Women--Pregnant or Not--Blitzed by Pro-Lifers

Two weeks ago I drove into the parking lot of Family Planning Associates in the city of Orange and, by virtue of my sex, I was besieged.

I was alone, unlike most of the women who drive into this parking lot on a Saturday, and I was not pregnant.

But even before I had turned off my car’s engine, anti-abortion protesters had encircled me. And like many of the other women who pull into this parking lot, I was stunned.

“Don’t kill your baby!” one man shouted, his face momentarily obscured by a color poster of a 20-week-old fetus that he had thrust against the window of my car.

“There is an alternative,” said another protester, also a man. “We want to help you.”

I did not need this man’s help, nor did I need the literature that he proffered with a smile on his face. So instead I stared at him and the others, and I suppose they realized that I was not afraid.

Soon they walked away to the next car, leaving me with their misplaced pity and even their scorn. They did not know that I was not pregnant. They wished they could have commanded me to give birth.

Family Planning Associates, a private gynecological clinic, is one of several in Orange County that performs abortions. It is believed to be the one that does the most.

Sixteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that every woman has the right to decide for herself whether she will become a mother, the protesters in the parking lot of Family Planning Associates do not accept that.

They have congregated in this parking lot and on the street in front of the clinic for months now. They bring signs, photographs, pamphlets and other paraphernalia they find useful to the business of protesting. On the day I was there, four plainclothes police officers were keeping an eye on things.

Sometimes the protesters get a bit out of hand, the cops said, and then they step in to smooth things over as best they can. So far there haven’t been too many problems.

Now that is expected to change.

In the aftermath of last month’s Supreme Court decision to review a Missouri law that restricts access to abortion, anti-abortionists are planning bigger and more organized demonstrations throughout Southern California. Two were held Saturday in Los Angeles, and others--even larger--are planned for next month. Members of the anti-abortion movement feel almost jubilant these days. They feel they may be on verge of outlawing abortion.

Mass arrests were always part of the plan, and at a protest organizing rally last month in Lakewood, fundamentalist pastor Randy Adler of the Stone Mountain Church in Laguna Hills called on the faithful to prepare to “give up (their) lives” for the cause.

Barbara Martinez, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, was there when Adler spoke. She went to the rally, she said, “to see who these people are who want to control me.”

But she was not prepared for Adler.

“I was stunned,” she said. “All I could see was (the Rev.) Jim Jones, ‘Line up the people. Give them the Kool-Aid. We are going to have to die for the cause.’ ”

Many of the protesters at Family Planning Associates also listened to Adler and other anti-abortion leaders in that Lakewood church. To them, the message was clear--black and white, with no room for interpretive differences.

The state, these people believe, should have legal custody of the unborn child. The mother sometimes gets in the way.

Protester Forest Ricker, a father of six, believes that any woman who would consider abortion is separated from God. This is not opinion, he said; this is truth.

Soon, Ricker and thousands of other anti-abortionists hope, all pregnancies will be carried to term. This, they believe, is God’s will.

These people scare the women visiting Family Planning Associates. Some women show that fear by holding their hands over their faces and bowing their heads as they rush past. A few turn around and leave.

But some look the protesters straight in the eye.

“We’re sorry to have to be here,” Kay Coe told me. Coe is a member of the North Orange County chapter of the National Organization for Women who voluntarily escorts women past the protesters and into the clinic.

Coe was standing among the protesters who had encircled my car. I didn’t need her help either, but I wanted to know why she was there to offer it.

“Many women do not expect this,” she said. “They become afraid. We are here to shield them. This is a great intrusion into their personal lives. It’s none of (the protesters’) business. It’s none of our business either. But we have to be here. They are.”