Hundreds Remember Slain Clinic Workers : Abortion: Overflow crowd attends memorial for two women fatally shot last week. Meanwhile, their accused killer is arraigned in Virginia.

An overflow crowd spilled into the streets of Boston on Tuesday as more than 1,200 people gathered to remember the two women killed in separate attacks at abortion clinics here last week.

The familiar voice of actress Kathleen Turner joined the chorus of outrage during a hastily arranged news conference that proceeded the memorial service for 25-year-old Shannon Lowney at the Arlington Street Church. Turner recalled her own youthful experiences as a client--and later as a volunteer--at several Planned Parenthood clinics, saying: “I don’t believe that any of us thought our lives were on the line.

“It never occurred to us. It should not.”

Somber in a black suit, Turner was joined by Pamela Maraldo, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America International in New York, and by Nicki Nichols Gamble, who heads the organization’s Massachusetts arm.

The Planned Parenthood clinic in nearby Brookline, Mass., was the first target Friday morning of a gunman who then proceeded to a second clinic a mile away.

Lowney and 38-year-old Leanne Nichols, the receptionist at Preterm Health Services, were killed; five others were wounded. A statement from Nichols’ fiance honoring her was read at the service Tuesday.

The alleged assassin, 22-year-old apprentice hairdresser John C. Salvi III of Hampton Beach, N.H., was apprehended Saturday in Norfolk, Va., after an extensive manhunt.

Turner riveted the tearful crowd--in which strangers supported one another in a feeling of collective tragedy--as she read Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” while a French horn soloist filled the church with a mournful anthem.

The Lowney family of Fairfield, Conn., was unable to attend because they were making arrangements to bury the young woman’s 88-year-old grandfather, who died shortly after hearing of her death.

Gamble said Tuesday that installation of new security devices will delay the Planned Parenthood clinic’s reopening for full services until next week. The Preterm clinic also has closed temporarily because of the shootings.

“Our staff are quite frankly traumatized by this,” Gamble said.

In the wake of clinic murders in Florida last year, she continued, the staff at the facility here went so far as to order bulletproof vests for doctors, “and even to suggest helmets,” Gamble said.

“But this,” she remarked, pausing to compose herself “was a nightmare we could not anticipate to happen inside a clinic.”

Maraldo said that since Friday’s shootings, threats against clinics nationwide have escalated in number and severity.

Clinic operators around the country hired armed guards or armed themselves in reaction to the latest violence.

A Toledo, Ohio, clinic that was firebombed in the 1980s demanded protection from federal marshals. A clinic doctor in Arizona said he was packing a gun and wearing a bulletproof vest.

In Montgomery, Ala., Beacon Women’s Center owner K.B. Kohls said she has installed a metal detector. She said she also has a gun and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

On Tuesday, Salvi was in isolation in a closely watched jail cell in Virginia as prosecutors tried to work out whether that state or Massachusetts would try him first.

In an appearance before Norfolk General District Judge Reid M. Spencer, he was ordered held without bail. He looked mostly at the ground and entered no plea to the Virginia charges of shooting at an occupied building, which included an abortion clinic. No one was injured in that attack. Salvi had been charged hours earlier with two counts of murder in the Massachusetts shootings.

Federal prosecutors in Boston said they were considering charging Salvi under a combination of laws punishable by the death penalty, which Massachusetts does not have.

Salvi has asked to see a Roman Catholic priest, his court-appointed attorney, Tazewell Hubard said.

The powerful National Conference of Catholic Bishops said Tuesday it will consider a call by Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston to halt protests outside clinics. Law called for the moratorium as a means of cooling passions.

President Clinton on Monday ordered a number of police task forces to study how to avert violence at clinics. He also told U.S. marshals to consult with clinics in their areas about potential threats.

Times wire services contributed to this story.

* L.A. CLINICS WARY: Planned Parenthood officials, authorities review security. B1