45 Arrested in Protest at Louisiana Abortion Clinic

Abortion foes made their most aggressive assault Friday in a weeklong siege on the city’s only abortion clinic, but a clinic spokesman said it didn’t shut down.

Police made 45 arrests, mostly of people who tried to charge police lines in front of the clinic’s two entrances. Some of those arrested were abortion-rights supporters, police spokesman Kevin Cavell said.

No serious injuries were reported.

Abortion protesters began to gather shortly after midnight, and police estimated the crowd at 800 by 5 a.m., compared with about 200 abortion-rights supporters. About 250 people were around the clinic by mid-morning, as the temperature rose.

The Rev. Keith Tucci, executive director of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said demonstrators talked a pregnant woman out of having an abortion.

“She talked to one of our sidewalk counselors and decided she did not want an abortion,” Tucci told abortion-rights advocates across a police line.

Clinic spokesman Steve Watsky said all seven appointments made with the clinic were kept. He said the usual number of women seen each day at the clinic is about 20.

Outside the clinic, tempers rose with the steamy Louisiana heat, which hit 89 degrees by 11 a.m.

“You people are scum! Scum!” an abortion foe yelled. “You have no respect for life. No respect for God. You’ll all burn in hell.”

A woman replied: “I’d rather be in hell than in heaven with someone like you.”

Police helped escort some women into the clinic, angering anti-abortion leaders who said police had said they wouldn’t perform escorts.

“It’s a security decision, and we won’t address it further,” Cavell said.

Watsky said two of Friday’s patients were “ringers,” abortion foes who weren’t pregnant and brought urine specimens from pregnant women. They left when clinic officials confronted them, Watsky said.

Operation Rescue began a week of rallies and demonstrations in the Louisiana capital last weekend but didn’t begin attempts to disrupt operations at Delta Women’s Clinic until Thursday.

About 12 arrests were made Thursday. Most of those arrested were charged with misdemeanors. Today is the last scheduled day of protests in Baton Rouge.

Tucci had said July 4 that crowds of anti-abortion demonstrators would jam the city and overflow to other Louisiana cities where abortions are performed. That has not happened.

The crowds have not approached those that took to the streets for 46 days in Wichita last summer, or in Buffalo, N.Y., for two weeks this spring.