Frontline (1983–…): Season 14, Episode 4 - Murder on 'Abortion Row' - full transcript

(siren blares)

Tonight on Frontline--
a shocking murder.

MAN: We've had a shooting at
an abortion clinic in the...

The victim...

WOMAN:
My name is Shannon Lowney.

The accused gunman...

MAN: I'm not insane.

I'm not incompetent.

WOMAN: He said,

"Mom, I was the thief on
the cross with Jesus."

MAN: An absolute deformity
of Christianity.



In the fevered climate
of a holy war,

two lives tragically collide.

Tonight, "Murder
on 'Abortion Row.'"

Funding for Frontline
is provided

by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting

and by annual financial support
from viewers like you.

This is Frontline.

PROTESTERS (chanting):
Women will decide our fate.

Not the church, not the state,
women will decide our fate...

PROTESTER: Please give life
to your unborn baby.

Please be a mother
to your child.

Your baby has a heartbeat.

(phone ringing)

RECEPTIONIST:
Hello, Planned Parenthood.



Do you have an appointment
for an abortion somewhere?

Okay, what we would do first
is make you an appointment.

Okay, you can come here
or you can go elsewhere,

and then I'm going to have you
speak with a counselor.

And what the counselor does...

PROTESTERS: Not the church,
not the state.

Women will decide our fate.

NARRATOR: There are three
women's health clinics

along a two-mile stretch of road
in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Anti-abortion activists call it
"Abortion Row."

(pro-choice and anti-abortion
protesters shouting)

WOMAN: The only time the
protesters bother me...

I mean, I can forget that
they're there...

NARRATOR:
Beth Waters is the head nurse

at Planned Parenthood.

WATERS: ...is when I happen
to walk through the door

at the
same time in the morning

as someone who the protesters
really affected,

and that person is crying,
and needs, you know,

ten or 15 minutes
just to get themselves recovered

to even be able to fill out
their forms

or say why they're here.

WOMAN (shouting):
Your baby is not a criminal.

Why should it receive the death
penalty?

Don't let Planned Parenthood
kill your baby.

Ask them to show...

NARRATOR:
Bill Cotter is a devout Catholic

who has been a full-time
anti-abortion activist

for seven years.

COTTER: It just seemed very
self-evident to me

it was very wrong.

It was obvious that it was
killing a human being,

that life began at conception,

and it didn't seem at all
controversial to me.

PROTESTERS:
Safe, legal and on demand.

Abortion rights
throughout the land.

Safe, legal and on demand.

Abortion rights...

WATERS: They say in
the media, you know,

there needs to be
more debate about the...

no, there doesn't need
to be debate.

This is a legal choice
and a legal right

that women in this country have,
to have an abortion,

and we don't need any more
debate about that.

We've had plenty of debate

and the courts have said
that this is legal.

MAN: Hiya, how are you doing?

NARRATOR: The clinics have
been a battleground

of protest and confrontation
for years.

Lieutenant Bill McDermott has
watched it from the beginning.

McDERMOTT: There were
a constant group of people

who showed up predictably,
every day at every clinic

at a certain time, and did what
they had to do,

whether it would be sing or pray
or hold cards, and then leave.

You could set your clock
by them,

your watch by the time they
came, by the time they left.

NARRATOR: He noticed nothing
out of the ordinary

about a young man in the crowd
in early 1994.

McDERMOTT: I used to call
them "mechanics"

because they wore
work boots, dungarees.

There was nothing unique
about their dress.

They dressed like...
like a mechanic would.

And what struck me
about this group--

there was about seven
to ten of them.

They were white males who got
there early

and didn't really mingle with
the big body of the group,

the prayer vigil people.

They always stayed
on the outside.

Nothing he did
caught my attention.

NARRATOR:
Richard Seron, a security guard,

had just finished
target practice

when he reported one day for
duty at Preterm Clinic

and saw the same young man.

SERON: I spotted a young man
enter the front door,

dressed in a black spy-type coat

with lots of pockets
and big cuffs.

This alarmed me right away.

He was acting kind of furtively,
so what I did was to gaze at him

and put my hand on the butt
of my service revolver,

and while he walked the length
of the corridor,

I tailed him and escorted him
out the rear door

from where he disappeared
into the neighborhood.

