Harman Meets With Leaders About Picketing : Abortion: She has ‘a very quiet discussion’ with law-enforcement officials and with doctors who fear they could be the target of Operation Rescue protests.

Citing concerns about public safety, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey) met last week with doctors and law-enforcement officials to discuss plans by abortion foes to picket the homes of physicians on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“It was a very quiet discussion of what we could do to prevent and defuse any intimidating conduct that would threaten personal safety,” Harman said.

Harman said she organized the session after receiving a letter from a Torrance doctor worried about plans by the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue to picket the homes of local doctors who it claims perform abortions.

The meeting, originally set for May 7, was moved to last Monday out of concern that publicity would draw anti-abortion pickets. Reporters were not invited to the Monday meeting in Rancho Palos Verdes, and Harman’s office declined to identify the doctors who attended.

The doctor who requested the meeting said Friday that it helped educate people about the picketing issue.

“The biggest thing as far as I’m concerned is that now all the officials in the community are involved,” said the doctor, who asked not to be identified. “Law enforcement is involved, and they understand what’s happening, and the problems.”

Harman said that five or six doctors attended the meeting, along with representatives of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the district attorney’s office, the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department and some elected officials from peninsula cities.

Sue Finn, spokeswoman for Operation Rescue of California, questioned whether the meeting was necessary.

“My feeling is that the doctors in Palos Verdes and the South Bay have nothing to fear,” Finn said.

“For (Harman) to spend this much time to protect 10 people who aren’t at risk anyway is just pro-abortion politics,” Finn said. “Our people are committed to being peaceful and nonviolent, so I don’t know what she’s trying to accomplish, other than making her constituents feel good--her pro-abortion constituents.”

Harman, who supported abortion rights during her successful congressional campaign last fall, said Friday that the purpose of the meeting was not to stop lawful conduct.

“The meeting was not a debate about the choice issue,” she said. “It was a conversation about safety and how we can all feel more secure.” The issue of picketing doctors’ homes has stirred debate on the peninsula since about 150 protesters with Operation Rescue picketed one doctor’s Palos Verdes Estates home April 10.

Operation Rescue has the names and addresses of 10 other physicians that it claims perform abortions. The group says it plans to return to picket some or all of those doctors’ homes on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Most of the doctors are Torrance obstetricians, and some say that abortion accounts for only a small part of their practice. Some are concerned about their safety, citing the fatal shooting of a Florida doctor in March during an anti-abortion protest by a different group.