200 Protest Bombs, Fires at Abortion Centers

Vowing to keep abortion safe and legal, about 200 men and women marched in a 1 1/2-mile candlelight procession Monday night from the downtown Planned Parenthood family planning clinic to Womancare, a women’s health care center in Hillcrest.

The march ended with a rally and singing to protest violence against abortion clinics across the country and to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe vs. Wade, that legalized abortion.

“We are expressing solidarity with women health care providers and the community against clinic violence and terrorism,” said San Diego NOW President January Riddle.

“The other thing we are doing is showing terrorists that their acts and intimidation will not be tolerated. We will not allow fear and intimidation to deprive us of our legal rights,” she said.

Thirty birth control clinics have been bombed or burned by arsonists since 1982, including the Birth Control Institute in San Diego, which was destroyed by an arson fire in September.

Riddle recalled the days before abortion was legal in the United States, when women had to travel to Puerto Rico and to other countries to seek safe abortions or risk clandestine operations at home.

“We remember when abortion was synonymous with kitchen-table butchery,” Riddle said. She asked the marchers to think on their walk of the women who “paid dearly” for their abortions, sometimes by bleeding to death.

Brina-Rae Schuchman, 51, said as she walked in the 49-degree cold that she was a nurse in New York City before abortion was legalized.

“I saw the women come in with pelvic inflammation infections, dying. They had severe adhesions and high fevers because in desperation they had sought these abortions. American women or women anywhere in the world should not have to go through that,” Schuchman said.

Schuchman said she had an abortion 14 years ago at age 37, after she had had four children.

“I felt at the time that I just could not handle another child physically or financially,” Schuchman said. “And I was using birth control at the time.”