COTTER: December 30, 1994,
the Friday morning.

It was a cold winter morning,
and as I typically was,

I was down in front
of the Preterm abortion clinic

in Brookline
with another individual.

We were sidewalk counseling
there from about 6:30,

6:40 in the morning.

It was fairly uneventful.

MAN: She was sick and I told
her to stay home,

but it was just typical of her
that she was afraid

that somebody would call

and not be able to get
the help they need.

NARRATOR: David Keene was the
boyfriend of Shannon Lowney,

a 25-year-old receptionist
at Planned Parenthood.

KEENE: I kissed her good-bye,
and she ran across the street,

and that's the last I...
last time I ever saw her.

WATERS: I was in a procedure
with the doctor,

and I heard a funny noise.

I didn't hear the gunshots
and neither did the doctor.

But I heard a funny...
it was a funny yell for help.

And I said,
"Can you check on that?"

and just as he was opening
the door,

one of the other nurses yelled
in that she needed me also,

and I started running out
and she said, as we were...

she's like, "And bring the
emergency cart and the oxygen.

Shannon has been shot."

(sirens blaring)

NARRATOR: Minutes later,

the gunman appeared at a second
clinic down the street.

WOMAN: He just came in that
clinic, opened up the door

and started shooting
at anything he seen.

He did not hesitate.

He thought the office was open,
so he would start shooting.

If I was in front of the lady,
I would have got shot, too.

I think I was the only one
that didn't get shot.

NARRATOR: Ed McDonough heard
the news and rushed to Preterm

where his fiancée,
Leanne Nichols, worked.

When he got there he was sent on
to the hospital.

McDONOUGH: Then they took me
into a room and they asked me

to ident... talk...
to see what she was wearing.

They came in
with her engagement ring.

Right then and there I fell.

I just... that was it.

I couldn't believe it.

NARRATOR: Leanne Nichols
and Shannon Lowney were dead.

Five others had been
critically injured.

PROTESTORS: Murderer,
murderer, murderer, murderer,

murderer...

WOMAN: All of these people
are to blame,

and the blood of these women
and the other people

who were shot in Brookline
is on your hands.

COTTER: I don't feel that I
have anything to apologize for

because I didn't do anything.

I mean, this thing was
a great tragedy...

MAN: I feel very sad.

When I got the news,
I went to the chapel.

INTERVIEWER: You never
thought it would happen

here in Boston?

LAW: Nope.

NARRATOR: Bernard Law,
the cardinal of Boston,

was in his historic residence

when he heard the news
of the clinic shootings.

LAW: I immediately went to...

I went to the chapel and...
and prayed, and I took a...

I took a...
I took a notebook with me.

I knew that it was going
to be necessary

for me to address this.

From my perspective,

the violence of the killing
of these two young women

was part of a larger violence
that I saw as an evil:

the violence of abortion itself.

NARRATOR: Cardinal Law
emerged from his chapel

with a handwritten statement
that called for a moratorium

on anti-abortion protests
outside the Brookline clinics.

MAN: Stop killing babies.

Stop killing babies.

You need to stop it.

NARRATOR: News of the
moratorium spread quickly

across the country.

And in Norfolk, Virginia,
the cardinal's call for peace

was scorned
by Reverend Donald Spitz,

an ex-Catholic turned
evangelical Christian.

SPITZ: It was, like,
the most ridiculous thing

I have ever heard of.

What would happen if the
protesters were out there

and they convinced a woman not
to go in there

and kill her child,

and because of his words those
protesters were not there,

and that woman went in
and killed her child?

Would the blood of that baby be
on the hands of Cardinal Law?

I think he would have
a part of that.

NARRATOR:
That night in Boston,

pro-choice supporters grieved.

At the two clinics
where Shannon Lowney

and Leanne Nichols had died
earlier that day,

the entranceways
had become shrines

to the first female casualties

slain in the anti-abortion
violence.

WOMAN:
We're being murdered

for exercising our right
to choice.

We're being murdered
for being women.

WOMAN: And I'm going to tell
you that you can die

from this simple, little
surgical procedure;

that they can perforate
your uterus.

