The July 19, 1986 San Francisco Sewer Pip Rescue By James C. Kopp on May 26, 1988

The famous sewer pipe rescue which I do not recommend to anyone because… well, we had actually planned a more sophisticated lock.  We were going to take two lengths of 8” diameter schedule 80, that means a half inch wall pipe which I got from a torn down refinery in Oakland, California.  Two lengths of them about 2’ a piece welded side by side and we were going make locks in there somehow for our feet to spring into and they couldn’t come out and that was going to be our big rescue.  Well, I couldn’t get the pipes to weld together.  We tried to weld them together with oxy/acetylene which was another big mistake, it’s the last thing I would have thought of based on what I know now. 

We tried and tried and tried for two or three days to weld these suckers together and we couldn’t.  So I was standing in the junk yard the night before the rescue, a lot of things were set in place, sidewalk counselors, picketers, all sorts of things.  Being as frustrated as I was, I was determined to make my last attempt for this foot to foot shackle out of two lengths of pipe.  This time it was going to be some schedule 40, 8” diameter sewer pipe.  I mean this was the last desperate attempt, and I got a scrap of it that was about 5 or 6 foot long.  It was terrible, both ends had been cut with a torch, it had a piece steel welded to the side of it that looked like I don’t know what, but it was a rough jagged looking piece of steel.  I shudder to think what I did.  However, things could have come out much worse.

Anyway so, I left my house trying to cut it but I couldn’t cut the thing.  I was inept at using gas torches.  I couldn’t even cut schedule 40 pipe.  This is pathetic, right?  So then I sat there and thought, what can I do with this pipe.  Even the way that it was, could I use it in a rescue.  So I decided to use an old Boy Scout knot called the taut-line hitch.  We had two lengths of rope coming in and we had bowlines around each person’s ankles so it wouldn’t tighten up and hurt your ankle.  We had the lines passing by each other then we would tie the taut-line hitch up by your hip let’s say.  This is with you sticking your foot in the pipe and the other guy sticking his foot in on the other side.  Then you thread the piece of rope through there, I don’t want to give too many details, because I don’t want anyone to do this because it was just a mistake.  Suffice it to say, we tied ourselves into this piece of pipe inside the mill, and in the end because we only had one taut-line hitch, it was in a half inch hemp rope.

Brian Hockel was my pipe mate for this rescue and his other leg that wasn’t in the pipe was attached to three other peoples ankles using a large kryptonite lock.  This also includes by the way, Nick Brough, who is a small guy and was known for being the guy who went flying in Denver.  This big black cop picked him up and just threw him across the sidewalk and he hit the concrete and crawled back to his spot, he was a tough little guy.  Nick was one of these mild mannered computer programmers who comes alive when he sees a picket line.  God bless him, he’s a great guy.

So Nick and a couple of other guys had their feet stuffed into this big kryptonite lock.  The SFFD tried to use the jaws of life to try to snap the krypto and that didn’t work because the krypto chipped the blades.  And to add insult to injury, the gas fumes from the unit that powered the jaws of life, which was like a lawn mower engine filled the abortion mill and set off the smoke alarms.  It was so funny because, just imagine someone watching from the sidewalk.  One minute the police go in and after a while the firemen and then the alarm goes off and the building has to be evacuated.  That means mill workers and abortionists, and not only that, it was a basement building which only had two doors.  So it took another couple of hours to ventilate the place.

Once the SFFD realized the jaws of life wasn’t an option, they just took their shoes and socks off and greased up their feet and pulled them out.  The only time I have ever been able to guarantee that two ankles would be able to stay in a kryptonite lock is if they are stuck into a mini lock.  The 3 x 6 kryptonite lock and provided that they are average sized ankles.  I have seen two women stick their legs inside a mini lock and they were still able to get their feet out.

They got the other guys detached, so at this point they had me and Brian and this pipe.  While the SFFD was pondering how they were going to get Brian and me out of the pipe, I had the privilege of overhearing a conversation between the Chief of Police and the Fire Chief.  Me, Brian and the pipe added up to about 450 lbs.  At that point the one of the younger firemen suggested that they could get us out of here by putting the pipe on a furniture dolly and putting me and Brian on some stretchers and just wheel and carry us out.  Then the mill could resume their operations.

