By Rita McInerney

Being arrested at abortion clinics is nothing new for Father Edwin Arentsen, one of 134 Operation Rescue protesters rounded up July 19 at an Atlanta abortion center. He estimates he has been arrested "about 80 times in the past 10 or 11 years."

Father Arentsen is now among approximately 100 Operation Rescue demonstrators confined to Fulton County Jail after hearings last week in Atlanta Municipal Court.

The hearings for the 134 demonstrators were held July 27, 28, and 29. Most maintained their refusal to identify themselves other than as "Baby Jane Doe" and "Baby John Doe" and were bound over to the state court of Fulton County for trial on criminal trespassing charges.

While confined at the Atlanta prison farm in southeast Atlanta, the prisoners were brought outside to the wide sloping lawn outside the cell area for an hour's recreation. This was the time each day when they could talk, pray and sing with their families and anti-abortion supporters through a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Touching was mainly clasping two fingers through the fence. Several guards stood quietly in the background during their peaceful assembly.

Interviewed July 23 at the prison farm, Father Arentsen, of Addieville, IL, and a priest of the diocese of Belleville, said those arrested wanted to show police and civic authorities that "if we don't bend, they can't afford to keep us. We're going to continue going to abortion shops. Before long they will see we are boss."

"We are trying to show that we the people thing government is wrong. Government is for, by and of the people ... and we want to show them that abortion is murder."

Ordained in 1943, he said he had parishes until 1978 "when the bishop released me from my parish. That gave me a chance to go to jail. I really believe God wanted me in pro-life work."

"I am going to fight this until God calls me to heaven," the slight, deeply tanned priest, wearing a baseball cap, Roman collar and short-sleeved black shirt, remarked from behind the fence.

None of the people arrested carried any identification with them on the protest. Some made the trip to Atlanta from northeast cities as family vacations.

Father Arentsen celebrated Mass for the Catholics in the group, about 50 or 60, he estimated, after a Mass kit was brought from St. Ann's parish in Marietta. He said he had also concelebrated Mass with Father John Adamski, pastor of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Atlanta, who was visiting the prison on behalf of the archdiocese.

One prisoner, a young man from New York, said he is "convinced of the validity of it (their confinement) as a witness." Although worried about his job, he said "standing as a witness" means the authorities are going to have to "continue jailing the born in order to save the unborn. If we're asking girls to have their babies, we have to be willing to undergo the inconvenience (of jail). If they let me out, I'll do it again."

Prisoners had high praise for their treatment by the guards at the prison farm. On some of the windows on the women's side of the barracks-like cell building the women prisoners had pasted white paper crosses and the letters OR.

An Atlanta Catholic, No. 51 according to her wrist band, said being there was "a little bit like going on retreat."

Before the prisoners returned in side they lined up for roll call in two rows, one for the men, the other for the women. As the guard called each number, the prisoner stepped forward and held up the wrist on which a number band had be affixed. Watching each prisoner go through the routine, a woman lingering on the outside of the fence, said it reminded her of the wristlets used in hospital nurseries to identify newborn infants.