Joe Scheidler, of Chicago, ‘godfather of pro-life activism,’ dies at 93
Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League and known as the “godfather of pro-life activism,” died of pneumonia in his Chicago home on Monday, his family said. He was 93.
Family and fellow activists say Scheidler will be remembered for his five decades of passionate work opposing abortion, from protesting at abortion clinics across the country to salvaging fetal remains from dumpsters and loading docks near medical clinics, so they could be buried and memorialized.
“My father’s proudest accomplishment was the pro-life work of those he inspired to take an active role in the fight against abortion, the greatest injustice of our time,” his son Eric Scheidler, who serves as the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, said in a written statement.
This work was often controversial. Joe Scheidler was embroiled for decades in the prominent lawsuit National Organization for Women v. Scheidler, which was before in the U.S. Supreme Court three times.
In the mid-1980s, the National Organization for Women and two clinic operators named Scheidler and others in a litigation attempting to hold protesters liable under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute for allegedly conspiring to shut down abortion clinics.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 ultimately found that federal racketeering laws could not be used to block protests. The Pro-Life Action League called the case Scheidler’s “ultimate victory.”
“I do think the temperament of the (Supreme) Court is changing; the temperament of the country is changing,” Scheidler told the Tribune at the time. “I expect Roe v. Wade to be overturned in not too awfully long.”
Scheidler was born in 1927 in Hartford City, Indiana, and served in the U.S. Navy as a military police officer near the end of World War II. He studied to become a Roman Catholic priest at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana, but ultimately decided that “God was not calling him” to the priesthood, and went on to teach at Mundelein College, according to the Pro-Life Action League.
Scheidler began his life’s work opposing abortion in 1973, shortly after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure nationwide.
“Every single unborn child was precious to him,” Eric Scheidler said in a telephone interview. “He had a real tenderness for children and the safety of children.”
Joe Scheidler founded the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League in 1980 to “recruit and equip pro-life Americans to be a voice for unborn children in their own communities throughout the country and the world,” the organization said in a written statement.
With a group of fellow anti-abortion activists, Scheidler salvaged thousands of fetal remains from dumpsters and loading docks outside of abortion clinics in the 1980s. The remains were later buried at cemeteries across the country and commemorated during annual memorial services organized by anti-abortion advocates.
The abortion opponents displayed some of those fetal remains in baby caskets during a 1986 demonstration outside a now-defunct medical facility on Michigan Avenue. Scheidler told the Tribune at the time that the demonstration was held to illustrate “the abortion holocaust that is going on all over America today.”
Scheidler was the author of the book “Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion,” and his memoir, “Racketeer for Life: Fighting the Culture of Death From the Sidewalk to the Supreme Court.”
“We take solace in the words of Jesus, ‘if the world hates you, realize that it hated me first,’” he said in “Racketeer for Life.”
Scheidler is survived by his wife, Ann Scheidler, seven children, 26 grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.
The funeral service will be 11 a.m. Monday at St. John Cantius Church, 825 N. Carpenter St. in Chicago; burial will follow at All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines.