The abortion mill people were saying, “we don’t care if these people ever get detached, we just want them out of here.”  That’s what they told the Police.  Then the police turned to the Fire Chief and said, “carry them out.”  But, do you know what the Fire Chief said?  The Fire Chief said that the minute these people are out of this room, we can no longer justify the use of emergency equipment to detach them.  “Why?” said the Police Chief.  The Fire Chief said, “as it is now we are stretching our authority to use this equipment when there is no one in any immediate danger of death or injury.”

The Fire Department typically uses these tools when someone is in a car wreck on the freeway, and maybe bleeding and there is gas all over the ground or whatever.  They usually need to do this in a hurry because the person might die.  That’s what those tools were designed for.  When the taxpayers paid for these extremely expensive tools, they paid for them for that reason.  And they brought in the jaws of life and we all know when happen there, they chipped it on the kryptonite and those blades cost $700.  That was $700 of tax payer’s money because the jaws of life gets chipped on the kryptonite.  Then the Police Chief says, “if we bring them down to the station as they are, would you then bring your rescue equipment down there and cut them loose?”  And the Fire Chief said, “No, once you take them down to the station, then they are your problem.”  So, the Fire Department of San Francisco was forced to do whatever they could with me and Brian right there in that mill by virtue of the fact that we were connected.

This is the beauty of krypto and the beauty of importing your own implements.  Because even if they could lift you, they don’t want to in that circumstance.  Now that might not be true in every city, but things like that happen in all sorts of cities.  We are getting to the point where we are reaching the limit of what these guys can deal with.  Finally, they got three Fireman on each of us and they yanked real hard and they made the taut-line hitch fail.  It hurt, because we didn’t pad our feet.  I didn’t want our feet padded for circulation reasons because if it is down there in the middle of that pipe and I am thinking about staying for six hours and I didn’t want some pad like an ace bandage or anything.  If we had two taut-line hitches it probably would have held and they would have been forced to cut the pipe which is the next thing they were going to do.

It’s entirely possible that mill was shut down for the whole day.  I do know that by the time they got us out of there, we were in the pipe for one hour and five minutes before they realized that they could pull on us and get us out.  I didn’t even know that they could pull on us and get us out.  I didn’t know that a taut-line hitch could fail if you really put enough pressure on a single taut-line hitch.  If you put two or three in there, who knows, maybe it would have worked.  But the next thing they would have done was to take the steel saw, which is a chain saw fitted with a 12” abrasive wheel directly on to the drive, no reduction and slice a window into the pipe so they could see what was in there.  Once they would discover that it’s just a rope, they could have reached in there and cut it.

The other end of this story is that I got put on trial for assault with a deadly weapon, because I was carrying this thing in and they said that I was using it as a battering ram.  Fortunately, their witnesses contradicted themselves.  Plus, the month long trial was so ridicules, I could have gotten it thrown out on appeal with no problem because they really messed up.

Keep in mind that the Police are required to make a clean arrests.  However, we speak in terms of clean rescues.  That means, rescues without an assault wrap.  But they speak in terms of clean arrests.  That means, an arrest without defect, which means they have to arrest someone whom they believe unquestionably is committing a crime.  If they ask us if we are going to leave and we are locked in, that is potentially defective because we can say, “Well gee officer, I don’t know how I got here.  But I would love to leave but my feet are all tied in.”  If you were working on a technical defense, you could do that kind of stuff.

In fact, not only did they charge me with assault with a deadly weapon and simple assault, they charged me with trespassing under a certain code.  A certain sub-set of trespassing called squatting because we had been sitting in that abortion mill for a hour and they figured that they would get clever.  They said, “this isn’t just trespassing, this is squatting, we want to get Mr. Kopp on squatting.”

I had a great lawyer, from the public defender’s office, a beautiful Christian lady who helped me out and toward the end she was fuming about abortion.  She just started to think about it.  You know most people know what abortion is, but you never draw their attention to it long enough to where they dwell on it.  And because this was an abortion related case, she started to see what was going on in that mill and toward the end of the trial, she was just spitting blood.  She was subpoenaing the abortionist to be on the stand and all sorts of things that an aggressive pro-life lawyer would do.  And she was on the payroll of the City of San Francisco as a public defender.

