By Gretchen Keiser

Prepared to go to jail for the clearer teaching such an action would communicate on the evil of abortion, St. Jude’s pastor Father Michael Woods instead received a sentence of time already served in jail for an Operation Rescue action in October 1988.

The priest was one of several people who appeared in Fulton County State Court April 16 facing charges that stem from the largest Operation Rescue action in Atlanta a year and a half ago.

Charged with the misdemeanors of unlawful assembly and obstruction of public passage outside the Hillside abortion clinic, Father Woods spent eight days in the Fulton County jail at the time. He sat in the doorway outside the clinic and refused to move when police officers asked him to do so.

Appearing before Judge Dorothy Vaughn this week, the priest had asked that he be sentenced to jail rather than given a fine or community service.

The prosecutor and the priest’s attorney, Matt Coles, negotiated and reached an agreement to settle upon 21 days in jail with Coles appealing to the judge to accept the priest’s prior time served as a portion of the 21 days. Judge Vaughn accepted it totally, freeing him from additional jail time, but also placing him on one year’s probation during which time he cannot go within 100 feet of abortion clinics in the Atlanta area, Father Woods said.

“Up until the last moment, we all figured there would be a jail sentence,” he said.

Given an opportunity to address the court, the priest said he told the judge that during negotiations he knew he could seek a fine or community service or a jail term, but as a pastor he was convinced he could best teach by choosing jail.

“I am a pastor and a teacher,” he said, and on Easter Sunday, just a day earlier, “I taught that there is life in the tomb. Today I teach that there is life in the womb.” Those who taught about the resurrection of Jesus were imprisoned for their teaching, he said, and “today I feel that the best way for me to teach that there is life in the womb is if I forego the joys of that life” by accepting imprisonment.

He expressed gratitude for the ruling by Judge Vaughn both to accept his time served and not to impose either a fine or community service in addition.

In an interview during Holy Week prior to the court date, Father Woods said that his reflection had gradually led him to look upon jail as his own conscientious response to the dilemma facing him.

While he does not object in principle to paying fines for such offenses, he personally felt called to make a different response. Community service, while laudable as a way to repair a crime against the community, in this instance teaches the wrong message, he said. “While the community may feel that a misdemeanor (unlawful assembly) is a greater evil than abortion, I must say no. …I would rather choose a greater hardship rather than deny that abortion is a greater evil than a misdemeanor.”

Father Woods also said that abortion as an evil must exact a penalty, and that he believes those who are not guilty of this particular evil are the ones who should gladly take upon themselves the suffering necessary. This would make it redemptive, in imitation of Jesus’ death on the cross, he said

Taking part in Operation Rescue actions has “unfolding consequences,” the pastor said. “The first step was walking there” to the abortion clinic, but a year and a half later the journey is still going on.

Each step for him is a “humble going in” in prayer and “hoping to find a different answer.” But the question is always the same and the answer “for me is always the same.”