When Oregon legalized abortion in 1969, Adolf and Lorraine Klein felt it was the most obvious evil around — and that they had to do something about it. So together with three other couples (the Betscharts, Hertels and Klupengers), they resolved to fight back against the lie that unborn life was disposable.
The result was Oregon Right to Life (ORTL), formed in 1970 – one of the oldest Right To Life organizations in the United States.
“It was something we did naturally, I guess,” says Lorraine, now 83 years old and living with Adolf, 87, in the Milton-Freewater area. “The real hard work came later.”
That hard work, by the way, happened without the assistance of cell phones or the internet, Adolf points out. But little by little — letters sent out, slideshows made, establishing contact with churches, knocking on doors, networking with doctors and lawyers and politicians, holding meetings— the fledgling ORTL began to make progress.
“Some lady got up after a meeting in McMinnville and said, ‘I’m not aborting after what I’ve heard tonight,’” Adolf remembers. “It just grew and grew. It was a work of Christ, as far as I’m concerned.”
The Kleins raised 15 children (“All single births,” Lorraine says) while getting ORTL off the ground. Eventually, the couple turned the organization over to official employees while remaining active in the movement. They worked pro-life fair booths, attended rallies, held signs on busy streets and taught Natural Family Planning classes. Most recently, they attended ORTL’s Eastern Oregon Pro-Life Summit in La Grande in October.
“I think it was pretty informative, with new facts you didn’t know before,” says Lorraine, a grandmother to 65 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. “It was certainly worth going to, that’s for sure.”
Despite their incredible achievements, the Kleins see their involvement in ORTL as minimal — “We didn’t feel we did anything that wasn’t normal,” Adolf says — but are happy to have played a pivotal role.
“Oregon Right to Life is much stronger politically now than before,” he says. “There’s much more activity going on than what we had. It is almost like a stairway, where we took the first step, then everybody else took the second and third and fourth.”
Lorraine agrees. “I’m just glad that Oregon Right to Life took off and went as well as it did and is doing,” she says. “It’s going to be a rocky ride, but we’re all going to be on it together.”
