Protest Marks Anniversary of Abortion Ruling

An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people from religious and anti-abortion groups gathered along the streets of Ventura on Sunday, marking the anniversary of a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld a woman’s right to an abortion.

Carrying signs that said “Abortion Kills Children,” protesters from more than 80 area churches formed a five-mile zigzag along Victoria Avenue, Telephone Road, Main Street and Mills Road.

Standing about six feet apart, the protesters--men, women and children--stood in place for 90 minutes to create what they described as a “Life Chain.” They cheered as drivers honked their horns and raised their thumbs in support. The number of protesters, however, fell short of the 6,000 that organizers had predicted.

The protesters said they demonstrated Sunday, despite the outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf, because they could not let pass without public comment the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide 18 years ago.

David Patrick of Ventura, clutching a sign in one hand and the American flag in the other, said: “Over 20 million babies have been killed since Roe vs. Wade. That is more than the number of soldiers killed in all the wars.”

Jim Peltier of Oxnard said he supports the Gulf War effort. “I think we need to stop aggression, and abortion is also aggression,” he said.

Chris Maguire, one of the organizers of the protest, said it went on as scheduled partly because it had been planned since October and would have been too hard to rearrange.

In response, the Ventura-Oxnard Chapter of the National Organization for Women criticized the protest as an effort to impose religious beliefs on the public as a whole.

NOW spokeswoman Nicolette Worley said that since the Roe vs. Wade decision, polls have shown that a growing majority of Americans think abortion should remain legal--and that most mainstream religious denominations support abortion rights.

“These picketeers are not only in the religious minority, but the minority of the general population as well,” she said.

During Sunday’s 1 1/2-hour protest, a few abortion-rights activists clustered at Victoria Avenue and Telephone Road, holding signs that read “No More Holy War on Women” and “Who Decides--You or Them?” Demonstrators said that abortion was a personal decision and that they found the protest especially distressing against a backdrop of war.

“Here we have bombs dropping, and the threat of the entire world being wiped out, which to me seems more important,” said Marlene Head of Oxnard, whose stepson just completed military basic training.

“This demonstration should be for peace, not about abortion,” said Irene Adelson of Oxnard.

The so-called Life Chain protests were scheduled in 11 other California cities Sunday, said Royce Dunn of Yuba City, who organized the first Life Chain in 1987.