Abortion Protest Confronts Students Outside High School

Antiabortion protesters carrying large colored pictures of supposed aborted fetuses demonstrated outside Laguna Beach High School on Tuesday but were largely ignored by students, most of whom shrugged past the protesters, rejecting their literature.

The 7 a.m. demonstration, held as students were arriving for morning classes, marked the first time the Dallas-based antiabortion group Operation Rescue has targeted an Orange County school. Similar demonstrations are scheduled today at El Toro, Mission Viejo and Trabuco Hills high schools.

“We’re going back to the schools and we’re not going to try to be fair and open-minded with the lies of the enemies,” the Rev. Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue National, said during a telephone interview from Texas. “We’re taking God back to the schools. . . . We’re bringing him back, 10 commandments and all.”

Laguna Beach resident Peter French, who helped coordinate Tuesday’s protest, said demonstrators want to dispel “the myths and lies” perpetuated in sex education classes on campuses.

“It’s pretty hard to say this is a cluster of cells or a product of pregnancy,” he said, referring to the picture on one of the 4-foot-by-6-foot placards. “These pictures tell the truth.”

Parents and school district staff, who said they were on hand to support the students, were irked that such an event was occurring in front of a school. “It bothers me that . . . they’re here to show graphic information to our children,” parent Susan Sandys said.

While many of the students acted as if the demonstrators were invisible, others seemed bothered by their presence. One girl shielded her face with notebook paper as she walked past a protester.

“I think it’s absolutely obnoxious,” Laguna Beach High senior Brian Rabben said as his mother dropped him off at school. “It makes me sick that they’re coming to a high school. . . . All my friends feel the same way.”

“I think they’re fanatics,” said Solomon Harbor, a junior.

The 90-minute demonstration came as no surprise to school administrators, who had heard last week that Laguna Beach would be the first Orange County high school targeted in Operation Rescue’s “Back to School Program,” a nationwide campaign launched Monday to deliver the group’s message directly to teens.

Principal Barbara Callard said she sent a bulletin to the school’s staff on Friday notifying them about the demonstration and gave teachers information about Operation Rescue. Callard said she wanted the staff to be prepared for discussions that might arise among the students and to remember that abortion is a “personal religious issue.”

“There will be differences among our kids,” she said, “and we need to respect those differences.”

Callard said she also notified Orange County Mental Health Services that the district might need their help, and peer counseling groups met last weekend.

The goal Monday morning was simply to move the students quickly past the demonstration and onto the campus, she said. A Laguna Beach police officer was on hand to monitor the protest, which remained calm.

Demonstrators said theirs is a difficult job but one they feel they must do.

“The unborn don’t have anyone speaking for them,” said Jon Smith of Mission Viejo. “So that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Benham, the national director, said the group’s campaign will continue indefinitely.

Demonstrators are expected to be at El Toro High School at 6:50 a.m. today, at Mission Viejo High at noon and at Trabuco Hills High in Mission Viejo at 1:45 p.m.