Foes, Backers of Abortion in Hostile Clash in L.A.

The distant shouts of protesters became audible Saturday as Archbishop Roger Mahony began addressing an anti-abortion rally in a park near Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles.

As Mahony, head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, called for “protection of each and every human life from the moment of its conception through natural death,” about 100 chanting abortion-rights marchers arrived and took up picketing positions nearby.

Their shouted slogans rang across the plaza:

“Not the church. Not the state. Women must decide their fate!”

“‘Right to Life,’ your name’s a lie. You don’t care if women die!”

The rival demonstrations, hostile but nonviolent, marked the 13th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Organizers for groups on both sides of the issue said the confrontation was the first time that abortion-rights activists in Los Angeles have picketed an anti-abortion event.

Applause for Mahony

Most at the pro-life, or anti-abortion, rally--sponsored by the Right to Life League of Southern California and the California Pro-Life Council--simply redoubled their attention and applause for Mahony. But about 40 people moved to the edge of the crowd of several hundred to confront the pro-choice, or abortion-rights, demonstrators with their own placards and shouted insults. Five police officers stood between the two groups.

The confrontation ended after about 20 minutes, when the abortion-rights advocates marched back to their own rally site at the steps of City Hall. That rally was sponsored by the Clinica Eva Defense Committee, Radical Women, the Feminist Women’s Health Center and the Revolutionary Socialist League.

Groups on both sides then declared victory for their group.

Abortion-rights organizers said the action was in part a response to the picketing of abortion clinics by anti-abortion activists and what they see as harassment of patients at those clinics.

‘Bullying of the Women’

“We’re sick and tired of their bullying of the women who go into the clinics,” abortion-rights organizer Maryann Curtis said. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on. (President) Reagan takes a stand against terrorism everywhere else, except here. I say, let’s take to the streets as we did today and fight back because the majority are with us.”

Susan Carpenter McMillan, the anti-abortion rally spokeswoman, said the presence of the picketers simply got her audience “fired up” for Mahony’s speech.

Mahony, asked his reaction to the abortion-rights supporters, said: “We really want to reach out to them, not in bitterness and hatred, but with that same love of God, to help them learn what abortion is all about. . . . (Public controversy over the issue) helps force people to deal with that issue, and I think that is helpful.”

Asked to respond to the charge by the abortion-rights’ supporters that the anti-abortion supporters are unconcerned about the lives of women who might die if abortions are outlawed, Mahony said:

“The focus and the spotlight must be on that beginning new human life. Because of the sacredness of that life, there aren’t any conditions that allow for the unjust killing of that life.”

His church’s position, Mahony said, is that extensive adoption services constitute “the best way to go.”