As for the jury, it was the one Roman Catholic lady who voted for conviction.  The homosexuals were the ones who voted to have me acquitted, and that is why I am not in jail today.  Anyway, the Roman Catholic, “Pro-Life” lady came up to me after the trial and said, “Mr. Kopp, no more pipes.”

When the whole thing was over, not only did the Lord prevail in the courtroom and got all the assault charges dismissed… thank God that he worked through the homosexuals… but as it turned out, you can’t charge someone with squatting trespass unless they fulfill certain elements and one of those elements is that you have to sit in one place for more than 24 hours.  So, all those charges were dropped.  I didn’t even pull time.  I didn’t even have an arrest on my record after that one.

May 26, 1988 James C. Kopp Interview, Part 2

MJ: We are in a holocaust in our country and that has escalated to over 20 million, maybe 21 or 22.

JK: Right.

MJ: And it’s been going on for fifteen years.  What do you think it’s going to take to stop the holocaust here in America?  And number two, do you think it can be stopped?

JK: I will tell you something that is my private opinion.  It’s not something that I can prove to you.  When I say that I don’t mean that it can be publicized, I just mean that there is no proof that I can offer for it.  I am not pointing to any particular Bible verse or anything.  But, if you look at the tradition of the major prophets and look at the times they were in.  Over and over they are describing that judges can be bought.  Jerusalem goes whoring under any tree or hill top with any god that she feels that she wants to.  You just look at the picture that was painted of Jerusalem when the Lord sent major prophets.  Then you look at the time now, and to that extent I would say that there is a connection with Scripture in terms of just looking around the world right now and trying to piece it together.  I personally feel that.. and I don’t want to discourage anyone when I say this, but the basic picture of abortion will not stop in the absence of a catastrophe.  Now, there are all sorts of catastrophes that could happen.  If the Lord were to come again, obviously that would be a catastrophe in the eyes of unbelievers.  If AIDS were to pass the epidemic threshold which is 6% of the total population, it would start moving up toward 51% which is what you would call pandemic, if became a much higher thing and started cutting much deeper into the hetero population, that’s an example of a catastrophe.  Or a nuclear war, or a communist takeover, these sorts of things.  The absolute worst thing that could happen for this whole planet is for everything to go along with the status quo, because then the judgment that God hold in reserve is even greater.  Hitler and his people did not stop doing what they were doing because they had moral qualms about it.  They stopped doing what they were doing because we forced them to.  You know this whole thing about pro-choice now?  That’s bologna.  They are murdering people, there is no choice.  They evolved in that and it’s the same with Mr. Hitler.  Hitler did not stop doing what he was doing because he chose to, and the fact that he had to be forced to stop was that the western civilization slipped back morally.  If Germany could have come to the conclusion that it was morally wrong and stopped for that reason I don’t think we would have had abortion.  So this is really just a continuation of the German situation. 

JK: (cont’d) But, in terms of whether it can be stopped or not, the other side of this whole thing, is because we are pro-life workers, each of us has the tremendous pleasure of knowing at least one woman who had a baby as the result of the efforts that the Lord brought to pass through us.  This is a tremendous privilege.  I would say most of the pro-lifers in the entire country have never had that privilege even though there work accounts for very much.  But, still in a way we know people, we have the faces of the women in our minds right now and the faces of their babies stored away, that we know that we if hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning and overcome all the fear and so forth, humanly speaking… as Dr. Schaffer would always say… “humanly speaking” those babies would have died and the souls of those mothers would have been on the path to hell.  And for that matter I’ll tell one even worse, our own souls, who know where we would have been with the Lord, if he had really been tapping at our heart.  I am not saying that, that is what you have to do to save yourself, I’m just saying Jesus wants us to walk with him.  But anyway, what I was going to get at… I ramble too much, (laughs)

MJ: That’s okay.

