We are “afflicted in every way, but not crushed,” Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about two Christians who can relate to this passage of Scripture better than most. After completing a number of interviews, I wondered if I would have their courage.

I spoke with the wife of Ed Snell, the 69-year-old Pennsylvania pro-life clinic counselor who was hurled from the top of his car by an aborting father, suffering a bleeding brain injury that soon had doctors fighting for his life. Snell is recovering at home now. (Among secular media, only his hometown paper covered the attack, though it was widely reported on conservative blogs.)

And I spoke with Patte Smith, another pro-lifer who was attacked four months earlier. On August 29, 2007, Smith  began speaking with a man and woman on their way into the notoriously “back alley” clinic of Orlando abortionist James Pendergraft. The woman was visibly pregnant and on her way to have a “labor and delivery” abortion (the kind in which the fetus is expelled into a toilet, sometimes alive.)

Introducing herself, Smith said to the couple, “If you wait just a few more months, you could go thru same process – labor and delivery – and you could have your baby and place it in a loving adoptive home.”

Smith said the man smiled at her in a “cold,” intimidating way, prompting her to retrieve a video camera from her car after he and the woman disappeared into the clinic. Smith said she had for years been advised by pro-life attorneys to keep a camera with her, for her own legal protection in case of violence or litigation.

“I usually don’t carry one, though,” she said. “I want to help women and babies, not discourage them from talking to me.”

This man’s attitude bothered her, though, so she got her camera. . .

Shortly thereafter, the man emerged from the clinic alone and after a trip to his car, returned to where Smith was standing, counseling another young woman. According to Smith, the man walked rapidly toward her and grabbed for her camera, repeatedly muttering, “Don’t film me, don’t film me….”

A witness, Mary Jo Gardner, said Smith turned to keep her camera away from the man, but he wrapped her arms around her. While trying to escape, Smith fell to the ground. Gardner screamed for help. Both Smith and Gardner said the man then bent over Smith, still struggling to get the camera. Then he kicked her in the ribs and went back inside the clinic.

Smith told me that wasn’t the first — or last — time she’d been attacked or threatened. Just a few weeks later, a man at the same clinic told Smith, “I’ll blow you away with my MAC-10.” She reported the threat to an Orlando policeman who was working paid security for the clinic. He told her, “Well, you shouldn’t have followed him to his car.” (The car was parked on a public street.) A crowd standing in front of the clinic laughed.

First, the attack in August — again, not the only attack, ever –  and now a man had threatened to shoot her down in the street. And yet Smith still goes back to the Orlando Women’s Center every week.

She did report the August 29 attack and the Florida state attorney filed battery chargers against the assailant, Dr. Nelson Kraucak, a practitioner of family and holistic medicine. Still, Smith told me, “I was ashamed of myself for expecting any justice for a middle-aged woman who gets knocked down and kicked a few times. I wasn’t being murdered…like these poor little babies. The worst part of it was that there was nothing we could do to save these babies.”

The women with Kraucak and MAC-10 Man had their abortions just the same.

Listening to Smith’s story, I wondered if I would have her courage. After a man threatened to blow me away with a military-grade submachine gun, would I go back to the clinic? As American Christians, our notion of “struck down but not destroyed” is most often spiritual. We wrestle on our knees, not on public sidewalks. Would that I, if it came to that, be like Snell and Smith and have the guts to lay it on the line physicially, to be a modern-day Paul.