Nearly 200 Arrested in Abortion Protest : Clinics: They attempt to break through people guarding one facility. Most of them are charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and trespassing.

Nearly 200 people were arrested Wednesday outside a suburban Buffalo abortion clinic as Operation Rescue stepped up its activities on the second full day of the group’s anti-abortion campaign here.

Police arrested at least 190 abortion opponents as they rushed onto a four-lane highway in front of a clinic in Amherst. The protesters attempted to breach police barricades and penetrate a human shield of abortion rights advocates guarding the facility.

The anti-abortion demonstrators fell limp to the pavement as they were seized by police. Officers dragged or carried them away, bound their wrists with plastic handcuffs and transported them to a nearby makeshift holding center. Authorities said most were charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing.

The arrests, which made dramatic fare for television cameras, came on the same day as the Supreme Court in Washington was hearing arguments on a case from Pennsylvania with potentially far-reaching implications for abortion rights.

Demonstrations also were held elsewhere. In Philadelphia, about 100 abortion rights activists demonstrated in front of the Liberty Bell and another 40 marched to the city morgue, predicting that the high court would curtail abortion, with drastic consequences. About 300 abortion opponents rallied at the Illinois Statehouse in Springfield to demand passage of a bill requiring women to be told their options before having abortions.

Five news media photographers and an abortion rights activist were arrested in Amherst, reportedly for defying a police order to stay off the highway. “Anyone on the streets will be arrested,” a police commander had warned through a bullhorn as the protest intensified Wednesday morning.

Operation Rescue plans two to four weeks of protests against abortions in this Lake Erie metropolitan area.

The Amherst clinic is operated by Dr. Shalom Press, whose home also was the target Wednesday of anti-abortion demonstrators. “Press kills children,” said the signs of abortion foes demonstrating outside the doctor’s home.

Abortion rights advocates and abortion opponents also demonstrated at three clinics in Buffalo.

“We have over 2,000 people involved today, and the presence was so strong it kept people from the abortion clinics,” said the Rev. Paul Schenck, an Assembly of God minister from the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda. Schenck and his twin brother, Robert, who also is a minister, were arrested during a demonstration Tuesday in Buffalo but were released on their own recognizance after being charged.

Robert Murphy, an Operation Rescue attorney, said 175 of the arrested protesters refused to identify themselves to police. He said they probably would be jailed until police found other ways to identify them for arraignment.

Schenck’s estimate of the number of anti-abortion participants could not be verified, but the actual figure seemed to be far less. At the same time as the Amherst clinic demonstrations were heating up, for example, only about a dozen abortion opponents could be seen at one clinic in Buffalo that had drawn more than 150 abortion foes the day before.

Linda Stadler, officer manager for Press’ clinic, said the demonstrators had not stopped any women from getting abortions Wednesday. Other clinics also reported no disruptions in their schedules.

The home of Buffalo Mayor James D. Griffin also was the site of a protest Wednesday by people favoring legalized abortions. Griffin, who said last fall that Operation Rescue would be welcome in Buffalo, took the demonstration in stride.

“I’ve been picketed before,” he said. “It’s part of the job.”

Abortion rights activists took up their stations around the Amherst clinic more than two hours before Operation Rescue’s supporters arrived about 9 a.m. The scene quickly turned into one of shouts, jeers and hymn singing.

As one woman pulled up in a car to go into the clinic, an anti-abortion activist rushed up and attempted to dissuade her: “You will feel the pain of it and go home an empty woman,” she said.

“Shut up and get out of her face!” cried an abortion rights advocate.

Local officials in the Buffalo area have begun to grow worried about the mounting costs of overtime to handle the demonstrators.

“It costs us in terms of money (and) in terms of emotion,” Erie County Executive Dennis Gorski said at a news conference. “People demonstrating with epithets and foul language at each other is wrong. I wish all these people would go back to where they come from and leave Buffalo and Erie County alone.”

Recently released figures indicate that 150,000 abortions were performed in New York in 1989, the latest year for which statistics are available. Of that number, 9,434 were performed in an eight-county area of western New York that includes Buffalo. The state paid $17.5 million in Medicaid costs for abortions in 1989.