Thousands Join Anti-Abortion Protest in O.C.

Waving identical placards that read: “Abortion Kills Children,” thousands of people formed a human cross through the streets of North County on Sunday afternoon in what even critics acknowledged was one of the largest anti-abortion demonstrations in Southern California history.

Organizers from the religious community, timing the event with the 17th anniversary today of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, placed crowd estimates as high as 20,000. They hailed the event as a rebuke to critics who question the strength of the anti-abortion movement.

Police said at least 12,000 people lined the sidewalks along Beach Boulevard and Katella Avenue, stretching more than five miles north to south and two miles east to west through parts of Buena Park, Anaheim, Stanton, Garden Grove and Westminster. Despite its size, the demonstration saw no mishaps except for traffic congestion, police said.

“This is the largest pro-life statement that’s ever been made in Southern California, I’m sure,” declared Bev Cielnicky of the Life Chain of Orange County, a coalition of churches and individuals that organized the event. “It shows we can’t be ignored.”

About 215 churches from Orange and Los Angeles counties were represented at the demonstration, each with a predesignated spot along the road to help form a crucifix, organizers said.

Organizers patterned the event after similar “life chains” last year in Riverside, Bakersfield and Northern California. It came at a time of intensified political debate over the abortion question following last year’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to give states more power to regulate the practice. Among the crowd were about a half-dozen pro-choice activists who organized at the last minute in opposition. They carried through the streets a sign and a banner espousing a woman’s right to choose, but one of the activists said those were taken from him and ripped by an abortion opponent.

That, however, was virtually the only sign of trouble at the event.

As traffic slowed in the demonstration area, drivers honked their horn in encouragement, while passengers waved and gave “thumbs-up” signs. A few stopped to take some of the 20,000 anti-abortion placards that had been printed up for the event. And some activists got microphones to broadcast their sentiments for all to hear.

But there was little in the way of confrontation or civil disobedience. And for the most part, the demonstration took a distinctly quiet tone, as family and friends stood calmly along the sidewalks.

It was this “peaceful” atmosphere that attracted some people who said they had never before taken part in a public demonstration.

Pointing to the highly publicized, emotional confrontations and arrests of demonstrators at abortion clinics last year, first-time demonstrator Carla McCulty said: “So many times a small group of radicals is all that’s viewed. That’s why this was different.”

Added first-time demonstrator Stacy Smith, of the Community Baptist Church in Yorba Linda: “I just felt the need to be involved in something that gets across the idea of the sanctity of life in a peaceful and well-organized manner.”

Tommy Jordan, a coordinator for the Orange County Pro-Choice Committee who was among the handful of counter-protesters Sunday, acknowledged that the anti-abortion organizers “are good at bringing people out for a nonconfrontation objective.”

Although he downplayed its importance, Jordan agreed with several anti-abortion activists from Los Angeles and Orange County that Sunday’s event was the biggest he had ever seen or heard about in Southern California.

“We’ve never had anything like this before; it’s a great day,” said the Rev. Norman Lund of the Lutheran Bible Institute in Anaheim, who helped organize the demonstration.

“We had a burden--the churches really had been sleeping on the abortion issue, and we needed to get people off their comfortable pews,” Lund said. “This kind of turnout makes the opposition visible and united in saying that abortion is wrong.”

Meanwhile, British actress Tracey Ullman exhorted about 300 people who attended a pro-choice fund-raiser Sunday in Hollywood to prevent the state from overturning the law legalizing abortion.

“I just hate turning on the television and seeing those toupeed chaps waving a Bible. . . . How dare they tell me what to do?” Ullman said. “I say, ‘onward girls.’ ”

Among those paying $150 each to attend the California Abortion Rights League-South fund-raiser were California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, feminist attorney Gloria Allred, several Los Angeles politicians, and state Sen. Lucy Killea (D-San Diego), whose narrow election victory last year was seen as a key referendum on abortion.

Robin Schneider, executive director of the California Abortion Rights League-South, said the group will continue to campaign for pro-choice candidates, regardless of party affiliation.

“It’s the best of times and the worst of times,” Schneider said. “Legally, we’ve come full circle, but politically, we are more sophisticated. We’ve got to win everywhere--in Orange County and statewide.”

A convoy of three buses and several cars left Los Angeles Sunday for Sacramento to attend a pro-choice demonstration today on the steps of the state Capitol. And in Washington, in advance of an abortion demonstration that is expected to draw 50,000 activists on both sides of the issue, pro-choice supporters erected a women’s memorial for “those courageous women who died from unsafe abortions.”

Times staff writer Dan Weikel contributed to this story.