NARRATOR: The next day, 1,200
miles away in Norfolk, Virginia,

Reverend Spitz and his followers
were ending their protest

outside a women's health clinic.

15 minutes later, a gunman
suddenly appeared

at the building's main entrance

and sprayed the lobby
with a hail of bullets.

Nobody was hurt.

Within 15 minutes, police
surrounded a pickup truck

and the gunman was arrested.

His name was John Salvi.

For Reverend Spitz,
he was a divine intervention.

SPITZ: I personally believe

that God brought
John Salvi here

because there was support
for him for the concept of...

that unborn babies deserve the
same protection as born babies,

by whatever means necessary.

MAN: I think probably the
most remarkable thing to me

is when Salvi came in here
he was not a zealot.

I expected this guy
to come in here

and be full of fire and
brimstone, and, you know,

be screaming, "Jesus saves,"
and all that.

He didn't.

He was very quiet.

He didn't seem to have any
particular interest in religion.

NARRATOR:
Salvi was interviewed

by a defense psychiatrist.

PSYCHIATRIST:
So without the background,

let me just come
back and say, first of all,

at some point do you plan to
share what happened--

whether you did or didn't do
the crime-- with your attorneys?

Or do you plan never to reveal
that to them?

SALVI:
My plea is a plea of silence.

There are certain questions

which I just do not wish
to answer.

PSYCHIATRIST: At any time,
even if it's...?

SALVI: That does not indicate
one way or the other.

"Did you eat at Burger King
at 3:00 in the morning?"

PSYCHIATRIST:
Silence?

SALVI:
Silence.

PSYCHIATRIST:
Okay, I understand that.

But, you know,
once you get to court...

SALVI: What...

How does that mean that I did
eat there or didn't eat there?

PSYCHIATRIST:
It doesn't.

SALVI:
You know, in what way?

I...

You know, I don't choose to
answer certain questions,

just as certain questions
you asked me

I didn't want to answer.

NARRATOR: During the first
week after his arrest,

John Salvi appeared quite normal

during several
court appearances.

MAN:
I say he's in very good spirits.

He's an intelligent young man...

NARRATOR: A Virginia public
defender, Taswell Hubbard,

was Salvi's first attorney.

HUBBARD: Otherwise
I found him very competent

and a very nice individual.

NARRATOR: But when Salvi
arrived in Boston,

his new attorney, J.W. Carney,
had a different answer.

CARNEY:
I'm having real concerns

about his mental health
and his mental condition

and his ability to serve as a
defendant in a criminal case.

PSYCHIATRIST:
Let's just kind of get started

and see how it goes here.

First, you're how old,
Mr. Salvi?

SALVI: 22 years old.

PSYCHIATRIST: Okay.

And were you employed
at the time,

before you ended up in jail?

SALVI: Oh, well, yes, I was.

PSYCHIATRIST:
What were you doing?

SALVI: I'm a hairdresser,
and, uh...

an assistant.

PSYCHIATRIST:
Okay.

Where were you born?

SALVI: I was born in Salem,
Massachusetts, on 03/02/72.

NARRATOR: Salvi grew up
north of Salem,

in Ipswich, Massachusetts,

the only son of Anne Marie,
a piano teacher,

and John, a dental technician.

He attended St. Stanislav Roman
Catholic church,

where his grandfather played
the organ

and his mother was
the choir leader.

Father John Jusseau
was the parish priest.

JUSSEAU:
He was a well-behaved child.

He was an only child
but he, uh...

and his parents spent
so much time

in wanting him to be a, uh...
you know, a good citizen,

a good member of the
church, you know?

He was...
he was an ideal child.

JOHN SALVI (father):
He was a very religious boy.

He asked to become an altar boy.

And we thought
that was wonderful,

and we agreed to that.

ANNE MARIE SALVI: All the
families knew one another,

so it was like one big family,

and when you attended Mass
on Sunday,

you got to see people
you knew and loved, and, uh...

it was a community activity as
well as a religious activity.

JUSSEAU:
But he was a very good altar boy

and one who enjoyed
serving, so it was...

Everything was just fine,
you know?

