Abortion Foes Have Tougher Task : Clinics: Operation Rescue’s opponents in Buffalo, N.Y., are preventing a recurrence of the turmoil the group caused in Wichita, Kan.

For most of the past week, Dianne Mathiowetz has been leading a double life--an auto parts assembly-line worker by night, an abortion rights activist by day.

It is tiring, she says. She does not get home from the plant until 1 a.m. At the crack of dawn, she is up and out among the hundreds of abortion rights advocates standing guard outside the abortion clinics targeted by Operation Rescue in its anti-abortion campaign here. Then, by 1:30 p.m., she is off to work at the factory again.

But for her and her comrades-in-arms, many of whom also are doing double duty in support of the abortion rights cause, the payoff is worth the sacrifice. Buffalo, she says, is proving to be Operation Rescue’s Waterloo.

“They came here from Wichita with all the bluster of bullies on a playground,” said Mathiowetz, 45, a tall, raven-haired woman with more than two decades of involvement in the abortion rights movement. “They have been surprised by the large numbers of people we’ve turned out, their absolute spirit and determination and our sophisticated organization.”

Operation Rescue’s leaders vigorously deny that their “Spring for Life” offensive here has been stymied. They cite the hundreds of adherents they turn out each day, widespread support from local churches and the women who they assert have been deterred from getting abortions.

“There’s nothing discouraging about this,” said the Rev. Paul Schenck, 33, senior pastor at New Covenant Tabernacle, an Assembly of God church in suburban Tonawanda. “We’ve just begun to fight.”

That may be. But after almost a week of Operation Rescue’s highly publicized campaign here, one thing seems obvious: If Buffalo does not prove to be the national anti-abortion group’s Waterloo, it almost certainly will not be another Wichita.

Unlike that Kansas community, which was thrown into turmoil last summer during Operation Rescue’s 46-day protest, this western New York city had abortion rights proponents fully prepared for this campaign. They appear to have checkmated Operation Rescue at every step.

Abortion rights advocates began their efforts four months ago, after Operation Rescue announced that Buffalo would be their next battleground and Buffalo Mayor James D. Griffin welcomed the group, saying their partisans would be treated “with compassion” by Buffalo police.

Abortion rights advocates formed a local group, Buffalo United for Choice, that rallied troops, setting up nonviolence defense training programs for more than 800 people.

Now, in contrast to the disruption that Operation Rescue caused in Wichita, here the disorder has amounted to little more than congestion around various clinic sites and blocked traffic.

On Tuesday, the first full day of Operation Rescue’s campaign to shut down abortion clinics, abortion rights demonstrators were out in full force hours before their adversaries to guard the four targeted clinics. They formed human shields around the facilities. Site leaders maintained contact with a central command center through cellular phones, providing updates and receiving intelligence on the scenes elsewhere.

As a result, the day ended in a standoff, with clinics still open.

On Wednesday, Operation Rescue threw the brunt of its force against a clinic in suburban Amherst. More than 190 abortion foes were arrested as they attempted to break through the police barriers and penetrate the human shield of abortion rights demonstrators. Again, the clinic kept operating. So did the other three on Operation Rescue’s hit list.

On Thursday, its army decimated by the arrests of the day before, Operation Rescue concentrated on a clinic near Buffalo General Hospital. Hundreds of abortion opponents lined the sidewalks across from the facility but were met by an equal force of abortion rights activists. The day ended in another standoff.

At the clinic, meanwhile, 13 of the scheduled 20 appointments were kept, manager Louise Crawley said. One woman canceled but rescheduled, she said, and the other six were no-shows. Whether Operation Rescue deterred them, she said, was not known. A reporter who was allowed inside said she saw 10 women awaiting abortions.

Operation Rescue leaders claimed that no women had received abortions at the clinic.

The Rev. Keith Tucci, Operation Rescue’s national leader, now asserts that his group never planned to make Buffalo another Wichita.

“This is not a national event,” he said, “this is a regional event. I never said that we were going to make it another Wichita. Our objective is to make a new Buffalo.”