Pro-Choice Rally Celebrates Court Ruling

Four generations of women shared Diane Jacobs’ blanket Saturday at a family picnic with a pro-choice agenda.

The youngest, Jacobs’ 9-month-old daughter, Catherine, teetered between her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother as speakers observed the 16th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling that legalized abortion and warned that the decision soon could be overturned. Catherine was unconcerned, but her relatives said they came to the Irvine rally for her sake.

“I have two children, and they were very much planned and by choice,” said Jacobs, of El Toro.

“We want to preserve that right for the next generation,” added Ruth Smith, Jacobs’ mother.

And although legal abortions were not an option for women of her day, 80-year-old Hortense Smith agreed. “I believe it should be the woman’s choice,” the great-grandmother said.

They joined more than 60 people--men, women and entire families--at a “Children by Choice” picnic and rally organized by Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties.

A professor, a lawyer, a pediatrician and a minister spoke in praise of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, and cautioned that the ruling could be jeopardized by the high court’s decision last week to reconsider state regulation of abortion. The court agreed to review a federal appellate court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1986 Missouri law that banned the use of public facilities for abortions or the participation of public employees.

The rally also drew anti-abortion activists, three men who stood quietly to the side, holding protest signs and a photograph of an aborted fetus. The confrontation was peaceful, however, and the only entanglements were verbal.

“I only see males holding up placards telling women how to run their lives,” Cathy Jensen said as she took the microphone. Jensen, who is president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Orange County, called for renewed pro-choice activism.

Scott Couch, an anti-abortion protester, described himself as a “born-again” Christian and said he hoped to sway some of those at the picnic with Bible tracts and his own fervent views.

“I’m standing up for God’s position,” said Couch, of Orange. “This is murder and we’re going to keep saying that for as long as it takes.”

Another protester, who identified himself only as “John,” said he came to the picnic “to inform people (about) what abortion really is.”

The abortion foes did little to dampen the rally, which broke up into balloon-toss and other games for the dozen or so children who came with parents. Margie Fites Seigle, executive director of the Planned Parenthood group, said celebrating wanted children is not incongruous with the organization’s abortion position.

“Children by choice is the best way and the only way,” Seigle said. “We offer birth control services and counseling--Planned Parenthood probably does more to prevent abortion than any other group in the country.”

Dr. Phyllis Agran, a pediatrician who is also the wife of Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, told the picnic crowd about abused and neglected children she had treated, and quoted President George Bush as having said in a recent speech, ‘We are a free people who should exercise our free will.’ ”

“Isn’t that what Roe vs. Wade is about?” Agran asked.

Jan Clark-George, who came to the picnic with her husband, Dean, daughter and grandson, applauded the speakers, who also included Cal State Fullerton sociologist Wendy Lozano and the Rev. Maurice Ogden of the Unitarian Church of Orange County in Anaheim.

“I’m here because I’m committed to choice, and I feel that it’s very threatened now,” she said.

Pointing to the anti-abortion protesters, she said: “It doesn’t surprise me that they showed up. It reminds us of how real the danger is.”