That's why it's so puzzling,

what happened later on
in his life.

PSYCHIATRIST: Do you have any
unusual beliefs as a Catholic,

or is it pretty straight
Catholic church

in terms of
your own attitudes?

SALVI:
My beliefs as a Catholic

would be more along the
lines of exactly

what the church has to say.

The pope went to a conference
in Cairo,

or some cardinals went there...

PSYCHIATRIST: Mm-hmm.

SALVI: And I was for
everything that they were for

and against everything
that they were against.

CONGREGATION (singing): The
word has gone out with a shout,

a shout and the sound
of the trumpet...

LAW: I think
it's generally understood

that the Catholic
church is pro-life,

that we respect
every human being

from the first moment
of conception

to the last moment
of natural death

and every moment in between.

For me the difference is
a matter of life or death,

so it matters profoundly.

And there's no way that I could
walk away from that.

NARRATOR: Bernard Law had
led the fight against abortion

from the moment he became
cardinal of Boston in 1984.

In his first public
pronouncement,

Cardinal Law described abortion

as the primordial evil
of our time.

(singing continues)

The morning after the murders,
Cardinal Law received a visit

from Bill Cotter,
leader of Operation Rescue.

COTTER: The day after
the shooting,

I went over to the
cardinal's residence,

rang his bell
and asked to see him,

and he showed me his statements
that had in it

a request for a moratorium.

How could anybody read this
statement and not infer from it

that it is our presence, our
demonstrations, our rhetoric

that is the catalyst
for the shootings?

Because if you have the shooting
and then you say,

"Okay, get away
from the clinic,"

it's a very natural conclusion
to say,

"Well, gee, the people in front
of the clinic--

"the demonstrators, the
picketers, the prayers,

the counselors-- must be in some
way a contributory factor."

LAW:
I was giving what I thought

was a reasoned explanation

as to why I felt it would be
best to refrain from this.

And I was appealing to people,
individually and collectively,

to consider what I had to say,
with respect,

and that's what I said
basically to Mr. Cotter.

(commotion)

NARRATOR: The cardinal and
the Operation Rescue leader

had been battling for years over
the proper tactics

the anti-abortion movement
should use against the clinics.

Since 1988, Cotter had attempted
to shut the clinics down

by physical blockades
and invasions,

and had been arrested
more than 40 times.

COTTER:
If abortion is murder,

we've got to really act
like it's murder.

We've got to put our bodies on
the line

to make a tangible sacrifice,
to make a tangible effort

to actually stop the killing;

not just hope that it will be
stopped by a politician,

or a judge or something,
but if it's happening now,

we've got to do something now.

NARRATOR: but in 1991,
he broke a court injunction

prohibiting such activity,

and he was sentenced to two
and a half years in prison.

In jail, Bill Cotter received
an important visitor.

LAW: I had felt a certain
admiration for persons who would

feel so strongly about
the pro-life movement

that they would be willing
to risk even imprisonment.

But I have never felt that it
was appropriate for the church

to be involved in organizing
Operation Rescue activities.

I just felt that
that was not right.

NARRATOR: Cardinal Law's
call for a moratorium

had now become
a nationwide controversy.

The moratorium had already
been endorsed

by several new England
bishops,

but elsewhere in the country,

the Boston cardinal's call
for peace outside the clinics

received little support.

In New York City,
Cardinal John O'Connor,

arguably the most powerful
Catholic leader in the country,

told pro-lifers
in his diocese

that they should
continue their protests.

O'CONNOR: ...within the
archdiocese of New York,

in the vicinity
of abortion clinics...

NARRATOR: In Boston, Cardinal
Law downplayed the controversy.

LAW: One is always happy when
one's friends are with him...

but as a matter of fact, that
didn't occur, and that's fine.

I am archbishop of Boston,
I'm not archbishop of New York,

and they know that they're not
archbishop of Boston,

so I did what I needed to do.

(crowd cheering)

WOMAN: I call this evening
upon every political,

moral and religious leader
across the country and in Boston

and Massachusetts to demand
that the anti-abortion movement

stop demonstrating
in front of clinics.

NARRATOR: Nicki Nichols
Gamble is president

of the Boston chapter
of Planned Parenthood.

