Abortion Clinics Open Amid Anxiety, Outrage : Valley: Representatives on both sides of the issue are angered in aftermath of Massachusetts shootings.

In the San Fernando Valley, the two largest abortion clinics, Family Planning Associates Medical Group and Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, remained open Friday while representatives on both sides of the abortion debate expressed outrage over the shootings at two Massachusetts abortion clinics.

“We’re saddened by the loss of two lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and on a personal level I’m furious that someone had the audacity to do this,” said Suellen Wood, executive director of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

Wood said a Planned Parenthood administrator visited its clinics in Burbank, Sherman Oaks and Canoga Park to assure staff that they would be protected by security and to remind them of security procedures.

Planned Parenthood’s Valley locations have been infrequently targeted by protesters, but Wood noted that many employees were worried by the past year of violent attacks on abortion providers.

“If you heard that at one of your other offices, someone came in and shot up a bunch of staff, would that make you nervous?” she asked. “It would not at all surprise me if we lost staff over this.”

At the Pregnancy Counseling Center in Mission Hills, where pregnant women are offered alternatives to abortion, Director Gail M. Hamilton said she was saddened by the shootings and feared that nonviolent abortion opponents would be tainted by the acts of “an obviously sick man.”

“It hurts us that people who are not associated with us cause others to think of us as radicals, and we’re anything but radicals,” she said. “We fear for our center, too, when things like this happen; that somebody’s going to be a nut for the other side. We’ve had death threats and reprisals, too. Last Jan. 4, our window was shot out.”

“I don’t really know why there is a nut in Florida and a nut in Massachusetts and none here,” Hamilton said. “It’s really only a matter of time.”