[Operation Rescue: Tape 1]

Raw documentary footage by Bill Stamets chronicling Reverend Keith Tucci and Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, on tour in Minneapolis. This tape features church services with Operation Rescue organizer Jim Anderson and Rev. Keith Tucci, as well as some footage of a protest outside of an abortion clinic.

00:04Copy video clip URL In a church in Minneapolis, the service begins with music and a prayer.

02:17Copy video clip URL Jim Anderson, an Operation Rescue coordinator, addresses the congregation. “Our hearts are pure and right, and our motives are pure and right.”

06:28Copy video clip URL Christian protesters gather outside of an abortion clinic. Protest signs include “Life or Death,” “Stop FOCA Now,” and “Support Life: Let Your Child Live.” Many of the signs feature images of fetuses and babies. Counter-protestors chant, “Free abortion across the land / without apology and on demand!” Children hold a sign that reads, “1/3 of our friends died from abortion.” Other children carry a small white casket while protestors sing.

16:40Copy video clip URL Reverend Keith Tucci delivers a sermon to the congregation.

18:08Copy video clip URL Tucci believes that fundamentalist movements are under attack, and that increasing censorship of their ideas is a punishment from God for not speaking out. “We’re not fighting a social problem. Child-killing is not a social problem, it’s a demonic agenda that we’ve got to resist. The only thing that makes child-killing a social agenda is a church that refuses to recognize the spiritual significance of what’s happening.”

26:10Copy video clip URL Tucci addresses the idea that women ought to have control over their own bodies. “There’s no other area in our legal system we apply that to,” he explains. “Next time you go and sit in front of an abortion clinic door and they come to arrest you, say, ‘Excuse me, I have control over my own body’.”

43:02Copy video clip URL “Take the warfare songs out of the church, and out on the street where they belong.”