(cheering)

GAMBLE:
And that the movement cease

their inflammatory rhetoric

that has fostered this climate
that we must end.

We must end the climate
of fear and violence.

(cheering)

PROTESTERS (chanting):
Remember Shannon Downey.

Remember Leanne Nichols.

Mass mobilization...

NARRATOR:
Outside the Brookline clinics,

pro-choice activists
commemorated the two victims.

Leanne Nichols would be
remembered more privately,

but Shannon Lowney had become
much more a public figure.

(church bell tolling)

WOMAN: Every single day,
Shannon was a light in the lives

of women in need of help,
in need of comfort,

in need of compassion.

It's that image we should take
with us as we leave here today--

the warm reassurance that
Shannon's light

will not only live on in the
lives of those she knew,

but in the lives of
every woman in America

through a deep communion with
the Planned Parenthood movement.

CLERGYWOMAN:
Farewell, Shannon.

The world is better for your
having lived.

We and all whose lives
you touched

are better for having known you.

We loved you living.

We love you now.

NARRATOR:
Shannon Lowney was baptized

in the Roman Catholic
faith by her parents,

whose ties
to the church were strong.

Before meeting and marrying
in their 30s,

Shannon's father,
Bill, a history teacher,

had served a decade
as a religious brother

in the Holy Cross order.

Shannon's mother, Joan,
a music teacher,

had been a nun for ten years.

JOAN LOWNEY:
I was brought up

in a very strict
Catholic family,

and in the days
in which I brought...

I'm a woman of my time, and in
the time that I was brought up,

I accepted dogma

and I accepted the faith as it
was presented to me.

But very early in my parenthood,
I heard a Jesuit priest talk

about parenting, and one of the
things he said

that affected me very much was
that all of us as parents

have a responsibility
to pass on to our children

the strongly held beliefs
we have.

The children's responsibility is
to reject that belief,

try it out, examine it,
wrestle with it

and either come back
to it or not.

BILL LOWNEY: And we really
came that way ourselves

in our own lives.

We made decisions that were
sometimes contrary

to the general public's vision
of the way we should do things,

but we've done that ourselves
as individuals

and we wanted to support that,

and do support
that with our own children.

NARRATOR:
Shannon was very close

to her older sister, Megan.

MEGAN LOWNEY: I think we had
a great advantage

in only being two years apart,

and so our experiences were
a lot the same.

We were seeing things
from a similar age.

And I think, secondly,
we were just born close.

NARRATOR: Liam Lowney was
Shannon's younger brother.

LIAM LOWNEY:
She was a very fun person.

You can see that in her
childhood growing up

when she was smiling
all the time

and she smiled
throughout her life.

I think the smile says
a lot about a person.

NARRATOR: In high school,
Shannon Lowney had two passions

she inherited from her parents:

her mother's love for music and
her father's specialty, history.

She was a straight-"A" student,
but Shannon sometimes discovered

she'd pay a price
for her high achievements.

WOMAN: She had a very
definite sense of what was right

and what was wrong,
from a very early age, and...

kids are definitely eager
to jump on that kind

of a piety kind of thing
going on,

and I think she got stomped on
for that a lot of times.

NARRATOR: Sue Solomon was
Shannon's best friend

from early childhood
through high school.

SOLOMON: I remember there was
a trip to Washington,

and a bunch of girls had decided
to kind of ditch another girl

and leave her, kind of like,
"Come on, let's go,"

and Shannon just wouldn't do it.

She wouldn't go.

So she spent the day with this
girl, you know,

and that's always the way she
was, you know,

kind of looking out for the
little guy,

making sure nobody was
getting stepped on.

She was...
she was very special.

NARRATOR: When he was 13,
John Salvi and his parents moved

to Naples, Florida, where they
bought a modest bungalow

in a middle-class neighborhood.

Salvi was struggling
academically

at Naples High School,
but in his sophomore year

he focused his energies
on wrestling,

the school's most
prestigious sport.

He started on
the junior varsity team.

Arthur Ogden was his coach.

OGDEN: John was, from my
perspective, a model student.

I liked John.

I liked him a great deal.

