‘Murderers,’ Shout Anti-Abortionists at Women Leaving Clinic

The Rev. Robert L. Hymers, a crusader against abortion, pointed Friday morning at two women emerging from a North Hollywood abortion clinic. “There they are--the murderers,” he called, as the two walked silently by a group of about 35 protesters, several marching with babies in their arms.

No, the minister said, he was not concerned about causing the accused women any discomfort.

“Think of the discomfort they are causing the pre-born children whose arms and legs they are pulling off,” Hymers said.

Clinic Owner Hanged in Effigy

Hymers, pastor of the downtown Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle, has vowed to picket the Valley clinic every Tuesday and Friday until it closes. He and his supporters say they targeted the North Hollywood clinic because they believe it to be one of the busiest in Los Angeles.

Friday’s demonstration began with the hanging in effigy of Dr. Edward C. Allred, who owns the Family Planning Associates Medical Group clinic on Victory Boulevard and similar facilities throughout Southern California.

Next Friday morning, Hymers said, he plans an even more dramatic gesture. He and another Christian activist intend to enter the clinic.

“I’m going in with a black minister and a picture of Martin Luther King,” Hymers said. “We want to use his techniques for the civil-rights question of the ‘80s. The civil-rights question of the ‘60s was for black Americans to get their rights. And the civil-rights question for the ‘80s is for the pre-born to get their civil rights.”

Men’s Interest in Issue Defended

Hymers said he did not feel abortion is simply a women’s issue. Asked about author Germaine Greer’s acerbic observation that, if men became pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament, he said: “If Dr. Allred as a man can take human life, I as a man can defend human life.”

Protester Millie Eberhardt of North Hollywood said that she, personally, doesn’t like accusing anyone who has had abortion of murder, even though she believes that’s what it is.

“That girl is hurting as she goes in there,” said Eberhardt, a Roman Catholic who began counseling against abortion five years ago.

She prefers to approach women who have had abortion compassionately, as they start home, she said.

‘All at Once It Strikes Her’

“Maybe today she doesn’t realize what was done to her, but tomorrow or the next time she sees a baby, or the day she would have delivered . . . . All at once it strikes her that she’s not pregnant anymore, that that could have been her baby,” Eberhardt said.

“I’m hoping that they don’t despair,” she said of the women leaving the clinic.

Pattie Irby, 20, of Van Nuys said she was demonstrating because she is a Christian--and because she had an abortion when she was 18.

She ended that teen-age pregnancy for “purely selfish reasons,” she said.

“I didn’t want to be fat. I didn’t like the father all that much any more . . . . I didn’t particularly want to sit in a maternity home.”

Regretted Abortion Decision

Irby, who wound up marrying the man, said she regretted the abortion decision the moment the anesthesia wore off.

“When I woke up from that abortion, I felt that a knife went through my heart,” said Irby, who chanted scriptural injunctions against murder long after most of her fellow activists had gone home.

While Irby shouted, another protester, Jack Stern, 38, of Sepulveda soothed Irby’s year-old son, Michah.

“The men have to take a stand, too,” said Stern. A substitute teacher who said he was threatened with suspension when he tried to introduce moral opinion into the classroom, Stern maintained his primary reason for protesting was Christian conviction. But men, he added, even married men such as himself, are often excluded in the decision about pregnancy. “A man feels a lack of power in this area, that he has no say,” Stern said.

Scene Inside the Clinic

Inside the clinic, which officially barred the media, Irby’s quoting of the scriptures was audible.

About 10 women sat in the waiting room, some with men, some with female friends, several by themselves. When the anti-abortionists picketed the clinic last Tuesday, one teen-age client burst into tears and asked a reporter: “I don’t think it’s murder. You don’t think it’s murder, do you?”

But the mood in the waiting room was pensive Friday, despite the sometimes indignant clamor outside. As Irby quoted chapter and verse, a clinic client from La Crescenta, a woman in her 30s with dark circles under her eyes, walked somewhat unsteadily into the waiting room from one of the treatment rooms.

She said she had had an abortion about an hour before and readily agreed to be interviewed as long as her name was not used.

Didn’t Want Third Child

Asked why she had had the operation, she answered that she had two children.

“I know better than to jump into that responsibility and expense and pain again,” she said.

She said she felt emotionally detached from the procedure at this point. What she mostly felt was uterine cramping. An angry security guard abruptly ended the interview by threatening to carry the reporter out if she didn’t leave voluntarily.

On Tuesday, another clinic client had gestured toward a smaller group of demonstrators and said, quietly:

“These people just don’t understand that we’ve thought it through before we’ve come to this point.”

Contributing to this story was Times Staff Writer Dean Murphy