Anti-Abortion Rally Draws 1,000--and Some Hecklers

Nearly 1,000 anti-abortion protesters, about three dozen hecklers and at least 80 Los Angeles police officers converged on the steps of City Hall on Saturday for a morning of rhetoric, prayer and verbal barbs.

The anti-abortion forces, far outnumbering the competition and backed by a public address system, dominated the exchange. They sang hymns, pledged allegiance to the flag and, for about five minutes of the two-hour demonstration, lay face down on the ground in a display of humility.

The abortion-rights activists made up for its small showing with a chorus of hoots, hollers, whistles, horns and jeers. When hundreds of anti-abortion activists began to prostrate themselves, the hecklers responded with sheep-like “Baa! Baa!” noises.

The police, for the most part, kept straight faces and formed a human wall between the two camps. They made two arrests, but those came hours earlier when a man and a woman were caught spray-painting pro-choice slogans in fluorescent colors on nearby sidewalks.

“It was a peaceful demonstration,” Police Lt. Les Lutz said. “We were just there to make sure nothing went down.”

The anti-abortion rally, organized by Operation Rescue, began at 8 a.m. with a prayer vigil in front of a downtown Los Angeles clinic. The protesters marched to City Hall, then gathered later for a picnic in Elysian Park.

Meanwhile, abortion-rights activists marshaled most of their troops outside four Los Angeles women’s clinics. The Clinic Defense Alliance of Los Angeles, a project of the Feminist Majority, had a total of about 300 people on guard in case anti-abortion protesters tried to block the entrances.

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, however, focused on freeing the dozens of activists nationwide who are in jail for such blockades. At City Hall, he called on the crowd to write the judges who sentenced them and demand they be released.

The hecklers chanted “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” Many of them waved swastika-bearing signs that read, “Danger: Religious Bigots.”

In the end, an Operation Rescue activist, who had recently been released from Los Angeles County jail for blocking a clinic entrance, claimed that there was really only one important mission awaiting the true believer:

“Make babies,” said a pregnant Deborah Grumbine, who is expecting her 11th child. “Lots of them.”