John's temperament, when it came
to wrestling,

I think can be summed up in one
word-- he was intense.

He did not like defeat, and many
times I would find myself,

after John had lost a match,
trying to talk with him

to point out some of the good
things that he did.

No, he did not have a great
record, but that seems to me

to be secondary to what he was
looking for.

And I kind of think he was
looking for a personal identity.

NARRATOR: Paul Chamberlain
became John Salvi's best friend.

CHAMBERLAIN: It was...

he was taking the vitamins more,
and the shakes, and mixing this,

and it was God wanted him bigger
is what it was,

is what he would tell
Donald and I.

God was making him
lift the weights.

He was helping him get stronger,
and we started thinking,

"Well, John is getting
a little weird."

JOHN SALVI (father): He was
reading the Bible all the time.

He would carry a Bible with him
to school and, you know,

I thought it was a bit...

maybe a little bit
on the fanatical side

to be reading all the time...
reading the Bible all the time.

But then, if you're going to be
a fanatic about something,

Bible isn't a bad thing to be
a fanatic about.

NARRATOR: In his senior year
at high school,

John Salvi walked away from his
dream of becoming

a star wrestler when he realized

he couldn't make
the varsity team.

OGDEN: He did not come and
discuss it with me,

but I could understand why he
would leave,

and I was very disappointed.

I did not have the opportunity
to contact him.

When I finally did contact him,
he just said that he had a job.

CHAMBERLAIN:
He was constantly in church,

or God wanted him to do this or
God wanted him to do that,

which basically isn't wrong, but
it was to make him bigger

and stronger and things
like that.

He basically went his separate
ways, and it was,

"Hi, how you doing?"
in the hallways

and that was basically
all it was.

There was no more going out.

NARRATOR: When he graduated
from high school,

John Salvi was ranked 205th out
of 265 students in his class.

Soon afterwards, Salvi enrolled
in a fire academy.

JOHN SALVI (father): He tried
to become a fire fighter.

He had passed everything.

And there was one last thing
to do, and that was to run...

I think it was less than a mile;

could've been a mile, but he had
been a cross-country runner,

and that would have been the
absolute simplest thing

in the entire test,
and he couldn't do it.

And I was told that he just
stopped, held his head

and refused to do the run.

PSYCHIATRIST: What was the
message you were anxious

to put out at that time?

SALVI: Well, a few things
that I don't think

that the Catholic church
is addressing.

PSYCHIATRIST: What is that?

SALVI: The financial
persecution of Catholics...

in this country
as well as worldwide.

They know who the Catholics are,
laying off certain Catholics.

This occurs also not only
in the business world

but also in the public school
systems

as well as police departments
and fire departments.

It's a layoff procedure
for Catholics.

PSYCHIATRIST: And how do you
know this is going on?

SALVI:
Everyone knows it's going on.

NARRATOR: When Shannon Lowney
graduated from high school

with honors, she chose to join
her sister at Boston College

rather than go to Notre Dame,
her father's alma mater.

BILL LOWNEY: She really hated
to not go to Notre Dame,

so we had a tough night--
I remember that very well--

but I said to her, you can only
walk in your own shoes.

NARRATOR: Boston College
is a Catholic university

run by the Jesuit order.

Their historic encouragement of
rigorous intellectual pursuit

also placed its staff
and students in conflict

with the church hierarchy.

One day Shannon wanted Kristin
Korn, one of her roommates,

to go to a protest rally.

KORN:
The women were protesting

the patriarchal society at
Boston College and they were

standing in a circle with one
woman in the center

holding up kind of a stuffed
sheet on a pole.

She invited everyone to come in
and do what they wanted

to this representative
of the patriarchy at B.C.,

and the women ran
into the center of the circle

screaming and kicking this
object and spitting on it,

and I was shocked and I think
that a lot of the other people

who were watching were shocked
also, and Shannon was furious.

She was so upset.

She thought that that was just
the sort of feminist ideal

and attitude that was setting
feminism back.

NARRATOR: But Shannon also
had a running argument

about the role of women with
her 80-year-old grandfather.

JOAN LOWNEY: He came from
a generation in which women

were expected to be homemakers

and were expected
to support their husband.

