By Gretchen Keiser

Jailed Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry is virtually cut off from contact with his family and believes Fulton County prosecutors will try to extend his prison term, according to Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ.

The archbishop visited Terry Oct. 24 at a Fulton County work farm in Alpharetta where he is serving a two-year prison term. He was sentenced after refusing to pay two $500 fines for charges of criminal trespass and unlawful assembly outside an Atlanta abortion clinic in July 1988.

Terry, 30, is married and he and his wife, Cindy, have four children, three of them foster children. Operation Rescue spokeswoman Juli Loesch said last year that the Terrys became foster parents for the children after sheltering the family while the mother was pregnant with the youngest. Both Terrys have counseled pregnant women outside abortion clinics in Birnghamton, N.Y., where they live.

According to Archbishop Marino, Terry said authorities have threatened to remove the foster children from their home, even though the youngest has lived with them since birth. The archbishop later telephoned Mrs. Terry, who said her husband was permitted to call her once a month and talk for 10 minutes.

Several other charges are pending against Terry in Atlanta, the archbishop said, and the Operation Rescue leader believes the prosecutor will attempt to “keep him in jail as long as possible.”

“He’s serious-minded and sober,” Archbishop Marino said. “He’s had a long time to consider what it’s going to be like” to be jailed for two years.

After approximately a 30-minute visit, the archbishop and others with him, including St. Thomas Aquinas pastor Father James Fennessy, knelt in a circle with Terry, held hands and prayed. “I prayed for him and his family. I prayed for a conversion in the nation, in the minds and hearts of people” concerning abortion, Archbishop Marino said.

He also talked to Terry about writers Victor Frankl and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who have written about the search for meaning in the midst of suffering, and about imprisonment for matters of conscience.

In a letter written from the prison to Operation Rescue supporters, Terry said he would appeal his conviction, but would remain in jail and not post an appeal bond. “Sooner or later, we have to confront the enemy. Sooner or later we have to pay our dues,” the letter said in part.

“The court system released this mass bloodshed, and now is the arch defender of child-killing,” the letter says. “…We can run, in which case they have been successful, or we can stand up to them, perhaps suffer, and ask God to use our stand to strengthen and encourage the body of Christ and to restore justice to this country.”