JK: What I was going to get at was this, as far as those women are concerned, abortion did come to an end.  You see what I’m saying?  As Mother Teresa says over and over and over…  all these atheist reporters come up to her and ask, “Mother, why are you working in the black hole of Calcutta?”  There is however many tens of thousands of people dying in the streets and you pick up your 500 a day, imagine, I don’t know what the number is, but imagine picking up a 100 dying people in a day and taking good care of them, I mean good care of them.  And even more than that…  I mean even an atheist could even do that if they had enough money.  Right?  Giving them enough emotional support so they can die with dignity which is part of what Mother Ts ministry is all about.  Just imagine how much effort that is.  But anyway, so the atheists come and they say, “well mother you come and pick up these 100 or 200 bums of the streets and half of they die anyway.  And the other half, after you patch them up, they are going back out on the street and they are going to die next week.”  She always has her standard answer that she gives.  She says, “it’s a drop in the ocean, but without that drop, the ocean would be one drop less.”  I have said this to myself many many times while I am sitting in a jail cell, or sitting in a court room.  We have got our one or two babies and as far as the Lord was concerned, he probably would have been prepared to ground the whole universe to a halt just to make sure we got our lazy tails out of bed that morning when we were having second thoughts.  You know what I mean, that feeling before you do a rescue.  You know, and He said, “Jim, the whole universe has been ground to a halt so you can take another 5 minutes sitting there in bed overcoming your fears.  Get down there!  That’s how important that baby is to me.”  And there’s a bigger picture and because of the television and everything, we are used to seeing TV pictures of everything that is evil in the whole world in 30 minutes on headline news, but that’s not our problem.  I hate to say it, but in the bigger picture I suppose it’s our problem.

JK: (cont’d) The Germans had this expression of Weltschmerz, “you want to have this pain for the whole world.”  Well, I do have a pain for the whole world, I wished I could preach the Gospel to every human being.  But I also know that Jesus cannot call me to do that.  Not if he wants to keep me in the flesh doing this and having this amount of energy and needing so sleep and so much to eat and so forth.  There are limitations.  I can think of a lot of Pro-Lifers that I have met that have burned out because they wouldn’t take care of themselves and wouldn’t set limitations for themselves, or would not allow the Lord to set limitations on themselves.  Had they done that, we would have a lot more manpower, we would have two or three times the amount of manpower in the rescue movement alone.  And in the CPC movement, I would say that we would easily have two or three times the manpower there.  If the people had just paced themselves.  This is probably an aside, but there has been many times during my pro-life career where I have taken a whole day off and I didn’t answer to anyone for it on this planet.  There are times when I took two weeks off.  Just before New York I was in a hidden location where nobody knew where I was except for one priest.  Finally toward the end I finally broke down and called Randall Terry, I didn’t want to tell him where I was.  But for two weeks, I walked up and down the beach, because I knew the upcoming Operation Rescue event in New York was going to be a heart attack.  It was going to be a panic and there were going to be people up in my face asking me to do things all week long and that’s exactly what happened.  And as it was, I barely made it through the week.  Having had the resources of two weeks of silence and prayer to build up.

MJ: It’s a marathon race.  A lot of people don’t realize, especially pro-lifers is the abortion is only one front.  Abortion just happens to be the watershed point, it happens to be the tip of the iceberg.  Even if we do stop abortion which I really think we can.  I think it is a very realistic goal, but even if we do stop abortion, there is still a lot of work to be done and a lot of other fronts and we definitely just can’t kick back.  If you really want to evaluate how well your movement is doing, sometimes its good to listen to what your enemies are saying about you.  Because they have a different perspective and can sometimes tell it best.  This is something that Kate Mitchelman who is the Executive Director of the National Abortion Rights Action League said.  This is her quotes: “Up until now the anti-choice groups have been chipping away at the right to abortion with a chisel.  But now they picked up a sledgehammer and they are trying to crush the whole thing.  They obviously feel that it is within their reach to overturn Roe V. Wade and make abortion illegal again.  And the frightening thing is that I am not sure they are wrong.”

JK:  Hum…  it’s great.

MJ: That is heavy when we got the abortion industry shaking in their boots.  I mean they are scared, we have got them scared Jim.  Now that the iron is hot, if we could just mobilize the masses to do it.  What do you think it’s going to take to stop abortion?