And Shannon came
from a generation

and from her own personal
philosophy that women were to be

people in their own right.

So that was a discussion

they had over and over
and over again.

LIAM LOWNEY: Shannon went
through what I referred to

as, "the stage" that both my
sisters went through

where they became militant about
feminism and issues like that,

and I was only a high school kid
and I didn't know much about it

and really,
at that point, didn't care.

However, I remember a time,

coming back from my
grandmother's house--

it was Megan, Shannon and I
driving in the truck

and I wanted us to drive faster
so that we could get back

and see Jack the Ripper-- it was
some mini-series that was on--

and she went on...

off on me for a
good period of time

about how I could watch
something that glorifies a man

that did such
horrible things to women.

We had numerous fights
about things like that.

NARRATOR: In her sophomore
year, Shannon Lowney took

a controversial course in
radical feminism

taught by Mary Daly, a theology
professor at Boston College.

DALY: I was a feminist before
one could use the word,

before I even knew the word,
when I was a little kid,

when I would say, "Why can't
girls be altar girls?

What's wrong with that?"

Then I no longer wanted girls
to be altar girls

or women to be priests,
I just wanted out.

But that took a while.

JOAN LOWNEY: Mary Daly writes
a good deal

about "beyond God the Father."

The whole concept of God is not
necessarily male.

So this idea of a woman who
could call herself Christian

or call herself Catholic, who
could grow up in a culture

but could still question it,

this was very valuable
to Shannon,

because here was Mary Daly who
had done something like that.

NARRATOR: Jennifer Mernell
was Shannon's roommate.

MERNELL:
She wasn't angry and negative

about the Catholic
church, she just had chosen...

found something else through
her knowledge and her education

that suited her,
that sat with her,

that didn't create conflict
for her.

It wasn't a negative,
angry thing,

it was just what she found
through the course of her life.

DALY: She was a very, very
quiet student, in my experience,

and although I had many radical
students

the year that she was
in my class-- in 1989--

overtly radical activists,

she just didn't jump out
in that way.

But the quiet ones are often the
ones who are absorbing the most.

It's sinking in, it's
organically developing,

a radical feminist
consciousness,

and it blossoms later,

and this was an astonishing
example of that.

NARRATOR: Shannon had become
a campus activist

and she now wanted to stage a
debate among male professors

called "men and abortion."

The first person she approached
was her history professor,

Paul Breines.

BREINES:
I have felt,

in my numerous years
at Boston College,

that the issue of abortion is
really the main issue which one,

as a faculty member or as
a student, really has to make

a very conscious decision
to take the risk

to bring that subject up
and to talk about it here.

I mean, it really...

I think it's the tabooed
subject.

BREINES:
That's not an answer.

You're just here harassing
people.

PROTESTER:
They're going in...

that's a killing mill.

They're murdering babies
every day.

BREINES:
Murdering babies every day?

That's what's going on?

PROTESTER:
Yes, what else is that?

NARRATOR: Breines was
a pro-choice activist

who often confronted pro-life
protesters outside the clinics.

BREINES: Don't you have
a mind of your own?

Do you have to listen
to your organizer?

You can't speak?

PROTESTER: Hallelujah,
hallelujah, Jesus is Lord.

BREINES:
There's a thought.

BREINES: When I was
a college undergraduate,

my then girlfriend,
who subsequently became my wife,

got pregnant.

We tried to deal as responsibly
as we could as 20-year-olds

with that issue and we agreed
that she would have an abortion

and certainly after that point,
for me,

in a deep, emotional way,
my commitment

to the woman's right
to a free and safe

and hygienic abortion, as risky
as it may be, is the best thing.

It seemed good for me, but I
thought it was really best

for women and that's why
I'm pro-choice.

All human beings have
a right to life.

Our unborn children are members
of the human race.

They're human beings, so they
have a right to life,

or alternatively,

to kill an innocent human being
is intrinsically wrong.

An abortion kills an innocent
human being,

therefore it's
intrinsically wrong.

NARRATOR: Shannon asked Peter
Kreeft, a philosophy professor,

to represent the pro-life view.

