Children Join in Peaceful Protest Against Abortion

Anti-abortion demonstrators staged a peaceful protest outside a family-planning clinic in Orange on Thursday as their children waved signs at oncoming cars on busy Chapman Avenue.

The two-hour demonstration drew about 250 people and was one of nine staged Thursday in Southern California by Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group that has organized similar protests across the country.

In Orange, children sat on the curb waving pictures of dead fetuses and carrying signs with messages such as, “Please stop killing us.”

“Many of the children know their parents have been active in picketing, and the desire of a lot of children was to participate,” said Russell Neal, a spokesman for Operation Rescue. “They are the survivors of the abortion holocaust of the last 16 years.”

About 40 sign-carrying abortion-rights activists demonstrated alongside the Operation Rescue group.

“We aren’t here to outnumber them,” said Barbara Jackson, a member of the Orange County Pro-Choice Coalition. “We are just monitoring to make sure that nothing illegal is done and that women are able to get into the clinic.”

Family Planning Associates Medical Group, at Chapman Avenue and the Orange Freeway, remained open during the demonstration, a clinic employee said. “It’s not stopping anything,” the employee added.

Jackson and other abortion-rights demonstrators criticized Operation Rescue for involving children in the demonstration.

“This is a very busy intersection,” Jackson said. “It’s unconscionable to bring children down here. I’m just crossing my fingers that someone doesn’t get hurt.”

Pro-choice demonstrator Rachel Stephens said having children as protesters is “manipulative and abusive. . . . I don’t think the children are old enough to really grasp the issue at hand.”

Asked if it was dangerous to have children standing within feet of oncoming traffic, Neal said, “It’s not nearly as dangerous as it is for the other children” in the clinic.

Among those who brought their children to the demonstration was Shauna Clemens, 21, of Huntington Beach. “I just don’t believe in abortion,” said Clemens, standing on the Chapman Avenue sidewalk with one hand on the stroller where her 6-month-old son slept. “I’m a single mother, and it is possible to raise a child.”