JK: Well that’s what I was saying, it would take a catastrophe which would force people to remember God.  In this country we have obviously forgotten about God.

MJ: Do you think a series of rescues would be enough of a catastrophe?  If the rescue movement were to gain more momentum and numbers within the next few years?

JK: I’ll tell about another quote that was made that same week by a similar person.  And this was after a week along effort which I don’t think anyone would ever deny that this was the greatest rescue effort that has ever been done.  In terms of manpower, organization and prayers and just raw success that the Lord heaped on this thing.  Suffice it to say, it was a great effort and one of the abortionist said during that week, “well these people can do what they want.  But basically what it boils down to is that next week we are going to be here and they aren’t.”  That’s one of the reasons I am anxious to get back in New York.  But, I’ll tell you another little story, quickly and that is, I was at a pre New York, OR (Operation Rescue) rally held on Long Island.  Not a rally, it was just where Randy was speaking to a group of people that was let’s just say your average right to life group.  I’m not casting aspersions, believe me these are great people.  Randy was going to speak at the end of the agenda, and they ran through their agenda and there were two people there who we knew at the beginning of the meeting that were identified to us as being clinic workers for Bill Beard.  Or I should say, mill workers that were there sitting in that meeting.  I don’t know why they were even allowed to be there, but the right to life people said, “that’s okay we don’t have any secrets.”  And Randy said the same thing, when he started to talk.  But anyway, so they went through this meeting and we waited for Randy to go on and it was about an hour and a half.  They talked about all sorts of things, legislation, education, “we got to get into this church” and “we got to hold a dinner here” and “we got to have a potluck,” all kinds of stuff which is all fine work.  Now I do remember toward the end that they had a 15 minute discussion on the cheapest source of a precious feet pin.  There were about 30 people there and they were discussing where can you get precious feet pins for the least amount of money.  All of this I admit is great pro-life stuff, and during this whole time these two women sat in the back and just sat there joking the whole time with each other.  Then Randy Terry comes on, and they became extremely quiet, and the expressions on their faces became extremely sullen.  And after a while, they realized the impact of what Randy Terry was going to do, or what he was hoping to do with the Lord’s blessing.  They wanted to ask some questions and they got very angry and got very upset.  For that matter, if they had known that Jim Kopp was standing in that same room, the one who is being sued by N.O.W. for opening up a Crisis Pregnancy Center in the city of San Francisco, the Devil’s play ground, I would have imagined that they would have been quite upset about that too.  Especially if I want to target and open up a CPC across the street from Bill Beard’s mill, or whatever.  You see what I’m saying?  When you get into the more intense pro-life stuff, suddenly just like the point you were making, you enemy perks up and says your hurting me!  Your hurting me!  Well, that’s what I want to do.

MJ: Joe Scheidler said that he attended these abortionist conventions and has told that the number one thing they complain about… they don’t complain about Jack Wilke and National Right to Life, (Jim interjected, “as great of a worker as he is”) and the pro-life political agenda.  When they talk about the problems that they are having, and who is giving them the most problems, they are talking about the activists.  They are talking about the people who are doing the sit-ins, the picketing and the sidewalk counseling.  They are talking about, “how are we going to stop these people.”  That should be a good barometer to go by, I would think.

May 26, 1988 James C. Kopp Interview, Part 1

Editor’s note: About 10 years prior to James Kopp performing a post natal termination procedure of an abortionist in 1998, I had a chance to sit down with him for about an hour and a half for an interview. I recently, found the cassette tape of that interview while rummaging through my old cassettes a few weeks ago. After I listened to the tape, I was reminded of the deep wisdom and insight that James shared. I was so amazed at what he said, I decided to transcribe the interview and share it with you. This interview is quite long, so I will present it in several parts. Here is part 1.


MJ: There are a lot of things I don’t know about you just form a personal perspective. Could you tell us about who you are and where you are from and some basic background information before we start talking about rescue missions (sit-ins at abortion mills)?

