Month After Month, ‘Soldiers’ Fight in Bitter Abortion Battles : Abortion: A Planned Parenthood clinic is just one of the many fronts in this very emotional war.

Trudy Hayes is looking for a fetus.

She wants to find one and bury it in one of two Ventura County cemetery plots where anti-abortion advocates hold memorial services for the “Unknown Child.”

“We’re going to place an aborted baby in there,” Hayes said, calmly and deliberately, her soft gray curls framing her faintly lined face.

“It can be done. They’re found in trash cans all over.”

Hayes, a 56-year-old church organist, is one of a growing number of foot soldiers in a war between abortion foes and pro-choice advocates in Ventura County.

It is a war that for the most part is being quietly fought, but one that also has escalated in recent months, partly as the result of two major developments in the past year.

In July, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the states have sole authority to deem abortion legal or illegal--making local opinions all the more important.

And before that, the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue pushed into Southern California and began blockading clinics, solidifying forces in Ventura County on both sides of the issue.

Now, with the Supreme Court ruling and Operation Rescue behind them, both sides have refined their tactics and are adjusting their strategies for political battles.

Trudy Hayes is just one of the combatants. And the skirmishing has become part of her life.

She and her husband, Bill, catalogue newspaper articles and brochures about abortion on their IBM personal computer. She has also helped organize two years of daily picketing at the Oxnard Planned Parenthood Clinic. And she has composed five ballads about unborn babies.

Then there is her continuing hunt for a fetus to place in one of the two donated cemetery plots, where anti-abortion mourners have gathered since 1984 on Memorial Day and All Souls’ Day.

The plots at Oxnard’s Santa Clara Cemetery and Camarillo’s Mountain Memorial Park are dedicated “In memory of the unknown child.”

The plots are empty for now. It has been hard to find fetuses, Hayes said. But she is determined.

“It’s on our minds a lot,” she said.

The imagery of war dominates the fight over abortion in Ventura County. At times it is a cold war. But there are other moments when the clash of values comes close to combat.

Both sides map their strategies with military zeal on a number of county battlegrounds.

Each claims to have spies infiltrating the opposition.

The anti-abortion movement likens abortions to the massacre of Jews in World War II concentration camps. Pro-choice advocates compare abortion clinic blockaders--sometimes dressed in masks and robes to represent the Grim Reaper--to the Ku Klux Klan.

Both sides claim the other is pushing misinformation and propaganda on an unsuspecting public.

They speak of the abortion fight as “the Vietnam of the 1990s,” and some say it has already begun to produce its own version of “post-traumatic stress syndrome,” the condition that plagues some combat veterans.

The tactics and the raw emotions that fuel the continuing struggle were evident during one of many recent skirmishes in Oxnard.

Outside the Oxnard Planned Parenthood Clinic, some anti-abortion protesters carried signs depicting bloody fetuses. Others clutched rosaries. Taped onto their cars were lists of women who allegedly died during abortions around the country.

The picketers stopped pacing as a doctor, known on sight to the demonstrators, drove into the clinic’s parking lot.

“Good morning, Killer,” yelled Bill Hayes, the 61-year-old protest organizer. “We haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Give him a kiss, Barbara,” Hayes taunted, referring to Barbara Wells, who until two weeks ago was patient services director at the Oxnard clinic. “He needs some AIDS.”

The “butcher’s arrival” is the big event for those who regularly demonstrate at the clinic, Hayes said. The rest of the time is spent anxiously waiting for women to show up so the demonstrators can yell out that life begins at conception, and abortion is murder.

The protesters are fighting the pro-choice views of the Planned Parenthood workers and volunteers--that a woman has control over her body and therefore has the right to an abortion.

But the oft-heard arguments are not in evidence so much as the heckling, which recurs week in and week out.

The Oxnard clinic--where women can get abortions until their 10th week of pregnancy--is not the only place in Ventura County where women get abortions.

Abortions also are performed at the Family Planning Medical Associates Clinic and in the offices of private physicians.

Some hospitals--such as St. John’s Regional Medical Center, a Catholic hospital in Oxnard--ban the procedure. But many other hospitals allow doctors to perform them.

The Oxnard clinic, however, has become the most visible abortion battleground in Ventura county primarily because of the daily protests there by Bill and Trudy Hayes, who have organized a loosely knit group of 15 to 20 volunteers.

At least one protester has patrolled the clinic every day since it opened two years ago. A prayer service by demonstrators is held outside every Thursday at noon.

Every morning, the Hayeses call the clinic to see if workers have arrived early enough to signal that it’s an abortion day and time to protest the “Death Camp.”

Once there, protesters outside the front of the clinic exchange pleasantries as they walk back and forth. They sometimes trade positions with another picketer tired of guarding the back alley.

They discuss the poems and songs they have written lauding the unborn, and they shake their heads ruefully as they discuss the evils of sex education, which “breaks down the morals of a child,” and premarital sex.

“I believe in responsible parenthood,” said protester Ruth Johnson, who fought against sex education in public schools long before she joined the anti-abortion movement. “That’s just fornication.”

