82 Arrested Protesting Abortions : 2 Clinics Targeted in New Strategy

Eighty-two people were arrested Saturday when hundreds of anti-abortion protesters struck two area women’s clinics.

The 82 were arrested after refusing to leave a San Diego complex until they were forced to do so by police using pain-compliance techniques. There were no arrests at a La Mesa clinic, where protesters voluntarily left after barricading nurses and patients inside.

The demonstrations led by Operation Rescue organizers began shortly after dawn and marked the first time in the recent series of sit-down protests in San Diego County that two women’s clinics were targeted at the same time.

Protesters at the San Diego offices of Dr. Phillip Rand and Dr. Gilbert S. Hardie sat before the front and rear doors, refusing to leave despite police warnings that they were violating a federal court order prohibiting such behavior.

Forced Into Police Vans

About an hour into the protest, police officers wielding nunchakus applied pain to the wrists of about two-thirds of the demonstrators and physically forced them into police vans. Three protesters slid under a police van, but officers forced them out and arrested them.

The nunchakus, as they have in the past, created the greatest concern among the demonstrators.

The Citizens’ Advisory Board on Police/Community Relations is reviewing the use of the controversial pain-compliance devices, and several board officials were on hand to observe the demonstrations and arrests Saturday morning.

They saw dozens of protesters rising to their feet with the nunchakus wrapped tightly around their wrists and heard many of their cries and moans throughout the morning.

“I don’t know,” said Andrea Skorepa, chairwoman of the review panel. “It looks like they (the demonstrators) have a fairly peaceful attitude.”

But she was inclined to disagree with protesters’ demands that the officers pick them up and carry them out.

“I don’t think that’s a viable solution. There’s more of a chance of injury, for the officers and the demonstrators.”

Two of the demonstrators who voluntarily walked into the police vans said they suffered severe injuries from past protests.

Dr. Michael Forrester of Fallbrook said a bone in his right wrist had been broken. “They just snapped it. I could hear it. I felt the crunch, and a guy three feet away heard it snap, too.”

Nancy Scofield, a nurse from Poway, said both her arms and shoulders have been injured with sprains and severe nerve damage. One arm was in a sling; the other wrapped in a bandage.

“It was unnecessary brutal force,” she said. “I can’t work. My family cooks. My daughter cleans the house. I can barely lift up a cup of coffee.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter, (R-Coronado), said in a telephone interview that pain should not be inflicted on peaceful demonstrators.

“It’s not for the police to punish people because they plan or orchestrate a demonstration,” he said.

But Police Chief Bob Burgreen, in a letter to Hunter, strongly defended the use of nunchakus.

“Pain-compliance techniques are neither bizarre nor cruel and rarely result in injury,” he said.

Rand and Hardie could not be seen at the Mission Village clinic during the protest. But two employees did arrive for work, and they became visibly upset when demonstrators noted that they were pregnant and began urging them against an abortion. However, the employees never indicated they ever even considered an abortion.

And Billi Wheeler, a nurse at the clinic, said abortions aren’t even performed there. “We don’t even have the equipment here to do one. We have nothing to do with abortions here. Never have. Ever.”

Pushed Past Guards

In La Mesa at the Family Planning Associates Medical Group on Fletcher Parkway, demonstrators pushed their way past security guards about 9 a.m. and barricaded a clinic office, trapping at least two patients and several employees inside for almost three hours.

Relatives of the patients waited outside, concerned for their safety.

“It’s crazy, it’s sick,” said one man, who came to the clinic to pick up his sister after an abortion and found the large crowd inside.

“If she’d known this, she wouldn’t have come. At least not this morning.”

Employees inside the clinic refused to talk to a reporter.

The demonstrators, after negotiating with La Mesa police and San Diego County sheriff’s deputies, agreed to peacefully march out of the building at a rate of two every minute until the entire complex was cleared. As the 150 demonstrators walked out, their colleagues outside, many of whom said they were from Orange County, cheered them on.

Also outside were large groups of pro-choice advocates, carrying signs and cheering their cause.

“They’re very insulting,” Joyce Tavrow of Rancho Bernardo said of the demonstrators. “They’re very frightening.”