Councilman Among 50 Abortion Foes Arrested in Tustin

Nearly 50 anti-abortion protesters, including a Tustin city councilman, were arrested Friday during a noisy demonstration outside a family planning clinic.

About 350 supporters of Operation Rescue arrived at the Doctors Family Planning Medical Group at 14700 Irvine Blvd. about 6:30 a.m. and blocked the clinic’s three entrances for nine hours, Tustin Police Sgt. Steve Lewis said. Also present were about 200 sign-carrying abortion-rights activists, who escorted six patients into the clinic without incident.

But by 1 p.m., the clinic’s main physician, Dr. William M. Moss, asked police to remove the crowd.

About 30 Tustin police officers, assisted by 40 officers from Irvine and Santa Ana and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, began arresting 48 people over the next two hours.

“Enough is enough,” Moss said. “I have a practice to carry out. It’s like blocking a hardware store.”

Those arrested were taken to the Tustin Police Department, where they were cited for misdemeanor trespassing and released.

Moss said he performed 10 abortions Friday morning, but was forced to cancel the appointments of three male patients scheduled for vasectomies in the afternoon. Operation Rescue spokesmen contended that no abortions were performed at the clinic.

Among the first to be arrested was Tustin Councilman John Kelly, 28, a self-described anti-abortion advocate whose four-year term ends Tuesday following his defeat in this week’s City Council election.

When it became clear at midday that Moss was going to request police action, Kelly pushed through the crowd and used his councilman’s badge to cross a police barrier set up on A Street, next to the clinic. He then demanded that Tustin Police Chief Douglas Franks order officers not to complete the arrests.

“You still work for me,” Kelly said angrily, when Franks refused to comply. “This is insubordination.”

Kelly then joined demonstrators blocking the entrance, drawing jeers and cheers from onlookers in both camps, and was arrested. He was released later at the Police Department after being cited.

After the incident, Kelly and fellow Councilman Earl J. Prescott, who also attended the demonstration as an anti-abortion supporter, called for Franks’ resignation. Kelly said the police chief, hired last year, “ignored a direct order not to arrest anyone who was gathered peaceably on that property.”

Prescott said that Kelly was improperly arrested, contending that Kelly was sitting on a public sidewalk rather than on private property and thus was not trespassing. Prescott said he plans to request an investigation by the City Council and the district attorney’s office.

“All of the arrests were invalid in my opinion,” Prescott said.

Franks could not be reached for comment.

The clinic’s executive director, Judi Larson, said the arrests were necessary because Operation Rescue activists were not allowing doctors or patients to enter the building.

Kelly last year had proposed a much-criticized council resolution that would have labeled the clinic “morally reprehensible and ethically unconscionable.” The action failed on a 3-2 vote.

Friday’s protest came a day after Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry formally announced at an Anaheim rally that he was stepping down from day-to-day leadership of the nationwide anti-abortion group. He did not attend Friday’s demonstration.

His successor, the Rev. Keith Tucci, 33, said Friday that he took the job several weeks earlier, when the organization shut down its Binghamton, N.Y., headquarters because of financial difficulties.

Tucci, a former Midwest regional director for Operation Rescue, will now serve as a roving ambassador for the anti-abortion movement. He spoke at Thursday’s rally and at Friday’s demonstration but was not among those arrested.

Tucci said that Terry will remain as “the major spokesman for Operation Rescue and the pro-life movement.” But Terry will no longer “be the nuts-and-bolts man” because of increasing demands on his time, Tucci explained.

Another elected official who attended the protest was San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith, a Democratic candidate opposing Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner in the state attorney general’s race. Both are backers of abortion rights.

Before the arrests, Smith’s campaign manager, Marc Dann, apparently became the first to receive a citation--a traffic ticket.

Both Smith and Reiner have staunchly professed their support for abortion rights. And Smith, expecting that the Operation Rescue blockade would be held in Los Angeles, had shown up at Feminist Majority headquarters in West Los Angeles at 5:30 a.m., hoping to one-up Reiner on his own turf.

When he learned that the demonstration would instead be in Tustin, Smith and his campaign manager drove 75 minutes down the Santa Ana Freeway. Dann stopped their rental car on busy Irvine Boulevard to let Smith off and was pulled over by a Tustin motorcycle patrol officer and cited for impeding traffic.

Operation Rescue’s protest at the clinic is scheduled to be repeated today, organization officials said.