Backers, Opponents of Court Decision Express Views : Abortion Ruling Anniversary Observed

Both sides of the abortion issue held rallies and other observances around the nation Tuesday to mark the 12th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized it.

Georgia Gov. Joe Frank Harris met 1,500 abortion opponents, each wearing a black armband, at the Capitol steps and read a proclamation declaring Tuesday “Respect for Life Day” in Georgia.

The rally and an earlier memorial service had a decidedly religious tone, with hymns, prayers and personal testimonies. One marcher walked to the Capitol with an eight-foot cross over his shoulder.

Lynne Randall, executive director of the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta criticized Harris for his role.

‘Outraged’ at Governor

“We’re extremely outraged that he would use his public position to support an anti-abortion stance when his office calls for him to uphold the Constitution, which makes abortion a legal option,” she said.

There were demonstrations, meetings and incidents in several California cities to mark the anniversary.

In Los Angeles, three men who drove up in a truck tore down a sign saying “Complete family planning services and abortion” from the outside wall of the Western Women’s Medical Clinic, at the corner of Western and Vernon avenues.

Dr. Clifton Lee, the clinic’s director, said there was no violence, “but it was a very depressing development. It’s a very poor neighborhood and we probably deliver 25 babies for every abortion we do.”

In Hollywood, three men in a truck hurled a bottle of urine at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in the 6400 block of Hollywood Boulevard at 3 a.m. Tuesday. Inside the bottle was a baby doll with a wire coat hanger twisted around its neck. Kika Warfield, community relations coordinator of the center, said no one was injured in the incident.

Later Tuesday, a man telephoned the center and said he had thrown the bottle. Center spokeswoman Joyce Johnson Pollard said that the man told officials at the center that the incident was “only a sample of what is coming to you.”

In San Diego, up to 400 anti-abortion demonstrators marched around the California Pregnancy Counseling Service office Tuesday morning, but it was a peaceful march with no confrontations with the clinic staff. Another 100 anti-abortion demonstrators gathered for a peaceful rally outside the San Diego Birth Center Group office.

In Northern California, anti-abortion groups marked the anniversary of the high court decision with a morning Mass at St. Aloysius Church in Palo Alto, after which 60 persons joined in a “prayer walk” to the North Santa Clara courthouse.

In San Francisco, Tom Saunders, president of the Alameda-San Francisco Planned Parenthood Assn., told a press conference that a ban on legal abortion “would only serve to criminalize it.” And Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, said that ending legal abortion would increase “the violence of back alley abortions.”

The bombs that have struck two dozen clinics across the country became as much an issue this year as Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court case that guarantees women the right to an abortion, subject to state restrictions only in the last three months of pregnancy.

Both sides in the abortion issue held news conferences at the Capitol in Sacramento.

The anti-abortion groups, while deploring the recent bombings of abortion clinics by activists, said publicity about them and related national articles about the issue were helpful.

“The bombings have definitely given us a forum,” said John Stoos of the American Life Lobby of Sacramento, who said national articles on the issue had “educational value.”

Pro-choice groups, including the California Abortion Rights Action League, condemned the bombings and said groups that call themselves “pro-life” have forfeited the right to use that name.

“The anti-abortion terrorists who have bombed or burned nearly 30 abortion clinics during the past year are not merely attacking real estate,” Mary Jean Collins, vice president of NOW, said at a rally at the state Capitol in Indianapolis. “These terrorist acts are attacks on women and can only be grounded in an utter disdain for women, their moral character and their choices about their lives.”

“The so-called right-to-life groups defend the current wave of terrorism against clinics by saying anti-choice terrorists are ‘sensitive’ people who cannot bear the ‘killing of innocent babies’,” Pam Fridrich, executive director of the Texas Abortion Rights Action League, told a news conference at the Capitol in Austin, Tex.

Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft declared Tuesday a “day in memoriam” for aborted fetuses, and issued a proclamation saying “the people of Missouri and their elected official respect God’s gift of life.”

In contrast, the Michigan Abortion Rights Action League organized a party Tuesday night at a downtown Detroit tavern “to celebrate 12 years of choice,” said Carol King, Great Lakes Regional Director for the National Organization for Women.

The group held a vigil Monday night outside the Walnut Lake Medical Center in suburban Livonia, which has been the target of picketing and “patient harassment,” King said.

The West Virginia National Abortion Rights Action League said it will erect five billboards this week to promote its point of view. “We hope to encourage the pro-choice majority to speak out,” said spokeswoman Carolyn Rickey. “Politicians are beginning to realize that being in favor of the right to abortion won’t be as bad for them as they thought four or five years ago.”

About 150 demonstrators, carrying signs saying “God loves babies, so do we,” and “adoption, not abortion,” gathered at Alabama’s Capitol.

Carmen Falcione, pastor of the New Covenant Church in Montgomery, urged the group to concentrate its efforts at home. “In clinics in this town babies are being mutilated by instruments right now,” he said.