JK: I was born in Pasadena, CA in 1954. I come from a family of five and I have one sister in heaven, and I guess part of my background includes the fact that my own immediate family has three single mothers. So to me, pro-life is very personal and the cost that mothers have to pay is something that I as a male could understand. I went to school in California, and I studied Darwinistic Biology as an under graduate many years ago, and was saved overseas in Francis Schaffer’s ministry and at the same time, through over Darwinism. But, I decided to finish up grad school even though by that time I started to think about pro-life and so I finished my Masters which was in embryology and fertilization. That started to get me into pro-life.

MJ: What year was this?

JK: I finished my Masters in I think about ’82. One of the reasons I got into pro-life was that… At one point during the Masters, I thought I might be interested in med school, so I became a pre-med, and I had some clinical experience. And, one day I was standing in the morgue of the Stanford Hospital and I assisted and observed autopsies there because I was in the pathology department and did my little bit of research at night. They brought in a baby that was 8 months from conception that had been aborted, for having Down’s syndrome. The Pathologist was particularly pleased to show me this baby because she knew that I was pro-life. She knew that I was in the morgue and she sent the baby in and she said, “You see enough of this kind of garbage and you really start to believe in abortion.” Those were the words she said to me, and I don’t think I will ever forget it. Up until then, I had some pro-life involvement intellectually, but it wasn’t until I saw that baby right in front of me, which was an absolutely beautiful baby that had been killed because it had Down’s syndrome. And, I heard those words and they just chilled me through my bones, “You see enough of this kind of garbage and you really start to believe in abortion.” Oh, and she also said, ”You pro-lifers really make me sick.” I was so stunned that I could not think of much to say but what happened is that I made a promise to God in my heart that I would try and do more. Up until then I had done political work in pro-life and my family has been involved in California politics for decades.

MJ: What year was this when you saw the aborted baby?

JK: That was 1982 also. The first rescue I did was in ’83 or ’84 and the first Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) that I opened was in ’84. So, it was after then I got on the pathway of CPCs and rescues.

MJ: You said you had your conversion overseas. Was this in Switzerland?

JK: Yes.

MJ: What was the name of the town?

JK: The name of the town was Huémoz-sur-Ollon. But the name of the ministry was L’Abri.

MJ: How many rescues have you done to date?

JK: I really don’t know the exact number, but it is somewhere between 15 to 20 I think. In terms of really big national type rescues with 100 or more people maybe 4 or 5 of those. And probably half a dozen lock-in rescues… maybe more.

MJ: Do you know how many arrests you’ve had?

JK: Well, let’s see... That’s right, some of the rescues did not involve arrests, so I have probably been arrested about 15 times. Not a lot.

MJ: Not a lot? (laughing) One of the things about you that is going against the grain of society is that a lot of people are soft and we have a lot of conveniences. And here, we have someone like you who has literally sold out everything for pro-life. I understand that you even took a vow of poverty at one time.

JK: (laughing) I don’t know about a vow.

MJ: That’s what John Witte told me.

JK: Well the hardest part was when I sold my trumpet. I used to be in the union and I put myself through college, or shall I say the Lord put me through college being in the union. And the hardest thing was when I sold my trumpet, which was an extremely good trumpet. That was how I made my living which was the culmination of my career as a professional musician. So that part hurt me, but ever since then it’s been downhill. I mean, in the sense that, once you…. I mean everyone has a trumpet if you know what I mean. Everyone’s got that one thing. You know, they will give up everything else, you know what I mean? And that trumpet meant probably more to me than anything else in terms of material things. I have already been moving in the direction of what I called, being judgment proof. You know, having no assets so that if N.O.W. (National Organization for Women) sues me, I would have nothing to fear. Which is the place I want to be in. So, I had been moving in that direction for a long time.

MJ: I could just see N.O.W. going after that trumpet. “We got to get Kopp’s trumpet!”

JK: (Laughing)

MJ: We read about Samuel Rutherford, Dietrich Bonheoffer, Corrie Ten Boom, then we look at people in our day and age… and I ask where are our heroes? And we have Joan Andrews and a handful of others. But our generation desperately needs some heroes that will sell everything out and just be radical. In our day and age this concept is very foreign and I just feel that we have a lot of soft Christians now days.

