If Terry pulls his magnum opus of a scheme off, it will make everyone forget about the controversy that surrounded the airing last year of a pro-life ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mother.

After all the stunts, shenanigans, personal scandals, and fundraising irregularities that are associated with Terry over the years, it is remarkable that he is still a person of interest. Apparently he is.

Terry recently met with future House Speaker John Boehner's chief of staff. According to Slate, "Terry e-mailed his supporters a photo from the meeting, along with encouraging words like 'We have Pro-Life DEMANDS' and 'We Must Play Hard Ball: They Must Fear Pro-Lifers!'"

Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, is an outlier; a consummate self-promoter. Even in the pro-life movement he's the guy that most respectable leaders don't want to be associated with. His vitriol knows no bounds: At a news conference at the National Press Club last year after Dr. George Tiller was gunned down while attending church services in Wichita, Kansas, Terry stated that Tiller "was a mass murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed."

Terry went on to say that Tiller would be remembered as "one of the villains of history": "I grieve for Dr. Tiller because he left this life, perhaps without proper preparation to face God. The thought of him leaving this life with blood on his hands for having killed so many thousands of children and not having been prepared to meet his maker is a dreadful, terrifying thought."

"Once prominent for leading raucous protests at abortion clinics in the 1980s, ... [Terry] never fully left the movement, although his public profile declined greatly during the 1990s," Church & State magazine's Rob Boston reported last year.

"Prior to the Tiller shooting, Terry was leading right-wing Catholics opposed to President Barack Obama's appearance at the University of Notre Dame's commencement and trying to drum up opposition to Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor."

In the spring of 2005, Terry, standing at the side of Terri Schiavo's parents, tried to drum up public support -- and funds -- for their daughter who had been in a "persistent vegetative state" since 1990.



As Boston reported, Terry was practically drummed out of the movement ten years ago when he "abruptly divorced his first wife, leaving her in New York with the couple's three children.... [and] [a] year later ... married a younger woman who had served as a volunteer in one of his congressional campaigns."

Stepping away from politics, he moved to Nashville and recorded two CDs, one country-western and one gospel. The CDs were duds.



In 2005, five years after being excommunicated from his fundamentalist church, he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Now, he's back with a plan for the Super Bowl. I first learned of it by reading a column by anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek. Stanek, who blogs at Pro-Life Pulse and was named in January 2003, by the conservative evangelical Christian World Magazine, one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years, wrote a recent column for WorldNetDaily that was headlined "Graphic abortion ad during the Super Bowl?"



Readily acknowledging that Super Bowl commercials are some of the most anticipated moments of Super Bowl Sunday, Stanek wrote: "... imagine a 30-second Super Bowl ad showing the graphic reality of abortion. Most Americans, including many pro-lifers, would abhor such an ad. But pro-life activists like me would be ecstatic, if such a word can be used to describe fulfillment of a passion to see a multitude of people face the truth about abortion."



The Missy Smith campaign's graphic anti-abortion ads

The story begins when Missy Reilly Smith is recruited by Terry, to run against Democrat District of Columbia incumbent Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton "for one reason: To air graphic abortion ads on television." (Terry was Smith's campaign manager.) The ad -- which has been removed from YouTube "as a violation of its policy on shocking and disgusting content" -- contains "extremely disturbing images, but a lawyer for Allbritton Communications, which owns the D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA (and also owns POLITICO) said the stations ha[d] no choice but to air it," Politico reported in mid-October.



"Much as broadcasters may be repulsed by these graphic images and are sensitive to their viewers, Federal law requires stations to air the spots," Allbritton general counsel Jerry Fritz wrote Politico in an e-mail.



"Fritz cited a similar 1992 Georgia case in which an anti-abortion candidate, Daniel Becker, sought to run a similar ad on an Atlanta station. 'The station asked the FCC for permission to channel the spot into time periods when children would be less likely to be in the audience - late night. Other broadcasters joined in and asked the commission for the right to refuse the spot altogether,' Fritz e-mail[ed]. 'The FCC gave permission to permit the channeling, but Becker appealed. The D.C. Court of Appeals found for the candidate in a 1996 decision.'"



According to Politico, "The reason, per Fritz: The Communications Act requires broadcast stations to sell 'reasonable amounts' of ad time to qualified Federal candidates, and bars stations from making any changes to those spots, in what's known as the 'no censorship' provision. Fritz added that in his understanding, Smith requested ad time from WRC, WTTG and WUSA as well as WJLA."



