Children Take the Spotlight at Abortion Protest : Demonstration: Parents involve their youngsters in the issue with a march organized by Operation Rescue.

The cameras were focused on the children Tuesday as dozens of local parents opposed to abortion turned out with their youngsters at a clinic to dramatize their cause with a Children’s Survival March.

The demonstration by about 170 people outside one of the area’s largest family planning clinics, on Chapman Avenue, kicked off a series of local Easter week events that will culminate with a rally this weekend. It was one of nine such demonstrations around Southern California organized by Operation Rescue anti-abortion forces.

In a scene that has been played out with increasing frequency since the U.S. Supreme Court gave states greater flexibility to decide abortion policies, about 20 abortion-rights proponents met the protesters in occasionally sharp debate.

But police, who have had to break up fistfights at past Orange County abortion rallies, reported no problems or arrests. The protesters, from toddlers to grandparents, stayed on the sidewalk outside the clinic, offered literature to women entering the area and occasionally sang religious songs.

Dozens of children, many of them on break from school for spring vacation, played games along the sidewalk and munched on cheese and crackers. Some mirrored their parents and held signs that proclaimed that abortion was murder.

Abortion rights advocates who turned out for the demonstration criticized their counterparts for bringing young children to a busy intersection and exposing them to potential harm on the crowded street corner outside the Family Planning Associates Medical Group.

“This is really dangerous,” said Anaheim resident Miki Moreno, an organizer of the counterdemonstration. “I wouldn’t bring my kids out here.”

Some abortion rights advocates charged that the abortion foes were exploiting the children for the benefit of media photographers and thrusting them into an issue they do not really understand.

But one young woman, who declined to give her name because she said it could hurt her acting career, pointed to her young daughter and said: “She knows why she’s out here. I tell her we’re going to save some babies. She understands.”

Ten-year-old Jenny Klein of Anaheim, who came to the rally with her mother, said she was there “to stop abortion.”

Looking at her mother, she said the unborn “should have a right to live just like us.”

Members of each side in the debate, armed with signs and sometimes graphic photographs, said they hoped to sway public opinion and, in turn, put pressure on politicians at this time of intensified debate on the abortion question.

But Larkette Lein, an Irvine woman who is helping start a local religious coalition for abortion rights, conceded, “We’re certainly not changing each others’ minds out here.”

Tuesday’s protest drew far fewer people than the estimated 12,000 or more that turned out in January to form a “human cross” in Orange County streets and fewer than a similar event last year at the same site.

But organizers discounted suggestions from their critics that the movement is losing support, and they promised to prove as much at activities set for this week.

Anti-abortion forces will hold a rally Thursday night at the Anaheim Vineyard featuring national anti-abortion leader Randall Terry. They are also planning on possible arrests and civil disobedience at undisclosed abortion clinics in Los Angeles and Orange counties on Friday and Saturday. Counterdemonstrations are expected.