The Battle Over Abortion Puts a Neighborhood in War Zone

Nobody on North A Street has scheduled a back-yard barbecue or a garage sale or the delivery of a new sofa for Saturday. Police barricades may be up again.

It will be the eve of Father’s Day, so rumors abound that Operation Rescue will invade a Southern California abortion clinic--and the Tustin birth control clinic at the foot of North A Street is one of its main targets.

Such has been the anti-abortion group’s pattern: to mobilize massive protests on or near an “ironic” celebration--Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day. Since the organization roared into being 18 months back, three fervid demonstrations have raged in Tustin--most recently on Good Friday in April. About 350 Operation Rescue supporters and 200 abortion-rights activists squared off at that conflict, both parties jamming nearby streets with their vehicles and screaming their respective platforms.

It is a war that Operation Rescue wages at selected abortion clinics throughout the country. It is a war rooted in deep-seated religious morals. It is a war without compromise.

As in all wars, the civilians suffer. And the civilians of A Street are fed up.

A month ago, Daniel Bigos went before the Tustin City Council to request that the clinic move.

In a proclamation signed by 17 other A Street residents, Bigos complained about the havoc Operation Rescue has wreaked upon his formerly serene niche of the world--the noise, traffic and graphic anti-abortion posters.

“People ask, ‘Are you pro-life or pro-choice?’ ” he said. “I don’t think that’s the issue here. I’m pro- neighborhood. “

North A Street teems with young professionals drawn by the quaint fixer-uppers perfect for their growing families. There are people in their 30s like Bigos and his wife Leslie, Gregg and Tara Way, Jeff and Catherine Burnette.

Then there are the old-timers like Michael Doyle, 49, who grew up in his house. And Bill and Mona Tolin, both in their 60s, who also have lived on North A Street for decades.

Bill Tolin and Doyle remember North A Street when it was surrounded by orange groves. They remember Irvine Boulevard when it was a byway named 4th Street yet to connect with the still-nonexistent 55 Freeway.

Most of the craftsman-style bungalows sprung up in the early ‘20s; the house cater-corner to the war zone is one of Tustin’s oldest, built in 1885.

All that changed in the mid-’60s. The newly christened Irvine Boulevard would beckon a lineup of office buildings--among them, Santa Ana-Tustin Medical Pavilion, home to the beleaguered Doctors Family Planning clinic.

The single-story building literally straddles the Santa Ana-Tustin border, though all 11 offices share a Tustin mailing address. Halfway up the block from North A Street on Irvine Boulevard, a friendly sign bids adieu to passers-by, coaxing: “Work where you must but live and shop in Tustin.”

Despite the development that mowed down its countryside, A Street retains an old-fashioned friendliness almost anachronistic in the bustling and transient lifestyle of modern Californians.

“This neighborhood is different from a lot of neighborhoods in that everybody knows everybody else,” said Leslie Bigos, who has a 2-year-old son and another baby on the way. “Our children play together. We help each other with projects--installing new windows or adding bathrooms. We have a block party every year.”

That same interdependence has united the residents in the face of adversity.

Last summer, while in the throes of morning sickness, Tara Way found something on her doorstep that would repel anybody--especially an expectant mother. Staring up at her was a photograph of an aborted late-term fetus, limbs severed and head gashed.

Anti-abortion devotees had struck again.

“I started bawling,” Way said.

Ever since that painful experience, she has made it her duty to pluck gruesome calling cards from the porches of pregnant women on North A Street. And, for such a compact stretch of landscape, a quarter-mile at best, the street harbors a lot of pregnant women--four at last count.

When he learned that Operation Rescue’s gory photo had reduced Tara Way to tears, Doyle--a divorced father of seven--promptly marched over and gave its distributors a piece of his mind.

And he hasn’t stopped since: “I find this (anti-abortion) literature on my front porch first thing in the morning, and I walk down the street--I still have bed head, my hair’s going every which direction--and I say, ‘Don’t put this stuff on my porch.’ They say, ‘Do you know what’s going on down the street from you?’ I say, ‘I live here, Jack. Don’t tell me what’s going on. Just get out of my face.’ ”

War stories? The civilians of North A Street can tell you war stories.

