And so, armed with hundreds of fliers, a bunch of DVDs and their lungs, some of the more faithful in Enyart's flock drove to Colorado Springs on September 4 to demand that Dobson retract the endorsement. Enyart and Ken Scott marched into the welcome center and, in the spacious lobby, propped up eight poster-sized signs each emblazoned with one word: Doctor Dobson Broke His Oath To God. It was a reference to Dobson's pledge never to endorse a candidate or piece of legislation that in any way cedes an inch to the pro-choice majority. When Enyart and Ken refused to leave, the police were called, and they were taken into custody and booked on trespassing charges.
"Jo is on probation, so if she gets arrested, she'll spend six months in jail," Ken said of his wife. "So she wasn't with us inside. She's outside with Leslie Hanks, passing out fliers and DVDs."
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On September 30, Jo Scott could be told to stay away from Planned Parenthood for a year.
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The welcoming committee at the new Planned Parenthood facility.
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As vice president of the Colorado chapter of Right to Life, Hanks helped lead an attack on Dobson in the summer of 2007. In her view, incremental policy change is pointless while abortion is still legal, and the National Right to Life movement, in which Dobson is a key figure, was too soft on baby killing. Shortly thereafter, National Right to Life severed ties with the Colorado chapter, and instead linked up with the tamer Colorado Citizens for Life.
The irony of Colorado's most ardent anti-abortion activists taking issue with McCain isn't lost on pro-choice politicians. "It's been a pretty insidious chipping away at choice," says DeGette. "Just because John McCain is a maverick, it doesn't mean he's a moderate. He is 100 percent against choice. He supports every plank of the Republican anti-choice platform and hews to the Christian Coalition line. So does Sarah Palin."
Ken Scott's Colorado Springs case is far from his only run-in with the law. His file lists almost three dozen arrests, some for personal problems — he took a baseball bat to his ex-wife's boyfriend's car — and many connected to his protest activities. In the mid-'90s, his antics earned him a restraining order to stay away from Dr. Warren Hern, his home and his Boulder clinic. "The Fight of Their Lives," February 13, 1997
Pueblo resident Andy Holman owned several residential properties within spitting distance of the Vine Street clinic in the late '90s, and recalls the time he "got fed up with their bullshit." He marched into the alley behind the clinic and confronted Ken on his ladder, informing him in no uncertain terms that he would press charges for disturbing the peace if Ken continued yelling. An argument ensued, and Holman called the police, filed his complaint and wound up in court. "The judge threw it out, though, because I threw a wadded-up newspaper at Ken, and the judge said I had 'fired a missile' at him, or something ridiculous like that," he recalls.
Although Holman says he had to sell a few of his properties at sub-market prices because of the anti-abortion protests that rang through the neighborhood, he eventually befriended Scott. Holman's daughter, Shana, worked at the Vine Street clinic and recalls how once Ken learned her name, he'd ask her how many dead babies it took to make her car payment. "It was all very surreal," she says. "Ken once stopped yelling at me from his ladder and quietly told me the tag was hanging out of the back of my dress. Then he went back to yelling about Nazis. He was wearing a devil mask that day."
If Ken wants patients entering the new Planned Parenthood facility to see his devil mask, he's going to need a higher ladder. But even though he and Jo have had to adjust their tactics at Stapleton, where a ten-foot-high fence lined with fabric surrounds the campus, they remain every bit as ardent.
At a hearing scheduled for September 30, Judge Harrell will decide whether to grant the district attorney's request that the terms of Jo Scott's probation include a requirement that she stay away from all Planned Parenthood facilities for a full year.
Otherwise, there's no guarantee that she won't break the law again. Because as it is, Jo plans to continue standing out in front of Planned Parenthood six days a week, Bubble Law be damned, until the facility no longer performs abortions. "I occasionally might take a step too close to another Planned Parenthood employee," she says, but that's a risk she's willing to take. "I serve God. I don't serve man."
To hold the fundamental belief that you are doing God's work is to have an unblinking faith in the inevitability of your actions — even if these actions could land you in jail for six months. But Jo Scott believes the only law she's bound to follow is God's law, and as long as the laws of society contradict the laws of her belief system, then society is corrupt and her obligation in the whole social contract is void. In fact, she considers herself a hero: "If I were a fireman and I saved three lives in a day, I'd be on the news!"