KREEFT: Women, like men,

have a right to control
their own bodies

and my right to swing my fist
ends at your nose.

And a man does not have another
body inside of his womb

because he doesn't have a womb
and a woman does.

So there's a special case
for a woman.

A woman has a responsibility
and a privilege

that a man doesn't have,

of giving birth
to another human being.

BREINES: From the standpoint
of the anti-choice people,

women tend to be recognized
rather... almost not at all.

Um, that what's central
is the womb, the fetus.

And I feel that women are not
instruments or vessels

for the production of infants,
but people who give birth.

NARRATOR: Shannon then asked
Louie Haag,

an ex-Catholic priest
teaching ethics,

to participate in the debate.

HAAG: She made it fairly
clear that she came down

on the side of choice and one of
the things that I tried to do

was get her to go beyond that.

I suggested that the question
was not pro-life or pro-choice;

those are too simple.

I would argue that if the
absence of brain wave

is the medically and morally
accepted criterion for death,

that index ought to be
equally important

on the front end
of the spectrum.

And we know that we do not have
human brain wave activity

until the beginning
of the third trimester.

I am suggesting that abortion
in the first two trimesters

does not constitute morally
the equivalent of homicide,

of murder.

And that, I think, is where
the debate must be engaged.

NARRATOR: In her senior year
at Boston College,

Shannon Lowney spent her
Christmas break

on a Jesuit missionary program

which provided American college
kids with their first experience

in the third world.

In a diary she kept, Shannon
wrote about her 12-day stay

in a poor Ecuadorian village.

SHANNON (dramatized):
"The stories the children have

"told me already of dead
brothers and sisters

"ground me in the reality of
their existence.

"Death is not sanitized here;
it is part of daily life.

"The children clamor to take out
our garbage,

"surely to claim those things
which we found unusable.

"Yesterday, we threw out a load
of ant-infested candy

"and today the children are
eating it anyway.

"I am ridden with a dull guilt
that I want to walk away

"and never look back.

"Right now, I feel like

"the smell that permeates my
clothes, my hair, my skin

"is something that has crept
into my soul.

"I hope I can shake this misery

without losing its impact
on my point of view."

MEGAN LOWNEY:
Her experience each day,

waking up to the
poverty and despair

of the people with whom she was
sharing those days was...

it was really tremendous,

and she was dropped
in this place as an outsider,

not to really effect change in
12 days, but to learn,

and I think that had a really
dramatic impact on her.

("Pomp and Circumstance"
plays)

NARRATOR: On a sunny
June day in 1991,

Shannon Lowney graduated from
Boston College

with a magna cum laude degree
in history.

JOAN LOWNEY: Oh, her
graduation from Boston College--

we were just so proud, I can't
tell you how proud we were.

BILL LOWNEY: I was elated.

And she was, and she just smiled
from ear to ear.

We gloried in her success,

and it was a very, very, very
special time in our own history.

("Pomp and Circumstance"
playing)

NARRATOR: Three and a half
weeks after her murder,

the president of Boston
College, Father Donald Monan,

had decided to personally
conduct a memorial mass

for Shannon.

The Jesuit's decision to
memorialize a clinic worker

set off an immediate
media controversy

with Bill Cotter
of Operation Rescue.

COTTER: Well, we said
in the press release

that the Mass
in honor of Shannon Lowney

was scandalous and in a sense
sacrilegious because it was

using the sacrament of the
Eucharist to bestow honor

on the life and by extension
the work of Shannon Lowney,

and that work was the
procurement of abortions.

That really is a betrayal
of the Jesuit tradition.

It's a betrayal of the Catholic
tradition, and it's something

that's really remiss
in a shepherd of the church.

LAW: From everything I know,
this was a young woman

who was doing what she thought
was right.

Do I think that it's a good
thing, in and of itself,

for a Catholic to be working
in an abortion clinic?

Well, clearly, I think not.

COTTER: I think it's valid
to ask this question:

Had Boston College been truly
and faithfully

a Catholic college, truly and
faithfully teaching

the Catholic faith, would
Shannon Lowney be alive today?

JOAN LOWNEY: Shannon believed
in people's having

strongly held beliefs.

She would appreciate those
strongly held beliefs

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