Whatever Happened to ... 1993 : Revisiting some of View’s most talked-about stories, we find progress for anxious parents and neon signs, second thoughts about a controversial sect - and pregnant women still craving “magic” salad. : Quietly, Quickly, Clinic Reopens

Mondays and Tuesdays are again “abortion days” in Bakersfield.

Family Planning Associates quietly reopened Nov. 6--at a new location, in a sturdy brick building which it owns--and with high-powered, 24-hour security. All this only six weeks after the clinic’s previous, rented, offices were burned to the ground in a spectacular arson fire that also demolished eight other businesses (“After the Fire--a Chill,” View, Oct. 11, 1993). No arrests have been made.

Family Planning Associates, targeted for years by local abortion foes, is the only place in Bakersfield where women can get elective abortions. (The Bakersfield area has the highest pregnancy rate for 10- to 14-year-olds in the state.)

“We were awe-struck with the speed at which they reopened, as was almost everyone in town,” says a Planned Parenthood employee, who asked not to be identified. Planned Parenthood allowed FPA to share its offices after the fire, although no abortions were permitted. “They were determined not to give in to that kind of terrorism. A fire could not stop them. They quickly bought and remodeled a building, and they’re busier now than before.”

Tim Palmquist, Bakersfield’s most visible anti-abortion activist, says he and others involved in the movement were “totally shocked” the clinic reopened so soon.

“We’d hoped to prevent them from (establishing) another location,” he says. Not by violence, of course, he adds. In fact, “no pro-lifer has even been questioned by authorities in the three months since the fire. We’re either clearly not suspects or they’re clearly inept.”

He doubts the latter. In fact, he hopes authorities have the same suspicions he has: “That the clinic could be responsible for the fire itself.” (FPA officials continue to refuse comment to the press about the arson or its Bakersfield operation.) He believes FPA benefited from the fire “by being able to move to a more central, more secure location.”

Fire Marshall Larry Toler, in charge of the arson investigation, confirms that no local anti-abortion activists have been questioned, but says the investigation is ongoing. He says he has “absolutely no reason to believe FPA was involved in causing the fire.”

Though the Palmquist group has done “sidewalk counseling” for those using the new clinic, he sounds a bit dispirited: “Other than a six-week hiatus of abortions in Bakersfield--and we’re not even sure about that--nothing much has changed.”