Crippled from polio since childhood, Bill Tolin hobbled a block on crutches to catch his ride to work one morning because police would not let cars through. Debbie Shvetzov gave a garage sale and nobody came--again, thanks to police barricades.

“My family spent $38 to advertise it in the newspaper,” Shvetzov groused on a recent Saturday afternoon, in between collecting nickels and dimes at her make-up sale.

Judi Larson, executive director of Doctors Family Planning clinic, said, “We understand that they would like these protesters out of their neighborhood--so would we. But we hope they see that we are victims, too.”

Indeed, some residents sympathize with the 9-year-old clinic, headed by Dr. William M. Moss.

“Personally, I hope it moves, but I think Dr. Moss has the right to run his business there,” said Doyle, who owns four restaurant franchises. “It’s like me and my pizza places--if you don’t like the pizza I make, do I have to move? I beg your pardon, but that’s not what America is built on.”

Gregg Way, a land planner, noted, “For years, we coexisted peacefully with the clinic--we didn’t even know the thing was there. And it doesn’t bother me that it is. We just want our quiet neighborhood back.”

At least two North A Street residents believe that the clinic should not relocate--for polarly opposite reasons.

“If it moves, it will just take the protests somewhere else,” said Mona Tolin. “I don’t want the clinic out of here, I want the demonstrators out of here. They have their value system, I have mine.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Catherine Burnette feels that “the clinic should close its doors completely.” As do many Americans--about 40%, according to recent polls--she and her husband Jeff believe abortion is murder.

“We’re definitely in the minority on our street,” reckoned Jeff Burnette, a schoolteacher. “The (abortion) issue is something that could easily divide neighbors, so we don’t talk about it much with them.”

Catherine Burnette, who is pregnant with her first child, appreciates the efforts of Operation Rescue. “Their demonstrations are not an inconvenience if they save a baby’s life,” she said. “To me, what’s going on at the clinic is more offensive than the posters or anything else.”

The Operation Rescue folks--largely fundamental Christians--could not have better stated their justification for attacking abortion clinics.

“If we’re going to worry about annoying the neighbors while little children are being brutally murdered, we need to look at our priorities,” said Randall Terry, founder of the Binghamton, N.Y.-based organization.

Orange County boasts one of Operation Rescue’s most active chapters, numbering 2,900 members. Local activists recurringly single out the Tustin clinic because of its volume of abortions, spokeswoman Susan Finn explained.

Operation Rescue enlistees say that their calling comes from a higher source than the U.S. Supreme Court, which twice in the last six weeks has dealt the organization setbacks. In a Georgia and a New York case, the justices allowed protesters to be banned from blocking access to abortion clinics.

“This is not a pro-life Supreme Court,” Terry said. “I’m tired of the cry for conservative judges. What we need are God-fearing judges.”

Their calling, Operation Rescue followers believe, comes from a higher source than the Tustin Police Department, which on Good Friday apprehended 47 of their demonstrators for misdemeanor trespassing.

Barbara McGuigan was among them. As is Operation Rescue’s method, she passively resisted--lying on the ground so that officers would have to carry her to the police van.

“They said, ‘We really don’t want to hurt you, ma’am, but we’re going to have to use pain compliance,’ ” recalled the 43-year-old Laguna Nigel housewife. “They bent my wrist way back to make me stand up. I just looked at them and said, ‘God bless you.’ They reminded me of the Nazis saying, ‘We’re just following orders.’ ”

It is hardly an assignment the Tustin police officers relish.

They would rather not swelter in summer heat for hours hoping demonstrators disperse before arrests are necessary. They would rather not risk straining a back muscle while lifting the dead weight of a passive resister. They would rather not endure protesters’ ridicule.

