Abortion protesters snarl rush-hour traffic

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Friday, September 22, 2006

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RAPID CITY — Two people were arrested Thursday during a rush-hour anti-abortion demonstration at the intersection of Mountain View Road and West Main Street.

Abortion protester Mark Gabriel, 46, of Appleton, Wis., was handing out anti-abortion leaflets to passing motorists. He was arrested for “impeding traffic,” Rapid City Police Sgt. Peter Ragnone said. Cybelle Claussen, 43, of Rapid City was arrested for disorderly conducted after she scuffled with one of the demonstrators. Ragnone said Claussen was apparently upset and had argued with one of the protesters because her children had seen graphic photos that protesters carried.

Gabriel and Claussen were charged with misdemeanors, Ragnone said.

About 30 demonstrators participated in the protest, which included large, graphic images depicting bloody, dismembered fetuses.

Organizer Matt Trewhella of Missionaries to the Preborn in Milwaukee, Wis., said the protest was part of his group’s Head West Campus Tour. The group already has visited schools in Sioux Falls, Brookings, Vermillion and Spearfish, and earlier Thursday, they were at the parking lot at Central High School.

Thursday evening, Trewhella stood on a small traffic island at the busy intersection of Mountain View and West Main. He used a bullhorn to urge passing motorists to vote yes on Referred Measure 6, South Dakota’s new abortion ban.

“South Dakota is the first state to have the courage to challenge the federal edict of Roe v. Wade,” Trewhella said.

At the opposite corner of the intersection, Dan Homan of Keokuk, Iowa, also had a bullhorn. “The blood of the children is on your heads,” Holman shouted.

College-age protester Nathan Buchinger of West Bend, Wis., stood at another corner, holding a poster more than 6 feet tall.

Buchinger said reaction to the demonstration was “about half and half.” He said many motorists signaled or gestured support, but he said there also was “a lot of cussing.”

Most of the protesters were part of Trewhella’s group, but several were local.

“I just happened to see them so I joined right in,” Al Carlson of Rapid City said. Carlson is a member of Citizens for Life, and he said he had often protested at the Planned Parenthood Clinic, which is near the intersection.

The demonstration was well organized. Leaders used small two-way radios to communicate with protesters on all four sides of the intersection. They had placed signs by roadsides warning motorists of graphic photos of “Planned Parenthood atrocities.”

The warning did not satisfy Chantelle Waldman of Rapid City, who drove by with her 14-year-old son. “I was offended,” she said.

Waldman pulled over, quickly hand-lettered her own sign and started a one-woman counter-demonstration. “Choice, God’s gift, Let America honor it,” her sign read.

After the arrests, Sgt. Ragnone kept watch on the scene from the parking lot at the Walgreens Drug Store. “We have a difficult job,” Ragnone said. “We have to protect the protesters and protect the community.”

The Missionaries to the Preborn demonstrators were peaceful and orderly, but Trewhella is a controversial figure. He was videotaped in 1994 calling for churches to form militias and for parents to buy their children “an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition,” according to The New York Times. The paper also reported that James Charles Kopp, later convicted of murdering an abortion provider, had once applied for a drivers license using a Milwaukee address used by members of Missionaries to the Preborn.

The group itself, which Trewhella founded in 1990, also is controversial, mainly for public displays of graphic images of abortions.

According to the group’s Web site: “The American press refuses to show the American people what these babies look like who are dying in the womb. We are simply attempting to bypass that media blackout by going to the streets and displaying these photographs.”

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com