NEWS PROFILE: Finley Schaef: memories of the abortion underground before Roe vs. Wade

c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ The Rev. Finley Schaef still remembers the woman and her teen-age daughter who visited his Methodist church office in Queens, N.Y., more than 30 years ago faced with a desperate dilemma. The daughter, the victim of a rape at the hands of her father, had become pregnant. They […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The Rev. Finley Schaef still remembers the woman and her teen-age daughter who visited his Methodist church office in Queens, N.Y., more than 30 years ago faced with a desperate dilemma.

The daughter, the victim of a rape at the hands of her father, had become pregnant. They were seeking advice on how to get an abortion at a time when the procedure was illegal and mere mention of the word was scandalous. For Schaef, now 67, it was the introduction to what became for him and more than 1,000 other clergy a new area of ministry.”I felt entirely helpless to be of some kind of support, other than simply to pray about it,”Schaef recalled in an interview.”I didn’t know what to do.” Schaef, who recently retired as pastor of Park Slope United Methodist Church in Brooklyn, learned he was not the only cleric who had been faced with a parishioner seeking counsel about abortion. He joined other ministers and helped form the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, led by the Rev. Howard Moody, an American Baptist pastor in New York City.


That network _ whose story remains largely untold _ proved to be the religious chapter in the tale of the long effort to increase abortion rights.”It was part of … a groundswell that changed the law, led to Roe vs. Wade,”said Schaef.”I think it was very significant. In retrospect, I’m proud I got involved in it.” Between its founding in 1967 and the legalization of abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling in 1973, the network grew to some 1,400 clergy across the nation. Ministers and rabbis provided women names of reputable doctors _ some as far away as Canada and Puerto Rico _ who were willing to perform abortions.

Despite their numbers, a spokeswoman for anti-abortion efforts by the U.S. Catholic Church recalled that the group’s members were working as individuals rather than official representatives of religious groups.”They didn’t come to this with the weight of their religious communities,”said Gail Quinn, executive director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Pro-life Secretariat.”You didn’t have mainstream religions hopping on board and having them speak on their behalf, so they were out of the mainstream.” Each of those individuals came to a personal understanding of the Clergy Consultation’s mission, one that had not been honed in seminary, but rather in the privacy of their church offices as women approached them.

Gradually, after the jarring episode in his office, Schaef formed his own philosophy about reproduction in general and abortion in particular.”I realized that motherhood should be something that is chosen, not imposed, not just for the sake of the mother but for the sake of the unborn,”he said.”What finally dawned on me is you want children to be wanted. It’s a huge pain and suffering to little ones if they’re not wanted.” Soon after he met with the troubled woman and her daughter, Schaef moved to another New York congregation, where a citywide meeting was held in which hundreds of women gathered to speak about how they had been touched by the abortion issue.”It was a turning point for a lot of people because women got up and talked about their abortions or failure to get abortions,”Schaef recalled of the mid-1960s session.

After that gathering, Schaef and Moody discussed how they could offer a pro-active response, and Moody pulled into the effort other clergy and a physician.”The significant thing was there were clergy willing to do this,”Schaef said.”Up until then, the pro-choice movement had been secular.” Schaef said clergy involvement in abortion rights was part of an increasing American consciousness about”abuse of power”by government, first concerning race, then the Vietnam War and finally involving women’s private lives, he said.”I think it was seen as a moral movement,”Schaef said.”We were Protestants in the true sense in those days.” The Rev. Tom Davis, chair of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Clergy Advisory Board, said clergy involved in the network were moved by the stories of women who had abortions where doctors demanded they come unaccompanied and wearing blindfolds so they could not testify against them later.”You can’t hear stories like that and stay stony-hearted,”said Davis, who gave women in Saratoga County, N.Y., telephone numbers of doctors who would not overcharge or harass them.”It was absolutely inhumane the conditions faced in those times and it was right of the clergy, I’d say, to finally come to the aid of those women.” The clergy, most of whom were men, counseled women of a variety of ages, some single, others accompanied by their husbands.

People who came to Schaef ranged from women who weren’t interested in idle talk _ some would say”Give me the name of a doctor. I’m not here for counseling”_ to cases where both parents and their teen-age daughter came to him for advice.

To Schaef’s surprise, the movement that began as an effort to circumvent the laws of New York state spread nationwide. And with publicity _ often by feminist groups _ came notoriety.”We did have our phones checked to see if they were being tapped,”said Schaef.”There was a kind of general anxiety because it was illegal.” In fact, Schaef and some of his colleagues were called before a Bronx grand jury, which eventually voted not to indict them.

Davis, of the Planned Parenthood clergy board, could recall only two clergy out of the 1,400 in the network against whom charges were brought. Their cases never went to trial.”I think the most significant thing was the lack of any opposition to it,”Davis said, noting many of the network’s chapters were listed in telephone books across the country.


The network’s efforts were eventually replaced by legal abortion clinics after laws permitting abortion were passed in individual states and after the 1973 Roe decision.

Within a year of the passage of New York’s abortion law in 1970, the work of the New York chapter had ended, Schaef said.

But the clergy involved in that effort helped open the first legal abortion clinic in New York, the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, Davis said. He estimated the clergy network referred about 100,000 women for abortions before the clinic opened its doors.”For some of these women, they were in a condition of extreme desperation and to offer them a path to walk on, to give them a sense of relief, was very satisfying personally,”he said.

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