“The stressful thing about (patrolling a demonstration) is that you’re dealing with everyday people who have put themselves in a criminal role,” said Officer Jeff Blair. “These are people who could be your next-door neighbor or your buddy at the gym.”

Blair is a rookie police officer, so young that he perceives his 36-year-old colleague Chuck Carvajal as “an old guy,” so young that the condemnations protesters sling still pierce his armor.

“One minute I’m the hero of the block because everyone looks up to the police, and the next minute I’m being told that I’m at Satan’s beck and call,” said Blair, 21.

Officer Carvajal wondered if Operation Rescue supporters’ hellfire-and-brimstone rantings alienate outsiders sympathetic to the anti-abortion cause.

“Policemen by nature tend to be conservative, so it’s likely that a lot of us are pro-life,” he observed. “But these people are religious zealots. You can’t rationalize with them. They’re really just being a disturbance and a nuisance. Their actions are not going to change policy. They’re drawing on taxpayers’ funds and they’re mucking up the court system.”

Over the past year, Orange County taxpayers have shoveled out about $37,000 for officers to patrol the protests, said Tustin Police Capt. Steve Foster.

The Tustin department, through a “mutual aid agreement” among county police and sheriffs, borrowed personnel from other cities for the demonstrations. Still, Foster said, the protests are a drain on his 76-officer staff.

“We have to make sure that we have adequate coverage throughout the rest of the city,” he said. “When we place 50 officers (at a demonstration), it stretches us thin elsewhere.”

At the hub of all this commotion is a small doctor’s office that looks like any other doctor’s office--nuzzled in the northwestern corner of the block-wide Santa Ana-Tustin Medical Pavilion.

Offices in the white, Spanish-style medical center open onto a pleasant courtyard. On a good day, the surroundings are so peaceful, so Southern Californian, that you can hear birds singing.

But on the occasional bad day, all you can hear are the Operation Rescue activists singing, and the NOW activists shouting, and the cars honking, and the police sirens wailing.

So once again, the war takes prisoners: the dentists, the podiatrists, the psychiatrists--civilians whose only connection to Dr. Moss is geographical.

Dr. Ernest Hook is the newest tenant in the center, which is owned by a group of doctors. The podiatrist moved in a year and a half ago, right before the tumult exploded. “I put in a bunch of nice plants around my door and they all got trampled,” he said. “The demonstrators have no regard for the other people around here.”

But the ruckus hasn’t hurt business, Dr. Hook said; he has no buyer’s remorse: “It’s a good location and a well-managed building, with top-notch doctors.”

Besides, most days are quiet--the controversy’s only reminder a smattering of unobtrusive picketers who regularly hover outside.

Massive protests are a different story--mob scenes breed aggression.

“During the (Good Friday) demonstration, I happened to have a lot of elderly female patients--not even close to childbearing years--and these Operation Rescue people stopped every one of them and said, ‘You’re not going in there for an abortion, are you?’ ” Hook said. “It was ludicrous, and it offended my patients.”

Joan Richardson, who manages her husband’s dental office, worries that the demonstrations could hinder ambulance access in the event of an emergency.

“Even with minor dental surgery, somebody can go into cardiac arrest or have an allergic reaction to medication,” she pointed out.

Despite such problems, neither Richardson nor Hook agree with North A Street residents that the family planning clinic should relocate. Said Hook: “Dr. Moss has the legal right to be there.”

Operation Rescue supporters acknowledge that their war punishes more civilians than it does enemy targets. But in their eyes, a fetus aborted because no one encouraged its potential mother to turn back is a greater tragedy than a luncheon aborted because police ordered its guests to turn back.

“I’m sorry that (demonstrations at the medical center) are an inconvenience for people going to get their teeth cleaned,” said Operation Rescue spokeswoman Susan Finn. “However, babies are being killed in that facility.”

Perhaps ironically, Randall Terry sized up the Tustin neighborhood’s groundswell against his organization as a victory: “It’s definitely a positive step forward when, for whatever reason, a group of people want an abortion mill out of their community.”