Mother Of 10 Is Battling On Two Fronts -- Stricken With Cancer, Anna Sullivan Keeps Up The Abortion Fight

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - People say it takes a special grace to be able to laugh and keep a sense of humor in times of adversity.

If that's the case, Anna Sullivan would have to be a grace-filled woman. For nearly three decades, the Cranston, R.I., mother of 10 has been trying to convince lawmakers and citizens that abortion should have no place in a civilized society.

Her efforts have rarely yielded the results that she and other abortion foes have sought. Despite moments of victory, as when Rhode Island lawmakers agreed last year to ban certain late-term abortions, their dream of getting into law a more comprehensive ban appears elusive.

Still, Sullivan, 66, manages an air of cheeriness, and her laughter is all the more striking considering that her battle is no longer confined to issues like abortion or assisted suicide.

Today she is battling for her own life. Under treatment for the last year for a cancer she thought she had licked in 1991, the activist has increasingly had to depend on crutches and a wheelchair, the result, she says, of an ineffective hip replacement operation last year.

Her health is such that earlier this month she decided not to go to her daughter's wedding.

`You should never quit trying'

But Sullivan, who has spent much of the last 25 years buttonholing legislators, is a long way from giving up. Though her visits to Right to Life offices in Providence have been greatly curtailed since Christmas - with co-managers Dona LeBoeuf and son Greg holding down the fort in her absence - she still works at home, looking after many of the details of an organization that not only holds rallies but also provides cribs, strollers and blankets to needy mothers.

"I'm very hopeful that I would have a little time left," she said. "But it's in God's hands. You play by the rules. You never know who you're going to touch or what you'll accomplish in however many days are left. You should never quit trying."

Sullivan's years with the pro-life movement reach back to 1969. It was then that a group of lawmakers mounted an attempt to repeal the state's strict anti-abortion laws, and a group of young housewives, Sullivan included, decided something ought to be done to head them off at the pass.

Reaction was slow

People were slow to react, she says. "It was just like now, with people telling us not to worry about cloning, that it wasn't going to go anywhere. It's what people used to say about abortion."

Still, the legislators did act. After the Supreme Court declared abortion legal in 1973, Rhode Island's lawmakers thought they could get around the decision by enacting a law declaring that life began at conception. But U.S. District Judge Raymond Pettine stayed the law.

"We hired a University of Texas law professor who was one of the best in the nation, and had some hope of winning in the courts, but our hopes faded quickly as we saw that Judge Pettine was going to be in for a long time and nothing would stand in his way supporting women's right to reproductive freedom. . . . It was very discouraging."

Nonetheless, she says, they were exciting times. As organizer of the annual Pro-Life Conferences that are held each fall, she remembers the time a large part of the conference's would-be participants came in late or failed to show up at all - because they had been arrested at a sit-in.

She says National Right to Life policy always prevented officers from getting involved in such sit-ins or where there is a potential violence. But she was involved in peaceful demonstrations where she was assured there would be no confrontations.

Still, she has had occasion to talk to many women contemplating abortion because many would come to her office after receiving a flier.

"If you get to talk to them, you can almost always change their mind. There a number of reasons why the girls think they need an abortion. One is economics, but it's very easy to erase that. Another thing is a boyfriend problem or a mother or father problem. . . . I found that once you show them the Life magazine pictures of how the baby develops, most decide not to have the abortion."

`They can still come back'

Such is the attitude of caring, she said, that she even receives visits from women who have gone against her advice and had the abortions anyway. "It's gratifying to me that they know they can still come back, that our doors are not closed to them."

Sullivan says as many as 2,000 women a year have availed themselves of the clothing, blankets, cribs and other items her organization makes available from donations.

Low moments, she says, come when "we lose a bill in the Legislature that was important to us or when we lose a case in court, or when a girl comes to you very sick" after having had an abortion.

In all of this, she says, "you just have to keep your sense of humor, or you wouldn't be able to do it." Then too, she says, it would be hard to go on without a realization that everything ultimately is in God's hands.

"So you have to be patient and realize that it's really up to God, that it will happen in His time. That was my awakening. After about six years, I said to myself, `I'm not up to this.' But then I realized that it wasn't up to me. That's when you get the peace not to be discouraged.

"You know, if you're not peaceful about it, you're just not going to be effective. You can't do anything without peace in your heart. You have to respect the people you're working against in terms of your philosophy. Sometimes you slip and fall, but you keep trying."

Sullivan says she believes change can happen as quickly as when communism fell in Eastern Europe.

"I think it's getting bad enough that people are beginning to see there has to be a turning around."