Juli Loesch and the Seamless Garment

The seamless garment idea has roots. In the mid-1980s, Juli Loesch build an organization she called Prolifers for Survival. “P.S.”: may I add a thought. She traveled across the country by bus, and built chapters in every part of the country. P.S. was small, but it was everywhere. Most of the people involved in the leadership of the organization were also involved in prolife nonviolent action (later called rescues). Juli was later the press liaison for Operation Rescue in Atlanta. I edited the P.S. newsletter, and I helped start prolife nonviolent action in 50 states plus Australia and Korea and Latin America and Europe. Harry Hand moved from New York to live with my family – and to help build two groups, P.S. and the Prolife Nonviolent Action Project. Carol Crossed gave generously to build P.S., organized conferences for it – and organized the sit-in at which Dan Berrigan was arrested at the door of an abortion clinic. Mary Rider, P.S. coordinator for years, was also active in the rescue movement.

Juli did that. Before Cardinal Bernardin spoke about the seamless garment.

While she was working on press relations during Operation Rescue in Atlanta, Juli Loesch met Don Wiley (Don the Baptist) and they got married. She’s been a creative and amazing and proud mom for decades.

Juli was scrupulous about keeping a balance, talking to pro-lifers about war half the time, and to peace activists about abortion half the time. He was a challenge and a delight and an itch in equal proportions on both sides.

The name “Prolifers for Survival” came from a peace initiative, the Mobilization for Survival. The Mobe opposed war, opposed nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and supported governmental responses to human needs. Juli spent months working to persuade the Mobe to make opposition to the violence of abortion part of their mission statement. Within the Mobe, she made many friends, and many enemies; she made allies, and stirred deep opposition; in general, she caused a ruckus. In the end, at one national meeting, the Mobe adopted a position of abortion neutrality and then at 2 AM when only the crazies were still debating and voting, adopted a pro-abortion stance.

At the other end, Eagle Forum went after Juli with great passion. They voted to give her the Benedict Arnold award, or some such. I don’t remember exactly what she got; I may have gotten the Benedict Arnold Award, and she got the Judas Award. Anyway, Phyllis Schlafly had a lot to say about Juli Loesch. Schlafly was definitely not interested in keeping the pro-life movement focused on abortion; she wanted the movement to protect women from abortion and from the Equal Rights Amendment and all that dangerous feminist stuff; and she also wanted the pro-life movement to be patriotic, by which she meant pro-bomb. Forgive my slight confusion about the Eagle Forum awards, but at least one of the awards presented (in absentia) to Juli or me or my wife (Betsy got a pleasant award) was presented by a pro-nuke general who was an officer of some kind within Eagle Forum, and also a director of the American Eugenics Society.

There’s a detail of Juli’s life that still lies across my heart as a scorching wire. P.S. had an annual budget of about 42 cents. That’s probably not quite right, but P.S. money was hard to find and easy to lose. So after a couple of years of full-time organization and poverty, Juli took a job working for the bishops in Washington, in their old office on Massachusetts Avenue. She is a brilliant thinker, a delightful speaker and writer, a capable and creative organizer. But her Boss was penniless and homeless on the road for some time, and Juli was too. She went to work for the bishops as a part-time typist, and she said thanks. She said thanks, and she meant it, and I still think of Fr. Edward Bryce with great gratitude because he did what he could for her.

And then, after all that – AFTER – one of the bishops picked up Juli’s idea and moved forward with it. He was not as careful as she had been about addressing two sides equally. But Cardinal Bernardin made the idea far more visible.

If you want to talk about the “seamless garment,” and you don’t know who Juli Loesch Wiley is, it’s probably best if you learn a little more. Please.

Opponents of the seamless garment shriek about the importance of staying focused. What a silly myth! You can built bridges to the left, or build bridges to the right, or both – but a movement can’t refrain from building bridges. Some pro-lifers build bridges to feminists, others to anti-feminists. Some build bridges to the Republican Party and the Tea Party, others (not quite so many of, but some) build bridges to Democrats. Some march with Fascists with roots in Brazil; others cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. But the idea of a movement without alliances and bridges and friends is silly. It’s juvenile science fiction.  Movements without bridges don’t move.