New York Jesuit Edward Murphy, for example, was arrested multiple times for his stands against the war. Simon Harak, SJ, works with Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign trying to end UN sanctions against Iraq and the devastation they are wreaking on the population of the country. Harak is among a number of members of the group who have traveled to Iraq to deliver medicine in defiance of State Department bans on travel to the country. In the early 1970s, many Jesuits demonstrated support for Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers in California. Following a large protest in July 1973, eighteen Jesuits were arrested for trespassing and kept in jail for up to two weeks.
Abortion is an issue that has been the focus of protest action by several Jesuits.
Among them, in 1991, George Endal at age 89 was sentenced to fifteen days in jail for his part in a protest at an abortion clinic in Anchorage. Francis Hagerty received a six-month term in 1993 for a similar protest in Brookline, Massachusetts. The killing of six Jesuits and two women in El Salvador in November 1989 ignited multiple protests. At a large prayer service at the federal office building in San Francisco on November 20, Jesuit leaders called for an end to U.S. government assistance to the regime in El Salvador, whose history of violence against its own people culminated in these killings. More than 150 Jesuits were among the demonstrators there, and 17 of them and 119 other participants were arrested for blocking the building.