Choosing a Confrontation : Religion: Anti-abortionists demonstrate outside San Pedro’s only synagogue, where nearly 200 people were attending a forum titled ‘Pro-Choice in the Religious Community.’ Protesters likened abortions to the Holocaust.

The protesters massed as the sun was setting over San Pedro, armed with placards denouncing abortions and determined that those inside would hear their message.

As guests arrived, they found themselves walking a gantlet between the rows of demonstrators singing “God Bless America” and “Amazing Grace.”

These protesters were not gathered outside an abortion clinic, but at Temple Beth El, San Pedro’s only synagogue, where nearly 200 people were attending a forum titled “Pro-Choice in the Religious Community.”

“This meeting is a slap in God’s face,” said J. T. Finn, director of the South Bay Pro-Life Coalition. “They’re calling themselves religious leaders, and yet their goal is to protect murdering unborn children.”

The meeting at Temple Beth El on Wednesday was intended to “provide a focus for the pro-choice religious community,” said Rabbi David Lieb, who helped organize the evening. Among the speakers were Lieb, the Rev. Dr. Barbara Kilgore of the First United Methodist Church of San Pedro, and Bunnie Riedel, director of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights of Southern California.

The meeting also drew nearly 200 protesters, who prayed, sang and distributed anti-abortion literature as those inside applauded speakers who maintained that women have a right to choose.

Finn said the protest was organized as a “prayerful vigil” by the coalition, Operation Rescue and religious leaders from the San Pedro Pastors Fellowship.

Some protesters likened abortions to the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews died before and during World War II.

“I’d agree that what we’re talking about here is an American holocaust,” Finn said. When asked Thursday if he was equating abortion to the death of Jews in World War II, Finn said: “I feel this is as great, if not a greater holocaust in terms of innocent lives being slaughtered.”

The idea drew a sharp rebuke from some who attended the conference. Riedel said that it was “the height of disrespect to picket at a synagogue.”

“It really shows how out-of-touch they are that they can compare the moral God-given choice of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy with the willful slaughter of well over 6 million fully grown, fully personed human beings,” she said.

“They have no regard for human life to make those comparisons, and no regard for the pain and suffering of Holocaust survivors.”

Nearly two dozen Los Angeles police officers blocked off 7th Street outside the temple and stood guard during the protest. Although tempers occasionally flared, police reported no arrests.

“I’m not going to look at those pictures,” one woman said as a protester held up a large photo depicting what appeared to be a fetus.

Pastor Dan Brown, chairman of the San Pedro Pastors Fellowship, said he did not want the protest to “be seen as an issue of Christians against Jews. And we don’t see it that way at all.”

Instead, Brown said, “we were there because we believe God has spoken on the issue.”

Lieb said the meeting fulfilled the intent “of providing a location for pro-choice people within the religious community to come together.”

The presence of the anti-abortion protesters, he said, helped shape the evening.

“As our people were coming in, it sort of galvanized them, made the evening more important for them, because they could see the face of the opposition. . . . They could understand and experience the depth of the issue.”