Abortion Foes Picket Palos Verdes Estates Home : Rights: Police choose not to enforce an ordinance that bans such protests around dwellings. Operation Rescue promises similar activities directed at doctors who live in the South Bay.

A crowd of abortion foes have taken their cause to a residential neighborhood in Palos Verdes Estates, picketing the gated home of a doctor who they said performs abortions.

Operation Rescue, which organized the event, promised that more protests will follow outside the homes of other doctors in the South Bay. The anti-abortion group is distributing a list of the names and addresses of nine doctors who live on the peninsula, most of whom are private obstetricians with offices in Torrance.

“No place to hide for Palos Verdes abortionists,” the list is titled.

The protest last Saturday continued the tactic of drawing attention to individual doctors who reportedly perform abortions, a tactic that drew widespread criticism last month when an anti-abortion protester shot and killed a doctor in Florida.

Abortion-rights advocates decried the Saturday protest, calling it harassment.

“I think these are inflammatory techniques, and they are inciting violence,” said Debra Berman, co-coordinator of the Palos Verdes/South Bay chapter of the National Organization for Women.

The doctor who was picketed described himself as a family practitioner who does fewer than 10 abortions a year. He said he is mystified as to why protesters singled him out.

Palos Verdes Estates police estimate that at least 150 people participated in the demonstration, which proceeded despite a 1990 city ordinance that specifically prohibits picketing “before or about the residence or dwelling of any individual.”

Police Chief Gary Johansen said police decided not to enforce the ordinance because protesters appeared ready to “start a problem,” with some carrying video cameras or encouraging police to arrest others in the crowd.

“Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. It just makes more sense not to start a confrontation,” Johansen said. “I just don’t think you need to make waves unless it’s necessary.”’

Johansen said the physician targeted in the protest, Dr. Myung Rha, left his home with a police escort during the picketing, and that four of five people tried to lie in front of his car to stop him.

Rha said that protesters banged on his car as he left and shouted things like, “How many did you kill?” Protesters also distributed a leaflet in his neighborhood saying Rha “kills babies,” and they gathered at his office last Friday, he said.

“I’m not an abortionist, I’m a family doctor. I take care of the family,” added Rha, who said he has practiced for 14 years and treats a largely Korean clientele. He said he does not know how protesters found his home. The pickets were both unexpected and frightening, he said.

“My kid is afraid to go out, my wife is afraid. Everyone is afraid,” he said. “We saw the newspaper. They killed one doctor.”

The shooting in Florida occurred during a protest organized by a different anti-abortion organization.

Operation Rescue spokeswoman Sue Finn said the protests attempt to “shed light on who these people are. They’ve been able to perform abortions in secret for many years.”

Finn said protesters hope to persuade doctors “to go into a legitimate form of medicine, not one that kills children, but one that saves lives.”

Anti-abortion protesters last month picketed outside the offices of 13 Torrance obstetricians and gynecologists who claimed that abortion accounts for only a small percentage of their practices.

A civil liberties lawyer suggested that the pickets could violate the doctors’ right to privacy.

“These doctors are not public figures,” said Carol Sobel, senior staff counsel of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. The point of the pickets, she said, “is to make it so physically terrifying that these doctors will give up their practices.”

South Bay anti-abortion activist Monika Moreno questioned whether such picketing could be banned, saying protesters have a constitutional right to free speech.

Some governmental bodies, nonetheless, have taken steps to restrict the picketing of private homes.

An ordinance passed in July, 1990, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors forbids anyone to picket “before or about the residence or dwelling” of any individual. It applies to unincorporated areas of the county.

A similar ordinance, approved two months later in Palos Verdes Estates, was prompted by concern that some protesters were planning to picket the Palos Verdes Estates home of Supervisor Deane Dana, said City Manager Jim Hendrickson.

Defying the ordinance is a minor infraction that carries a fine of not more than $100 for the first offense, Hendrickson said. To his knowledge, he added, the ordinance has not been enforced since it was adopted.

Anti-abortion protests at doctors’ homes prompted the San Jose City Council last month to approve a permanent ban on picketing in neighborhoods within 300 feet of a targeted home. And the City Council in Tustin recently moved to forbid pickets at private homes after an anti-abortion group picketed the home of a family planning clinic manager.