2 Women, 2 Abortions Produce Clashing Philosophies

It was a secret and often shameful procedure before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1974, when Barbara Smith and Arlene Sontag each underwent it.

Years later, full of those memories and flushed with the courage of their convictions, both Orange County women went to publicly demonstrate their opinions about abortion at a protest at a Los Angeles clinic. But for Smith, the purpose was to prevent more abortions, a procedure that she believes is murder. For Sontag, the goal was to preserve what she believes is a constitutional right.

“I aborted a baby 18 years ago,” said Smith, 45, of Costa Mesa, a “born-again” Christian now married to an Orange County contractor. “I didn’t want my military career interrupted.

“Deep down inside I knew it was wrong,” she said. “My selfish motivation wouldn’t let me acknowledge it.”

After she became a Christian 10 years ago, she was flooded with a sense of guilt, she said. She fell on her knees in her kitchen and wept.

“I knew I was forgiven,” she said.

Her purpose in joining the anti-abortion group Rescue, a new wave of protesters willing to be arrested for civil disobedience, was not to earn forgiveness, she said. “I want to save babies and save women from going through the pain I did.”

Abortion is a crime against God, said Smith, a member of the small, charismatic Church on the Word in Mission Viejo. “It needs to be stopped.”

On the question of whether women who have abortions should be treated as criminals, she said, “It’s up to the courts to decide.”

Sontag, 52, of Anaheim said she and her husband had two children when they decided 27 years ago that they wanted to terminate her third pregnancy.

“My own gynecologist sent me to Tijuana,” she said. “He wouldn’t do it, but when I came back he filled a prescription” for antibiotics to ward off infection.

The abortion was “dirty, filthy and frightening. There are no words to describe that kind of experience,” she said.

“Abortion has been legal for 17 years. We’re not going back.”

At a time when the religious right is becoming more active, Sontag sees “a whole new resurgence” of pro-choice advocates among the young. At 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning, as she joined 100 others to defend the Family Planning Associates Clinic in Cypress against anticipated anti-abortion demonstrators, she saw that 80% of her group were young. It made her cry, she said.

More men were willing to picket and protest too.

Sontag came to the protest with her son Richard, a lawyer. She said he woke her up early Saturday morning, saying, “Let’s go defend the Constitution.”