Joe Scheidler is a Catholic husband, married to his wife Anne for more than 50 years, a father, grandfather, and National Director of the Pro-Life Action League, a national pro-life educational and activist organization headquartered in Chicago. Joe founded the Pro-Life Action League in 1980. We had his son Eric Scheidler, Executive Director of the Pro-Life Action League, as our guest back on show #10.

Joe Scheidler left a career in public relations to become a full-time pro-life activist shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade opinion in 1973. He has been a prominent leader in the pro-life movement from the beginning, a pioneer for sidewalk counseling, he helped start crisis pregnancy centers, trained thousands of pro-life activists, and only God knows how many lives he has helped save, how many conversions he has helped to foster, and how many souls he has helped to reach eternal salvation.

Joe has a new book, published in 2016 by Tan Books, a memoir he’s written with his son Peter, entitled Racketeer for Life: Fighting the Culture of Death from the Sidewalk to the Supreme Court. The title Racketeer for Life refers to the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit filed against him in 1986 by the pro-abortion group, National Organization for Women (NOW). Joe definitively won that case by unanimous decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006.

Watch Joe at National Sidewalk Counseling Symposium: