Crusading once again

A series of setbacks forced Randall Terry out of the public eye, but the 'family values' champion has returned

BY TINA SUSMAN | STAFF WRITER; Staff writer Andrew Metz in Pinellas Park, Fla., contributed to this story.

April 3, 2005

In December 1990, Randall Terry, a militant anti-abortion activist from New York, arrived at a Missouri hospital to try to persuade the parents of Nancy Cruzan, a woman in a persistent vegetative state, to restore her feeding tube.

After years of relative quiet, Terry is back, in the Terri Schiavo case, much to the dismay of critics who shudder at the thought of the splashy Operation Rescue founder making a political comeback.

His appearance Tuesday alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson heightened unease among organizations who for years were on the receiving end of Terry's tactics, which included delivering a fetus to Bill Clinton in 1992, chaining himself to abortion clinic sinks, and getting himself arrested dozens of times.

Terry, 46, insists he has softened after going through bankruptcy, a messy divorce, the censure of his church, estrangement from his gay son, a failed run for Congress, and a feeble attempt as a country singer.

"I have been through so much heartache, so many ups and downs," he said Thursday. "I'm not angry. I'm not the same. I'm a different person now."

That's little comfort to his harshest critics. While they insist Terry represents a fringe group of fundamentalist Christians, they concede his public relations skills, and some were unsettled by his role as a spokesman for Schiavo's parents.

The gut reaction was "Oh my God, he's back," said Steve Emmert, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, a Virginia-based lobby group.

"It's one thing for him to be doing whatever he's doing, but when he does it with Rev. Jackson standing beside him, it takes on a very different - I don't know what," Emmert said.

JoAnn Smith, president of Planned Parenthood in Nassau County, agreed.

"You say the name Randall Terry, and it conjures up all kinds of images that none of us wants to deal with," she said.

Terry was pleased to find a high-profile platform.

"It's unbelievable," he gushed Tuesday after Jackson appeared at the Florida hospice where Schiavo died Thursday. "I could not have written this script if I had been on acid."

It was far different in 1990, when Terry arrived uninvited at the Missouri hospital where Cruzan, 33, in a vegetative state since a 1983 car crash, lay dying. Her parents were battling hospital officials for the right to remove her feeding tube. A court ruled in the Cruzans' favor, and their daughter died 12 days after the tube's removal. The couple shunned Terry.

This time, Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, invited Terry to be their spokesman in February as they battled their son-in-law Michael Schiavo. Devout Catholics, they described their move as an "effort to rescue Terri from the clutches of death by judicial homicide."

Terry quickly demonstrated the aggressive style that made famous Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion organization he founded in 1987. He called Michael Schiavo a "monster" and organized protests outside the man's home; he appeared on TV news shows and gave regular briefings to the media.

It was his second foray into the case, following his successful lobbying in 2003, also at the Schindlers' invitation, of Florida legislators that led Gov. Jeb Bush to sign an emergency bill allowing him to temporarily block removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. It was a sign that the fiery persuasiveness remained, even if Terry had shrunk from the spotlight since losing badly in his 1998 run for Congress in upstate New York.

A year later, he filed bankruptcy, claiming $1.6 million in debts to evade paying judgments to the National Organization for Women and other groups that had sued him for disruptions at abortion clinics. In 2000, he and his wife of 19 years divorced amid allegations - denied by Terry - of his infidelity. He was ousted from the Landmark Church in Binghamton, and the pastor accused him of "sinful relationships" with several women. Perhaps most vexing to Terry, a rabid opponent of homosexuality and self-proclaimed crusader for family values, was his adopted son's decision last year to come out as gay.

In the meantime, internal struggles at Operation Rescue led to Terry's departure.

Last month, Terry and his second wife moved to Florida. He hasn't said what he'll do next, but he made it clear yesterday that his absence had been a mere rest, not a retreat.

"I got the hell beat out of me for so many years, and I took a sabbatical," Terry said, offering a couple of his CDs to a reporter.

Staff writer Andrew Metz in Pinellas Park, Fla., contributed to this story.