Abortion Foes Join in Prayer Vigils : Protests: Organizers say peaceful demonstrations at clinics in Inglewood and Gardena have been successful. Abortion rights advocates say the tactic is drawing fewer people than expected.

Madeleine Hendrickx stood like a sentry outside a Gardena doctor’s office, armed with a rosary and a Sony Walkman.

Through her earphones, she was listening to sweet-sounding French songs of prayer. Through her prayers, she was trying to combat abortion.

This was Hendrickx’s first anti-abortion protest. The 64-year-old Redondo Beach woman says she could not imagine taking more radical steps, such as the blockading of clinics in Wichita, Kan., that have resulted in the arrests of 2,400 demonstrators since mid-July.

“I’m a peacemaker. . . . I don’t like big confrontations,” Hendrickx said outside the clinic Tuesday. “It’s up to God to open their ears.”

In Gardena and elsewhere in California in recent days, abortion foes have been employing a less aggressive tactic on the sidewalks of clinics and doctors’ offices--a series of prayer vigils called “Turn the Hearts” that are intended to draw followers who oppose abortion but find more strident actions distasteful.

Some abortion foes “won’t go to a rescue, they won’t carry a sign, they won’t picket--but they’ll pray,” said Don Combar of Torrance, an anti-abortion leader at St. Lawrence Martyr Catholic Church in Redondo Beach, one of several area churches that joined in vigils outside Gardena Obstetrics and Gynecology on Western Avenue.

Eight people prayed, eyes lowered, during the Gardena gathering around midday Tuesday. Another 21 protesters prayed and talked at a second demonstration outside Family Planning Associates Medical Group on East 99th Street in Inglewood, one of the area’s largest abortion providers.

The vigils suggest the abortion debate is heating up again in the South Bay, which has become a target of protest since Planned Parenthood Los Angeles announced its intention to make Torrance the site of its first new clinic in seven years.

Last week, the mere prospect of a prayer vigil on its doorstep prompted a Torrance surgical center to ban abortions. Abortion foes hope more South Bay clinics and physicians will follow.

“There are a lot of people willing to stand up for the unborn (in the South Bay). It’s a relatively (politically) conservative area,” said Monika Moreno of Redondo Beach, spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group California Coalition for Life.

Abortion rights advocates question the overall effectiveness of this week’s campaign, claiming the vigils are drawing far fewer protesters than activists statewide had predicted.

“We have been shocked by the numbers out there, especially when they said it was going to be such a big deal,” said Valerie Berman, coordinator of the Clinic Defense Alliance.

Her group had assigned “escorts” to usher patients through what they thought would be an aggressive group of demonstrators. But within days, Berman let the escorts go.

“They’ve been bored out of their minds,” she said.

Kathy Spillar, national coordinator of the Feminist Majority Foundation in Los Angeles, said protesters failed to materialize at some California clinics. “I would say this is a bust for them at a time they should be gaining momentum,” she said.

But abortion foes are labeling the vigils a success, singling out the decision by Surgicenter of South Bay on Madison Street in Torrance to ban abortions on its premises.

Organizers had predicted as many as 200 protesters would materialize outside Surgicenter’s doors last Saturday. But the event was canceled after the center halted abortions, and the protesters were reassigned.

About 40 demonstrators were reported Saturday at the Inglewood clinic, although organizers claim that 300 people in all participated in rotating shifts that day. Police said they spotted about 20 people at the Gardena site Saturday.

Some physicians and women’s rights groups downplayed the significance of Surgicenter’s action, saying it performed too few abortions to have any real impact on the availability of services in the area. The clinic, which specializes in eye surgery, performed 27 abortions this year, a clinic official said.

Nationally, studies have cited a decrease in abortion providers in recent years, most dramatically in rural areas. The wave of anti-abortion protests is believed to be a factor because it can drive up the cost of insurance and security for abortion providers, said Susan Tew, a spokeswoman at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York City, a nonprofit reproductive research institute. She said, however, that its precise impact is difficult to measure.

But throughout the South Bay, accessibility does not appear to have been affected by months of sporadic protests, and abortion services continue to be offered by many private doctors, hospitals and other surgical centers, physicians said.

“Even though one avenue is perhaps blocked (at Surgicenter), there certainly are plenty of avenues available,” said Dr. Reinhold Ullrich, a Torrance obstetrician and gynecologist and former Los Angeles County Medical Assn. president.

“I don’t think there’s any difficulty of women obtaining an abortion through a private physician in the South Bay,” added Dr. Arthur L. Wisot, another Torrance obstetrician and gynecologist.

Although Operation Rescue claims one South Bay physician--who it will not name--promised to stop performing abortions this spring when threatened with a demonstration, several area physicians said they know of no South Bay colleagues who have bowed to the protests.

Even when Operation Rescue recently picketed the home of Dr. Nicholas Braemer, a Torrance obstetrician and gynecologist, he stood firm.

“It’s unpleasant,” said Braemer, adding that he has received crank telephone calls at work. But the pressure is not new, he said. “This has been going on for years and years and years.”

At the Family Planning Associates Medical Group in Inglewood, officials questioned whether the protesters had accomplished much.

“These things are always kind of a nuisance,” Dr. Edward C. Allred, the group’s medical director, said. “We don’t pay any attention to them. . . . People don’t change their minds. Occasionally a patient might go through a change of heart, but usually they’re back in two to three days.”

Still, abortion foes press on.

Shortly before noon Tuesday, 15 people formed a circle, locked hands and prayed on a tree-shaded Inglewood sidewalk as a clinic guard looked on.

Some vigil participants acted as “sidewalk counselors,” attempting to dissuade several women who headed toward the clinic’s doors. Their goal is what they call the “saves”--babies born to women who have been talked out of an abortion.

The demonstrators weren’t planning any blockades or Wichita-style drama, said vigil coordinator Diane Ryan of Redondo Beach.

“Everything is lawful,” she said. “Christians are coming out to pray.”