Bill Hayes keeps his eye on the parking lot, from which the protesters have been banished, as he listens to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on his headphones.

In the daily skirmishing outside the clinic, the opposing sides rely partly on simple forms of electronic warfare as they fight their battles.

Two tape recorders used by the anti-abortion forces broadcast the sounds of wailing infants being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.

“It drives ‘em nuts,” Hayes said.

But the clinic’s defenders fight back with an even more basic type of electronic countermeasure.

Two blue-shirted Planned Parenthood volunteers who escort women in and out of the clinic rely on a radio to drown out the sobs and screams with loud rock tunes.

For the leaders of the pro-choice movement, the battle plans are largely defensive in nature.

At the Oxnard clinic, two Planned Parenthood escorts guard the back door with two more escorts posted at the front entrance.

About 20 volunteers help in the effort. They have undergone daylong training sessions to prepare for their duties.

When a patient drives up, two of the clinic volunteers bring out cameras and stalk the protesters, snapping pictures in an attempt to distract them.

The two remaining escorts approach a patient’s car. They stand on either side of her and hustle her into the clinic.

Marlene Head, secretary of the Ventura-Oxnard National Organization for Women chapter is one of the women who train the escorts.

Escorts are taught to keep up a running commentary on whatever comes to mind as they approach the door, in order to distract patients from what the protesters are saying, Head said.

To avert violence, they are taught not to respond to the hecklers.

And they also are warned what to do in case violence erupts, Head said, refusing to elaborate.

Inside the clinic, there are more electronic countermeasures. Clinic workers turn on the television and the radio in the waiting room to block out the sound of the protesters outside.

“Once she’s inside the clinic, then we know she’s OK,” said JoAnne Moore, director of Planned Parenthood’s facilities in Oxnard and Ventura. “Getting her from the car to inside the building is a trauma.”

The clinic lobby is restful, done in deep blues and browns, the lower walls lined with library-like wainscotting. The rest of the clinic looks like any other doctor’s office.

The procedure takes five to 10 minutes. The entire process--beginning with a detailed medical history and ending with juice and cookies--lasts about two hours.

When it’s time to leave, the volunteers sometimes put a jacket over the woman’s head and run with her out to her car, hoping to shield her from more taunts.

“They say, ‘What did you have, a boy or a girl?’ or ‘How long did it take the doctor to kill your baby,’ ” Moore said.

The daily skirmishes produce some small victories and defeats for both sides.

The anti-abortion forces sometimes succeed in frustrating clinic officials by harassment tactics, such as calling up and making false appointments, Moore said.

She said they also call the clinic’s answering machine and leave their phone off the hook, making it impossible for clients to call in.

They have taken down license numbers of cars in the parking lot, tracing owners--mainly clinic employees--through the Department of Motor Vehicles and list the names on placards.

In Moore’s view, the protesters interfere with what should be a “routine medical procedure.” To the protesters, however, the procedure is all too routine.

Pam Scott, who said she has masqueraded as a prospective patient, claimed that employees at another county clinic likened abortion to “having a tooth pulled.”

The skirmishing results in frequent complaints to the police.

Oxnard Police Officer Scott Swenson said police regularly receive complaints that the protesters are obstructing the sidewalk, harassing passers-by, interfering with parking and playing loud tapes. Clinic workers saw to it that police enforced the one-hour parking limit in front of the clinic so that protesters could not monopolize the spaces. Now the picketers must pause occasionally to move their cars.

But complaints to the police have not stopped the demonstrators. The clinic’s other responses include scheduling abortion days erratically. Last month, they tricked protesters by beginning abortions in the afternoon rather than the usual early morning hours.

Like any modern army, the pro-choice forces rely on gathering as much intelligence as possible. Moore said they do “heavy” screening of their potential abortion patients to weed out pro-choice imposters and they require urine tests of women wanting abortions.

At times, the demonstrators have succeeded in blocking abortions.

Dr. Jim Gay, a physician who has performed abortions at the Oxnard facility, said it has been forced to cancel abortion days several times because not enough doctors were available.

Gay, who hopes to start an organization of doctors who support abortion rights, said many doctors are deterred from working at the clinic because of intimidation. He said he used to park his car several blocks away and walk to the clinic because he feared protesters might slash his tires.

Looking to the future, pro-choice forces say the job of defending the Oxnard clinic may become easier when Planned Parenthood combines its Oxnard and Ventura clinics into one facility.

The decision came after Planned Parenthood received an unsolicited offer to buy the Oxnard building, Moore said.

The next clinic will have a wall or bushes, unlike the present location, which provides no buffer between the front door and the sidewalk where protesters stand.

“Frankly, we’ll get it in a location a little more defensible,” Moore said. “We’re not going to make their lives as easy as they’ve had it the last couple of years.”

The daily demonstrations have not stopped Planned Parenthood from expanding, Moore said.

The organization is looking into operating in the eastern end of the county so that women in the Simi Valley or Thousand Oaks will not have to travel to Agoura, Sherman Oaks, Ventura or Oxnard to find a Planned Parenthood clinic, she said.