Recruiting more Missy Smiths to run for congress

Although Missy Smith received only 6 percent of the vote, her campaign managed to raise $60,000 according to Terry (the Washington Post pointed out that "Reports thus far filed with the Federal Election Commission show only about $25,000 in donations, though they do not include contributions less than $1,000"). More importantly, the campaign made a lot of noise when it aired "two graphic abortion ads a whopping 355 times on network and cable television stations in the metro-D.C. area, which included parts of Virginia and Maryland," Jill Stanek reported.

"Along the way, Smith garnered scads of free national and international press focused on the fact that abortion graphically murders children."

Stanek pointed out that, "Smith's recruiter and mentor was pro-life activist Randall Terry."

Spurred on by their success, "Terry and Smith have decided ... to recruit 25 like-minded congressional candidates in the country's top 25 media markets to run in the 2012 election cycle. By so doing, one-third of the nation could be educated on the horror and reality of abortion, says Terry."



"One positive of a consolidated effort would be the duo's plan to create one or two excellent ads for all 25 candidates to air (with their own voiceovers and taglines). They recognize Smith's ads weren't the greatest quality, although she did the best she could with the time and resources she had. Utilizing the same ads would ensure quality control and accuracy as well as conserve resources. We also discussed the need for ads to focus more on abortions of younger babies," Stanek reported.



On January 2, Missy Smith, Randall Terry and Alan Keyes will be holding a "closed door, by invitation (or by request)" meeting at the Embassy Suites in Alexandria, VA, "for anyone interested in running for office in 2012." You can watch Smith and Terry's recruitment video, and Smith's graphic anti-abortion campaign ads at the Missy Smith website (http://www.missysmith2010.com/).



In the recruitment video, Smith pointed out that Terry "was the perfect campaign manager. I am no one. I knew nothing ... When Randall came up with this ... he was my support, my direction, my encouragement."

As part of her recruitment pitch, Smith says that she believes that "this dynamic duo [her and terry] can help you" run for Congress "in your own area." Terry says that they can help new candidates because he knows "where the levers were, which strings to pull."



"Our mission," Terry states "is to bring about the end of legalized child killing, or to say it in the negative, to make it illegal to kill a human being from conception until birth, for reason, by any means."



Terry attacks tax-exempt, pro-life organizations for trying to raise money off of the Republicans victories. "This election was about money, bailouts, jobs, unemployment; it was about ObamaCare. It was not about the life and death issue of child killing. The only race ... that got sustained press because of child killing is Missy's... . Right now we have tax-exempt groups that are by definition -- listen to me -- incapable of ending legalized child killing. We have tax-exempt groups sending out fundraising letters presenting what is basically a scam, a fundraising fraud."



During Smith's campaign, she sent out letters to every pro-life leader -- especially focusing on those with large mailing lists -- in the country asking for three things; a personal endorsement, contributions for her ads, and for them to publicize and drive traffic to her website. Terry reported: "The truth of the matter is that there was not one major pro-life group in America that did all three. There were a couple that did one or maybe one-and-a-half. But at the end of the day the vast majority of them did nothing. ... When they had the chance to get involved they did nothing. Why? Because, they put their tax-exempt status -- which is about money -- ahead of the babies lives. ... It is time we really reassess the value of any pro-life group that is 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt. ... How are you going to have the right people in office who pass the right laws if you are sending money to places that can't even spend the money on what is necessary to end child killing? It's ludicrous. We're looking to run in 2012, 2014, 2016. We will escalate this until child killing is made illegal again because America is brought face-to-face with the dead babies."



According to Jill Stanek, "Terry is considering a run for president specifically with the goal to air a graphic abortion ad during the big game in 2012. Terry's back-up plan if unable to raise enough funds, estimated at $2.5-3 million, would be to run his ad during either the AFC or NFC championship game two weeks prior."



Given Terry's "penchant for showmanship" and his past history of questionable fundraising practices and how the money he raised was used, Stanek is justifiably concerned. However, according to Stanek, Terry assured her that "100 percent of his ad would be dedicated to the atrocity of abortion."

Another Stanek concern is "financial accountability, particularly for what may be a massive amount of donations. The names on Terry's finance committee would be critical here." However, "Misgivings aside, running a graphic abortion ad during the Super Bowl would indeed be a pro-life activist's 'coup de grace,' as Terry said.