Abortion Foes Face Activists for Choice

Almost 1,000 anti-abortion and pro-choice activists squared off outside two Pico Boulevard women’s clinics Saturday in a five-hour standoff that marked the introduction to Los Angeles of Operation Rescue, a group that has introduced 1960s-style protest tactics to the anti-abortion movement.

As one side sang “Amazing Grace” the other shouted: “Not the church! Not the state! Women must decide their fate!” About 75 police in riot gear stood by.

The sit-ins, which produced no arrests, amounted to a dress rehearsal for a much larger protest Operation Rescue has planned for next month. It has called for anti-abortion activists from throughout the nation to come to Los Angeles for a series of sit-ins aimed at shutting down local abortion clinics.

Operation Rescue, working with a coalition of Southern California pastors, announced last week that it would block the entrances to one or more local clinics Saturday, but did not disclose the locations of its targets. Most of the protesters themselves did not know their destinations as they gathered in the predawn chill Saturday for a caravan from the First Foursquare Church in Long Beach.

Chanting Scripture and singing hymns, the anti-abortion demonstrators settled in shortly after 7 a.m. to block entrances to the Women’s Medical Center of Los Angeles and the Pico Women’s Medical Group a few blocks away. Many had their children with them.

Pro-choice groups were on alert. They had stationed their supporters at clinics throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, and quickly redeployed when the protesters showed up at the Pico Boulevard clinics. Some wore bright orange vests indicating they had been designated to escort patients into the clinics--carrying them over the bodies of the protesters if necessary.

However, the anticipated confrontation over opening the clinics did not develop.

The Pico Women’s Medical Group did not open. Some of its staff showed up for work, but left when they saw the crowds, and police said they were unable to find the owner.

Clash Avoided

The demonstrators agreed to move away from the doors of the Women’s Medical Center after their leaders announced they were satisfied that no abortions were scheduled Saturday. Clinic workers said abortions make up only a small percentage of the medical services it performs.

The center’s owner, whose identity the clinic staff refused to reveal, did not press charges against the protesters.

“Victory must be rooted in a firm determination on the part of the people to suffer personally, rather than let babies be killed,” said Joseph Foreman, Operation Rescue’s national field director. Foreman, a 34-year-old Presbyterian minister, has opened an office in Garden Grove that will serve as the command center for planning next month’s protests.

Operation Rescue is a loose coalition largely made up of fundamentalists and factions in the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded about a year ago by Randall Terry, a 29-year-old former automobile salesman who lives in Binghamton, N.Y.

It has tapped a mounting frustration among some in the anti-abortion movement who are bitter that more than a decade of intense political pressure and the election of abortion opponents to the White House have failed to produce significant changes in the nation’s abortion laws.

Rapidly Growing

Although other anti-abortion groups have expressed an uneasiness with Operation Rescue’s law-breaking tactics, it has grown dramatically and has been able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“What people are doing is putting their bodies between the unborn child and the people who are trying to kill them,” said Arthur J. Stoll, another of the protesters. “In 16 years, none of the other political activities have been able to accomplish that--to save a human life right now.”

Pat Griffith, treasurer of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, saw the protesters’ mission in a different light. “They’re religious zealots. They’re fanatics, and they’re bullies, too,” she said.

In the last year, about 7,000 Operation Rescue demonstrators have been arrested in mass protests in the nation. The largest was in Atlanta, where about 1,200 protesters filled local jails.

The stakes in the national debate over abortion have risen dramatically. Last month, the Supreme Court announced it will reconsider the extent to which states may restrict a woman’s right to an abortion. With a new conservative majority on the court, abortion foes see their strongest hope in years of overturning or scaling back the landmark 1973 court decision that legalized abortion.

Pro-Choice Viewpoint

Meanwhile, pro-choice activists, who acknowledge that they had grown complacent in the 15 years since Roe vs. Wade established a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, are showing a new vigor.

“The thing we’re just adamant about is we’re going to protect our patients--their privacy, their freedom and their constitutional right to an abortion,” said Dr. Joan Babbott, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles.

Babbott said that pro-choice groups had trained more than 500 volunteers to deal with the Operation Rescue protest Saturday, and expects to have a much larger number in place for next month’s demonstrations, which are expected to be held March 22 to 24.

Concerned for Freedom

“I really am angry that people my age take (widely available abortion) as a given,” said 27-year-old Chrise DeTourmay, a volunteer coordinator for the California Abortion Rights Action League. “I can’t imagine living my life according to new rules that would limit my freedom.”

But 47-year-old Betty Johnson knew what it would be like. She had been there before. Twenty six years ago, she underwent an illegal abortion in New York.

“If you didn’t have the money to fly to Puerto Rico or know a physician to help you out, what could you do?” she said. Johnson went to a doctor who spoke limited English. His office was on the lower East Side.

A week after the abortion, performed without anesthetic in five nightly visits, she said she hemorrhaged, but recovered with antibiotics prescribed by her own doctor. She didn’t mention it to anyone for more than 10 years.

“It was terrible to go through the shame, secrecy and hiding when what I did didn’t affect anyone but me,” she said. “I marched in my 20s and 30s. I don’t want to do it again in my 50s and 60s, but if it comes to it, I’ll do it.”

Paradoxically, it was 23-year-old Paula Wilkerson’s experience with two legal abortions that had her on the other side, among the anti-abortion demonstrators. After her conversion to Christianity, she said, “I realized what I had done. I had killed my babies.”