Different missions, common goal for pro-life couple

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Samuel and Gloria Lee aren’t sure if 20 years ago they could picture themselves where they are today.

"We just wanted to open a bookstore," Gloria Lee said with a chuckle.

But the two are far from that, a whirlwind dream conceived around the time the two were married 21 years ago. Instead, the duo have joined the ranks of perhaps the most notable members of the local pro-life movement. Their worlds are different, yet the same in how they work to promote a culture of life.

Sam, 47, is founder of Campaign Life Missouri, a one-man pro-life lobbying organization supported by donors. Gloria, 49, is director of Our Lady’s Inn, an emergency shelter for pregnant women in crisis, which Sam also helped found in 1982. They are members of All Souls Parish in Overland.

Over the years, the two said they have seen an evolution in the pro-life movement. From the days following the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, there was an immediate need within the pro-life movement, Sam said, to isolate abortion as a problem that needed to be stopped.

The view now, he said, is completely different. "Today, it’s, ‘Why can’t we love them both?’ It has sort of gone from isolating the unborn child being killed by abortion as the problem, to it’s the mother and the child," he said. "And that has been a very healthy change, because you can never isolate the child from the mother. It’s just impossible." The focus on stopping abortion lies with the relationship — or bad relationship, Sam noted — that led up to the point of seeking an abortion. "What are we going to do to help young people not to be in that situation?"

From Breaking the Law to Making the Law

It was Jan. 22, 1978, the fifth anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision. Twenty-one-year-old Sam had been in St. Louis for several weeks after moving from Southern Indiana. He arrived in St. Louis with the goal of studying to become a priest. Instead, it was because of a meeting he attended with a group of Franciscans, that Sam found himself on that day participating with a group protesters at the Regency Park Gynecological Center in West County. It was the first time Sam had participated in a sit-in to protest the abortions that were being performed at the clinic.

The doctor became so frustrated with the protest that the clinic was shut down for the day. Over the next several years, Sam continued with the sit-ins, with a sense of satisfaction that perhaps the group stopped another unborn child from being aborted. The protesters also were known to send young women to a local crisis pregnancy center as an alternative to aborting their children.

Soon enough, Sam and his fellow protesters started to get arrested at the sit-ins; later on, he and several other participants were banned from the premises of several local clinics. In 1983, he served a nearly yearlong sentence, along with several others, for violating court orders that banned them from the clinics.

Prior to his sentence, Sam married Gloria, who he had met through a blind date set up by Bill Bland, a mutual friend. They soon started a family and eventually had four children. It was around the time that he got married and started a family with Gloria that Sam decided to get out of the sit-in movement and moved on to lobbying for pro-life legislation in Missouri.

The transition from protests to lobbying work was not clear-cut, he said. "I guess there was for me some personal dissatisfaction with the way things were going with the sit-in movement," he said. Others involved in the movement started off with small tactics, such as putting glue in the locks of the abortion clinic’s doors. "The whole underlying philosophy was ... by sitting in front of this door, we are taking on the vulnerability of this child," said Sam. "You can remove us — but you’re going to have to pull us away. "I thought that was a very important element. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of ... why this technique versus glue in the locks ... and then smashing the equipment ... and then burning the building ... and then shooting the abortionist. Where do you draw the line? And on what basis do you draw the line?"

Sam developed an interest in the law after working with lawyers following his arrests from the sit-ins.

"Working with the lawyers, they wanted not just to get us off, but they wanted to raise bigger issues," he said. "I thought, ‘Maybe there’s some legislation that could actually benefit us.’ I had this desire to get some legislation passed." Sam beat a path between St. Louis, where his family was located, and Jefferson City, where to this day he travels several days every week during the legislative session to lobby.

Over the years, Sam has lobbied for countless issues. His claim to fame lies with the 1986 Missouri legislation that he helped to write, which placed a number of restrictions on abortion — including banning the use of public facilities and employees for performing abortions, prohibiting counseling that would encourage abortions and viability tests for pregnant women in their 20th or more week of pregnancy.

That legislation was the key element in the 1989 Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that none of the challenged provisions of the Missouri legislation were unconstitutional.

