Foes of Abortion Lose Court Bid on Protest Evidence

A federal judge refused Tuesday to allow anti-abortion protesters to present evidence that they were forced to blockade abortion clinics during three days of demonstrations in March in order to protect the lives of unborn children.

The ruling came on the opening day of a hearing in Los Angeles federal court to determine whether members of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue violated U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima’s March 13 order barring the organization from bodily blocking entrances to abortion clinics.

Tashima also rejected arguments by the protesters, now facing potential contempt-of-court citations, that their demonstrations in seven California cities were protected by the 1st Amendment.

“The law is clear that there is a constitutional right to choose to have an abortion if a woman so chooses, during a certain period of time,” Tashima said, granting the American Civil Liberties Union’s motion to exclude such evidence.

Argument Rejected

“The argument is that certain moral obligations override the law,” the judge said. “While that may be a valid principle in certain arenas or before certain forums, it’s not in this one. In this one, the court is sworn to uphold the law.”

More than 1,000 protesters were arrested during the March demonstrations, and a coalition of abortion rights groups are seeking damages of at least $100,000 from 18 Operation Rescue leaders for allegedly violating the court’s preliminary injunction.

In a counterclaim, Randy Adler, one of the Operation Rescue leaders of a rally in the city of Orange, is seeking to have himself appointed guardian on behalf of all unborn fetuses. Ultimately, Adler seeks an injunction against all future abortions based on the life and privacy rights of the unborn.

ACLU attorney Carol A. Sobel said her organization will immediately move to dismiss the counterclaim, which she said attempts to reopen a question already decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1973 decision legalizing abortion.

“They want to re-litigate Roe vs. Wade,” Sobel said.

But Robert L. Sassone, Adler’s attorney, said the counterclaim seeks to go a step further than a Missouri case now before the high court by trying to establish that unborn children are people with full rights to life and privacy.

Void Decision

“This could go so far as to overturn the abortion decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Sassone said. “That’s our ultimate goal.”

At the opening of testimony Tuesday, several protesters joined hands and recited the “Lord’s Prayer” before entering the courtroom.

ACLU attorneys presented a series of witnesses who testified that during demonstrations in San Diego and Sacramento, anti-abortion protesters allegedly violated the court’s order.

In a sworn declaration filed for the hearing, a San Diego woman testified that she feared she was having a miscarriage or a dangerous tubal pregnancy but was prevented from keeping an appointment with her doctor by Operation Rescue protesters.

The woman, Denise Schofield, said she began crying and bleeding outside the clinic when demonstrators failed to heed her claims that she had not come to have an abortion but to save her baby.

One protester, she said, allegedly told her: “We’re doing this because we love your baby. We don’t want you to kill your baby.”

“The three women urged me, ‘Go and see our doctors,’ ” Schofield said in her declaration. “While these three women were talking to me, a little boy came up and showed me a plastic model of a fetus.

‘Very Upset’

“I was very upset by this, and told the three women, ‘You people are sick.’ The dark-haired woman replied, ‘No, the children need to know that you are killing your babies.’ ”

Attorneys for the protesters have not yet begun presenting their case, but they have argued in court papers that Tashima’s preliminary injunction was unconstitutional.

“One lesson taught by the Nuremberg trials following World War II is that each person will be individually held responsible for crimes against humanity, regardless of whether that act was legal in the jurisdiction in which it was committed,” lawyer Cyrus Zal argued. “It is respectfully submitted . . . that abortion is a crime against humanity in the same vein as the extermination of Jews was a crime against humanity, despite its legality under the German Nazi regime.”