Slides sparked a Damascus moment for Bob Winn

Bob Winn was a 31-year-old products liability attorney moving up the partnership ladder at the Sessions Fishman law firm when something he read in the Clarion Herald piqued his interest: Loyola University New Orleans, his alma mater, was holding a forum on abortion.

This was in the spring of 1970, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy with its Roe v. Wade decision.

In 1967, Colorado had become the first state in the country to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest or the permanent disability of the mother. California, North Carolina, Oregon, New York and Washington state followed shortly thereafter.

By the time Winn walked into Loyola’s Marquette Hall for the conference – presided over by a Tulane University chaplain and a nun – abortion rights clearly were on the ascent.

An inveterate note-taker, Winn scribbled down his impressions.

“When I went in, it was poorly attended,” Winn wrote. “The nun acquitted herself well, but she was obviously overmatched. The chaplain was better prepared, and he spoke from firsthand experience. After the program, there was a signup sheet for more information about abortion.”

As Ben Clapper, who today serves as the executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, remarked at Winn’s funeral Mass on Jan. 26 at St. Dominic Church, “be careful of the signup sheet.”

Through that signup sheet, Archbishop Philip Hannan got wind that Winn had a passionate interest in defending preborn human life, and he asked the young attorney to fly on his behalf to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where a small group of Catholics from across the country was gathering to discuss how to block what they saw as an impending abortion tsunami.

At one of the first sessions in Minnesota, someone asked Winn what he knew about abortion.

“I don’t know the difference between an IUD and IBM,” he replied.

Winn said he was only being honest, but something happened a few minutes later when he heard from Dr. Jack Wilke. Attorneys are schooled to follow the evidence and not to be influenced by emotions, but what Wilke did next apparently became Winn’s Damascus moment.

With proper warning, Wilke unwrapped nine color slides and placed them in the projector’s carousel. Then he turned off the lights and turned on the projector.

Winn recalled that these were “the abortion slides – that explain the brutality of abortion.”

Winn flew back to New Orleans with two things: “Nine slides, wrapped in ditto paper and fastened by a rubber band” and a small book, which sold for a dollar, entitled “Questions and Answers About Abortion.”

When Winn returned home, Clapper said, he and his wife Maria called a few friends to come to his house for a dinner party.

“Instead of showing pictures of their travels, and the great things they have been doing, Bob showed these nine slides and presented on what he had learned at the conference,” Clapper said.

“He felt that abortion was such a grave injustice – for children in the womb to die in that fashion – that he said, ‘I have to do something. I have to tell my friends about this,’” said Peg Kenny, the former director of the archdiocesan Respect Life Office.

Sensitivities and tactics aside, the slides the abortion industry did not want people to see transformed any debate about the humanity of the unborn child. The marching cry that came out of those dinner parties was: “Life is for Everyone.”

Roots of pro-life movement

Mary Jane Becker was at Winn’s dinner party in 1970, and she was so moved as a young mother that she joined Winn and Dr. Joseph Crapanzano Sr., a gynecologist who cofounded Louisiana Right to Life with Winn, to form a traveling panel to speak to Catholic organizations about the unseen reality of abortion.

“The science has been with us since even before the first state approved abortion because it was determined that this was a living, human being,” Becker said.

On Friday, Jan. 19, 1973 – the date is etched in Becker’s memory – the three were giving a presentation to the Knights of Columbus at Our Lady of the Rosary Church in New Orleans. With Auxiliary Bishop Louis Abel Caillouet in attendance, Winn told the crowd that in three days, the Supreme Court might promulgate a decision “that would allow abortion in all 50 states.”

“Bishop Caillouet came up to Bob and congratulated him on the presentation and the work we were doing, but he said, ‘Mr. Winn, I have to tell you, the Supreme Court would never, ever allow abortion in all 50 states.’”

When the decision came down on Monday, Jan. 22, 1973, Becker said Bishop Caillouet called Winn and said: “Mr. Winn, I have to apologize. You were absolutely right. I never thought it would happen.”

Over the course of the next half-century, Winn was the driving force behind virtually all pro-life legislation in Louisiana, said Sharon Rodi, an attorney who worked with Winn since 1973, when her own daughters were 3 and 5.

“I had two little girls, and I thought it was terrible that women should be faced with the decision to abort their children,” Rodi said.

Overrode Roemer’s veto

Winn’s efforts in 1991 led to the Louisiana Legislature overriding a veto by Gov. Buddy Roemer of a law that banned abortions except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest. That law, however, never took effect due to subsequent Supreme Court rulings, particularly the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision in 1992.

However, pro-life advocates are hopeful that the Su­preme Court will uphold the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy – and perhaps even overturn Roe in its entirety. That decision is expected in late June.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, and that’s how Bob was,” Rodi said. “I hope it’s going to happen, but, you know, we’ve been disappointed before. And, if it doesn’t happen, we’ll keep going at it. Maybe the last time I saw Bob, he said, ‘Nothing’s going to stop abortion in this country until we change the hearts and minds of people.’ So, we have to continue to educate. We have to continue to offer alternatives to women. We have to make it unthinkable.”

In his nearly 50 years of defending life in all of its stages – in recent years he took on the expanding movements toward assisted suicide and euthanasia – Winn experienced victory and defeat. But, the point is, he was never solely a spectator in the arena.

Effort trumps success

One of Winn’s religious and ethical touchstones was provided by U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, who joined Congress two years after Roe v. Wade and fought to keep any federal funds from being used for abortion.

Hyde wrote about the “final judgment,” when individuals are called to stand alone before God and give an account of their lives.

“But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone,” Hyde said. “I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world, but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world, and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, ‘Spare him, because he loved us,’ and God will look at you and say not, ‘Did you succeed?’ but, ‘Did you try?’”

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