Ultimately, he said, the decision has upheld law that provides protection to unborn children in non-abortion circumstances. Citing the recent murder case of Laci and Conner Peterson, Sam said, "in non-abortion circumstances you can have someone convicted not of just killing a pregnant woman, but also killing her unborn child," he said. The Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services decision has ultimately allowed Missouri’s law "to go forth," he said.

This year, the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act also was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Sam said he remains optimistic but realistic in terms of what can be accomplished with pro-life legislation in the future.

During the last legislative session, Campaign Life Missouri lobbied for a number of issues, including tax credits for those who adopt a special needs child as well as those who donate to agencies that provide pregnancy resources; more than doubling the funding for the Missouri Alternatives to Abortion program; and a comprehensive ban on human cloning.

The key lies in "getting the laws passed — keep these cases in the pipeline, keep getting enough support," he said. "I think part of the lesson is that you have to be persistent. "I don’t mean persistent in terms of months or a legislative session. We’re talking over years, decades, a lifetime. And for most pro-life people, being pro-life is not a career choice. It’s a lifetime commitment. That’s certainly something we have over those who are pro-abortion."

Growing the Blades of a Grassroots Effort

"I always say I could never do what he’s doing," said Gloria Lee. "I’d rather knock my head into some wall than try to go to Jeff City and deal with politicians."

At the same time, Gloria noted that her husband has told her, "I could never do what you do with the ladies. "Different things for different folks," said Gloria.

As current director of Our Lady’s Inn, Gloria first learned about the maternity home through her involvement in the Community of Restoration, a charismatic prayer group at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Soulard, which was a few blocks away from the first Our Lady’s Inn location at the old convent at St. John Nepomuk Parish.

Bill Bland, the man behind Sam and Gloria’s first date, was helping to renovate Our Lady’s Inn and also was a member of Sts. Peter and Paul. Gloria, who was living with a couple of third order Franciscans at the time, volunteered as one of the first live-in houseparents at Our Lady’s Inn.

"I had a regular job, I worked for the state at the time as a disability counselor," she said. "But I just lived there. I was on call in the evenings and weekends. And I just interacted with the ladies — talked with them, helped out, answered phones. Whatever needed to be done."

But the convent wasn’t big enough to serve the women and children they had coming to them. St. John’s convent, built in the late 1800s with narrow stairs and tiny bathrooms, was in need of repairs and not a good setting for pregnant women and children, Gloria said.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 1997, Our Lady’s Inn moved to a convent that once belonged to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, across the street from St. Anthony of Padua Parish in South St. Louis. Over the years, she has been involved with Our Lady’s Inn in a number of capacities, including as a bookkeeper, volunteer, member of the board and now as director.

Gloria, who has a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling, said she said she has seen a growth in the ministry at Our Lady’s Inn. "In the early days we’d probably get 20 or 30 (calls) a month," she said. "And then for many years we were stable at about 40 a month." Today she said they get about 50 to 60 calls a month. The new location can handle about 18 or 19 women at one time. There are 25 bedrooms, some with a middle wall knocked out to provide a double bedroom for women who come with their families.

When she first became director, Gloria implemented classes and other programs that would help the clients become more self-sufficient. "These ladies have to support themselves when they leave," she said. "My first thing was if they didn’t have a GED, they’d have to go to GED class. If they couldn’t get paid employment, I had them do volunteer work."

Under her leadership, Our Lady’s Inn has been able to offer the women a number of classes on financial management, life skills, relationship skills, Lamaze and childbirth, parenting, and human sexuality and spirituality. "We’re definitely abstinence-based," Gloria noted.

Asked why she is involved in this kind of work, she said: "Sam and I committed ourselves to doing it," she said. "I am just as blessed by doing it as ... I work with wonderful people who are also committed to helping these women and children. The pro-life community is just a phenomenal group of people.

Gloria noted that none of her and Sam’s work would be possible without the support of family, friends and donors.

"Sam and I would never have been able to do this all these years ... I could tell you story after story about the blessings we have received."

Some information for this story was provided by "Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars," by Cynthia Gorney.