Targeting Doctors : Protest: Anti-abortion forces picket physicians who perform relatively few of the procedures. Abortion-rights supporters decry the tactic as unfair.

The headline on the flyer proclaims: “WANTED! For killing unborn babies in the South Bay!”

Beneath are the photos of dignified-looking male physicians in jackets and ties, some gray-haired and bespectacled--hardly the Central Casting image of hardened criminals on the loose.

This flyer is part of an anti-abortion campaign targeting 10 Torrance obstetrician-gynecologists who are said to perform abortions as part of their regular practices.

The South Bay has become a hot spot in the abortion debate because Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles is searching for a site in or near Torrance for a new clinic that would offer abortions. It would be the first such clinic to open in the Los Angeles area in several years.

Operation Rescue of California promises to launch similar protests against individual doctors in coming months--complete with “wanted” flyers--in Orange County, San Diego, San Jose and Sacramento.

What sets this type of protest apart is that it focuses not on clinics commonly picketed by anti-abortion groups, but on private physicians for whom abortion may only be a small fraction of their day-to-day work. Protesters have labeled these doctors “Lomita Boulevard abortionists” who must be exposed to their patients and neighbors.

“We feel it’s important to highlight anyone who kills for a living, regardless of whether they kill one or 50 a week,” said Operation Rescue spokeswoman Monika Moreno.

And J. T. Finn, director of the South Bay Pro-Life Coalition, says the campaign is generating “public awareness that doctors who are supposed to be healing are actually killing babies.”

Abortion opponents have been hoisting their picket signs and fetus posters weekly this month in peaceful protests outside the doctors’ offices in Torrance, a largely middle-class suburb that is the South Bay’s largest city.

Abortion-rights supporters decry the campaign as unfair to doctors and patients, and some worry that it could heighten physicians’ nervousness that offering abortions will bring pickets to their doorsteps.

But four of the targeted Torrance doctors said in interviews this week that they have no plans to discontinue offering abortions, which they said constitute only a tiny fraction of their medical practices.

Some expressed bewilderment as to why they have been singled out, their names emblazoned on picket signs accusing them of killing babies.

Such tactics are misrepresenting what the doctors do, said Dr. Stephen Colodny, who has practiced in Torrance for more than 20 years and says abortions account for less than 1% of his income.

“It would be no hardship at all to stop, but I don’t intend to be intimidated into it,” Colodny said.

He called the flyers and pickets misleading: “I could stand outside an orthopedist’s office and say, ‘Dr. Jones cuts off legs.’ It’s true, but it’s a distortion of what the person does.”

Three doctors said their views were shaped because they did their medical training in the years before abortion was legalized.

“It had a major impact on my thought processes. I know you cannot legislate against abortion. People will do it, no matter what,” said Dr. Gerald Wasserwald.

Another targeted physician, Dr. Reinhold Ullrich, recalled testifying in court in San Pedro about women he had seen die after suffering side effects from illegal abortions.

“That’s why I think a woman should have a right to choose,” said Ullrich, a past president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. who has practiced in Torrance since 1957.

Dr. Ben Naghi, who is also targeted, questioned what some women would do if they could not choose abortion. “All these teen-agers? What are they going to do?” he said. “They’re 15, 16. . . . These are kids. They’re going to have kids themselves?”

The other six targeted doctors either could not be reached or would not comment.

The county Medical Assn.’s president, Long Beach internist Dr. Richard Wigod, said Thursday that this is the first time he has heard of Operation Rescue targeting obstetrician-gynecologists in the county.

He criticized the flyers as “very biased, very slanted, and frankly quite irrational, in my view.”

In the long run, Wigod said the tactic may backfire. “I think patients and families who are familiar with these doctors . . . they probably would be affronted by this,” he said.

Organizers describe the protests as a joint venture of Operation Rescue and the South Bay Pro-Life Coalition. The so-called “No Place to Hide” campaign started in Torrance May 6 and has continued every Wednesday for two to three hours at midday. Supporters of legalized abortion have begun mixing peacefully with anti-abortion picketers. Nearly 70 people were present at noontime Wednesday, with about half the signs displaying anti-abortion messages and half defending abortion.

Anti-abortion protester John B. Zielinski of Torrance, who wore rosary beads wrapped around his wrist, displayed a large sign reading “Catholics Can’t Be Pro-Choice.” He hopes to persuade the doctors to halt abortions, he said.

“They’ve got to realize, essentially what they’re doing is murdering unborn children,” Zielinski said.

Two abortion-rights supporters standing nearby carried American flags.

“I think maybe the people against choice don’t know what country they’re in, and this is a reminder,” said Ann Hikida of Lomita.

Some abortion-rights advocates predict that targeting doctors such as those in Torrance could politicize patients and the medical establishment--and hurt the anti-abortion movement in the process.

“The more their tactics go to this level, people say they won’t take it anymore. Peoples’ tolerance is reaching an end,” said Debra Berman, a coordinator of the Palos Verdes/South Bay chapter of the National Organization for Women and an organizer of the counter-protests.

But anti-abortion activist Finn disagreed: “The more that abortion is exposed, the more uncomfortable it’s going to be for doctors to provide abortions.”