Prayer vigil, church rally kick off week of anti-abortion activism in Wichita

On the first evening of the weeklong “Summer of Justice” event, the Rev. Rusty Thomas warned roughly 75 people assembled that the coming week would be a challenge.

“There is a specific vision and mission for this time in Wichita, Kansas,” Thomas told the crowd at Word of Life Church, where nightly rallies are planned. “It’s time for a paradigm shift, to change the narrative of what it means to be pro-life.”

The leader of the Operation Save America group received near-constant applause from his audience, about half of whom came from other states to Wichita for the week.

Operation Save America, based in Texas, is a successor organization to the original Operation Rescue, which led the 1991 “Summer of Mercy” demonstrations in Wichita, a 46-day show of strength that brought national attention to the anti-abortion movement and resulted in about 2,700 arrests. Most of the arrests were for blocking access to what is now South Wind Women’s Center, then a clinic run by George Tiller, a Wichita physician who was shot to death by an abortion opponent as he attended a church service in 2009.

The “Summer of Justice” is a weeklong observance of those 1991 protests, and during it, the group plans to staff a 24-hour prayer tent.

On Sunday, that tent will be at the South Wind Women’s Center on East Kellogg, a clinic that provides abortions and is the primary focus of anti-abortion activism in Wichita.

In an impassioned speech Saturday evening, Thomas said he hopes the group’s efforts this week will send a message to the anti-abortion movement.

“This is the great error of the pro-life movement,” he screamed at those gathered at Word of Life. “God does not want us to regulate baby murder; he wants us to end it. End it!”

A quiet start

Earlier in the day, the “Summer of Justice” got off to a quiet, prayerful beginning.

About 10 members of Operation Save America on Saturday morning gathered at a prayer tent set up near Century II convention center, but there was essentially no activity around the South Wind Women’s Center.

The street in front of the clinic was closed to traffic and barricaded with concrete traffic barriers in anticipation of Operation Save America activities. Two police cars watched the scene, but there was very little to see.

Only three people were in the vicinity of the clinic early Saturday, one Operation Save America activist from Colorado and two local women who are clinic supporters.

The two local women, Gina Austin-Fresh and Leola Wang Russell, said they were there as observers to watch for any illegal activity that might take place. They left when they found out there was nothing going on to observe.

Wearing an Operation Save America T-shirt, Ken Scott, of Denver, said he was in Wichita to “witness to as many people as possible.”

“America’s morality is collapsing,” he said. “The blood of innocent children is crying out to God for justice.”

He also left the clinic site when he found out there was no one there to witness to.

Prodigal sons welcome

About 10 Operation Save America supporters were gathered at the prayer tent near Century II, where they were holding a 24-hour prayer vigil, backed with Christian music from a boom box powered by a car battery.

Saturday morning, they were celebrating the “first fruits” of their effort when a passerby came to the tent and asked the demonstrators to pray with him, said Thomas, Operation Save America’s leader.

Lucas Vice, 30, said he lives in a mission shelter and was walking by to go do laundry when the music from the prayer tent caught his attention.

Vice said he left a scheduled 12-month treatment program last month after only 10 months. “I came back to town and I messed up.” Unable to find a job, he said he started using drugs again and felt that God was angry with him.

He said praying with Operation Save America was helping him come to terms with that. “I haven’t felt God’s love for a long time,” he said.

Operation Save America activist Ante Pavkovic, a North Carolina pastor who once was arrested for disrupting a Hindu prayer in the U.S. Senate, prayed with Vice and compared him to the biblical story of the prodigal son.

“Here’s a man who is out here praying and repenting and wanting to come back to God,” he said. “Prodigal sons are always welcome.”

Every night at 6:30 this week, Operation Save America will hold a themed public rally at the Word of Life Church, 3811 N. Meridian.

To get into the rallies, people must sign a form indicating they will not be violent.

Thomas said Sunday’s service, same time and place, will focus on repentance leading into next week’s planned street demonstrations.

“That will set the spiritual tone for what we want to accomplish in this city,” Thomas said. “We have to win the battle from within before we can win the battle from without.”

Dion Lefler: 316-268-6527, @DionKansas

This story was originally published July 16, 2016 at 12:52 PM with the headline "Prayer vigil, church rally kick off week of anti-abortion activism in Wichita."