Although the anti-abortion demonstrators have not yet stopped the Oxnard clinic, they have unintentionally succeeded in running off customers who used to hang out at the Munch Box, a hamburger stand next to Planned Parenthood. Business is down by 25%, owner Penny Cantrell said.

“My patrons don’t want to sit down and eat a hamburger and look at those signs,” Cantrell said. “I’m selling hamburgers and they’re holding signs saying ‘Babies are killed here.’ ”

If two opposing generals were to be named in the county’s abortion battle, they would be Nicolette Worley and Ken Craft.

Worley is director of the Ventura branch of the National Organization for Women. When she mentions Craft, she doesn’t hide her disgust.

“He makes me sick,” she said.

Craft is associate pastor at Ventura’s South Coast Fellowship Faith Center. He voices a different view of his adversaries, proclaiming, “I love them all.”

The two routinely go head-to-head when Worley calls out her troops to oppose anti-abortion activists at demonstrations staged by Craft.

Although abortion is the immediate issue, Craft makes it clear that the real battle, in his view, is over more than the legality of abortion.

Moral and religious beliefs color almost every discussion of abortion.

“Sex shops. Sex shows. Bestiality, the degradation of women,” Craft said. “We’re slipping fast. We will fall as the American family falls.”

Those views appear to the pro-choice side as attempts to snatch away the power of individuals to decide how to live their lives.

“I’m mad because a group of religious fanatics who don’t know me want to make my reproductive decisions for me,” Worley said at a NOW rally. “We must turn our anger into action, and we must fight.”

So the two are marshaling their forces. Craft draws largely from his 1,100-member congregation. He is hoping to enlarge his following in January when he will start a church in the Simi Valley.

Worley relies on the 300 members of NOW’s Ventura-Oxnard chapter. The Simi-Conejo chapter commands another 200 people and the group’s county mailing list holds 1,600-names, more than any county in the state other than San Francisco and Los Angeles, she said.

But manpower is not enough in this fight. Battle strategies are important.

Craft’s first priority is to stage more “rescues,” such as the one for which he spent 10 days in jail this summer.

A few months after participating in Operation Rescue in Los Angeles earlier this year, the 25-year-old pastor was arrested at the Ventura Family Planning Medical Associates clinic, where 50 anti-abortionists blocked access for about five hours.

“Rescues are the only way we can stop the killing of innocent children today,” Craft said. “I wish we could do rescues every week.”

Worley, meanwhile, puts her priorities in the battle for support from local legislators, who ultimately may have a voice in deciding the legal future of abortion in California.

“We want to harness grass-roots power so we can vote legislators out that don’t listen to us,” Worley said.

Worley encouraged the 1,500 people attending NOW’s biggest county rally last month to take down the names of representatives--posted on a board with their stand on abortion printed in red--and write to them. Along with stamps, envelopes, paper and pens, NOW provided sample letters for people to copy.

A new anti-abortion umbrella organization, the Alliance for the Protection of Children, also will make lobbying one of its primary goals, according to Richard Lawson, the public affairs director.

The alliance, which says it has 600 members, was established in September to solve one of the biggest problems facing the county’s anti-abortion contingency--its lack of cohesiveness.

The pro-choice movement is interconnected with Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women. But the anti-abortion forces in Ventura County have been fragmented.

There are a host of organizations, including Mothers for Life, Operation Rescue, Project Rachel, Shield of Roses and Women Exploited by Abortion.

Pockets of protesters also are found within a variety of church groups. And new organizations continue to spring up. Just last month, Defenders of the Faith of Ventura County was begun because the Knights of Columbus invited to their annual dinner Sen. Pete Wilson, who has made no secret of his pro-choice views.

Few groups are connected to national organizations. Even fewer have strong fund-raising plans, scraping together money from donations, garage sales and “walk-athons.”

“We feel there are commonalities present among pro-life groups,” Lawson said. “We’d be stronger as a unified whole.”

Neither side in the battle over abortion sees a speedy resolution of the issue, which they see as the most divisive political question since the Vietnam War.

As the adults on both sides race from skirmish to skirmish, they bring their children with them in the full expectation that they may become the future soldiers of the anti-abortion and pro-choice forces.

Not only does Pastor Ken Craft bring his 1-year-old daughter to anti-abortion protests, Planned Parenthood’s JoAnne Moore said she delighted in taking her 11-year-old granddaughter to a pro-choice candlelight vigil.

Planned Parenthood offers to teach workshops on sex education to school-age children. Meanwhile, Craft encourages children in the youth group he leads to do reports on abortion and “fight the battle” in school.

Both sides are intent on swaying children, the voters of tomorrow, and children attend almost every abortion-related protest, rally and event.

At a NOW rally last month, a sign posted on one baby’s stroller read: “Family for pro-choice. I was wanted.” At the demonstration outside the rally, a sign attached to another infant’s stroller read: “Not for Pro-Choice. For Pro-Life.”

As the two sides exchanged their usual rhetoric, a man leaned out his car window and spit at one of the anti-abortion picketers standing on the sidewalk outside the NOW rally.

The spittle missed the protester, but hit his 7-year-old son.

The boy didn’t cry. Like a good soldier, he just raised his sign a little higher.