when he entered it. Calls seeking comment from the Fort Wayne Women’s Health Organization, which had moved out of the building nearly a year before, were not immediately returned. Brown says he sees one battle looming as crisis pregnancy centers – founded and run by abortion-rights opponents – face deception and fraud charges filed by state attorneys general, based on consumer protection law. “I believe I’m uniquely qualified to defend them, given six years in the state of Kansas attorney general’s and 25 years in the movement,” he says. Vicki Saporta, head of the National Abortion Federation, says she knows of no such action in Indiana. She says the federation compiled a report on alleged misrepresentations at centers about two years ago and a bill was reintroduced in Congress last week to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to proceed against such centers on those grounds.
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But Brane welcomes Brown, saying it can be difficult to find specialized legal representation. He said Brown’s motivation and drive come “from his faith in Christ.” “He is not a reckless person. … People like him who have a strong pro-life ethic are going to have a strong belief that everybody is made in the image of God, including the unborn child, … and that if we believe abortion is murder, then we have to act like it’s murder. “I can’t imagine anyone in the pro-life movement who wouldn’t be excited at having him back.”
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