JK: Yeah, I think I see where you are going, and I definitely agree. In fact, any time the Lord has asked me to make a sacrifice… and of course, I cannot make a sacrifice in my own strength. If I were to form the resolution that I should sell my trumpet, that would be no big deal. That doesn’t mean anything if it is in the flesh. But, if you were to pray about it and you are sure that is what the Lord wants, and if you go to him and say, “okay Lord.” Then you are offering it up to God and He’s doing it. I definitely think that we don’t offer up enough things to the Lord, we are hanging on to too many things. That, I don’t think too many people would argue with you, especially in the United States. In my opinion, part of the core of this whole problem is that there has never been a country in the entire History of the planet that has had such a very large number of people with such an average high level of freedom from war, poverty, disease, coldness, hunger and pretty soon when you get that isolated and that independent, God is just an idea after a while. God is out there working on the fine things like do I feel good. If you go into most churches these days, people are concerned with feeling good. They are not thinking about, am I starving? Or, is that guy starving? Have I heard the Gospel? Or, has that guy heard the Gospel? You can say the same thing about missions. There are very few people in this country who will do missions, same thing with pro-life. So I certainly agree… Oh, I know what I was going to say, I ramble.

MJ: That’s okay.

JK: The other thing I was going to say too is, long ago could have done what I call an arrest cycle. I have done two of them now. Or, one or two, I can’t remember exactly. But anyway, its where I come into a town and keep doing rescues until they give me a hard time. And during the hard time I assess and say to the Lord, “do you want me to continue in this town, or do you want me to go to another one? Okay? That is what I would call and arrest cycle

MJ: Okay.

JK: In St. Louis, (laughing) they rotated me out to another position before I got in jail for a hard time because in St. Louis you can get arrested 100 times and never see the inside of a jail cell for more than 6 or 8 hours, it’s really incredible in St. Louis. But, the reason I have not done perpetual arrest cycles, in other words, keep going until you get arrested more and more, is that I sense that the Lord has asked me along the way to stop and take the time to open up Pearson Centers. Or, Crisis Pregnancy Centers. If my whole goal in life, and this is not my whole goal, but if my entire 100% goal in life was to save as many babies as I could, that I physically could myself, I would do nothing but open Crisis Pregnancy Centers. I think there is more at stake than just, how many babies can Jim Kopp save. There is a slightly bigger picture, not much bigger. But anyone who sets themselves a goal, I want to save as many babies as I can. That’s not a bad goal, and I certainly would certainly never fault that, but I think there is a little bit more to it. Something that the Lord has been showing lately is that there is more involved than babies. In China for example, if you go and do a rescue in mainland China, you will be in jail for 25 years, and you will be a martyr and the Lord would certainly honor all your prayers, who knows on a mystical level?

JK: (cont’d) But practically speaking, you can’t do anything in China to really help save the babies until you do something about communism. And you can’t do something about communism without being good Christians in general. You have to have a body working together and part of the body working together is exhortation and a word of knowledge and all these things that are… You see what I mean? There is slightly more to the picture than physically, just how many babies can Jim Kopp save with the hours that I’ve got left in my life. That’s why I take the time out, or I dare say the Lord has asked me to take the time out in Delaware and maybe in Texas, California, New Jersey, New York state or wherever he sends me, to leave a trail of these CPCs and they become focal points for pro-life work. And they become stepping stones for people who want to step up into rescues. Most people can’t take that step straight from political work to rescues. They just can’t do it, they need a stepping stone in the middle. A place where they can meet the girls, get a hands on view of how terrible it is out there, how badly these women are being lied to, and pushed around by their boyfriends, and pushed around by the abortionists…

MJ: Isn’t that the truth. All in the name of pro-choice.

JK: Exactly! Get a real solid picture. Demythologize the pro-choice deal, and then they start to get mad. It’s like when I saw that baby in the Stanford morgue, I got mad. If you come to me after that and start talking about trumpets, I would say… Hey! forget trumpets! We are on another level. You know? And I’ll tell you something, most national leaders that I know, that I have had the privileged of meeting… it’s a funny thing, but they have had a similar kind of experience. Not the exact same experience, but something like it.