Anti-Abortion Protest Draws Small Turnout

Three years ago, Operation Rescue drew thousands of followers to Louisiana for a weeklong anti-abortion protest. This year, the daily turnout has been measured in dozens.

“We’ve had almost as many police as demonstrators all week,” police Maj. Howard Robertson said Saturday. “We were prepared for the worst, but it’s been a real low-key thing.”

In 1992, at the last weeklong antiabortion demonstration in the area, about 1,700 Operation Rescue members protested outside a Baton Rouge clinic every day. Sixty-one people were arrested.

Saturday’s final demonstration paled in comparison: About 80 members of Operation Rescue showed up at one clinic, along with about 50 abortion rights activists.

“They’ve definitely bottomed out,” said Janet Arenz, director of the national clinic defense project of the Los Angeles-based Feminist Majority Foundation.

Arenz, who was in town to train “clinic defenders,” said there’s been a steady decline at demonstrations.

“We’re seeing it all over the country - people just aren’t getting involved in the extremist groups,” Arenz said.

Fatal shootings of abortion doctors in Florida and of clinic receptionists in Massachusetts have knocked down Operation Rescue’s numbers, said the Rev. Bill Shanks, a Louisiana organizer for the anti-abortion group.

“The people who did that haven’t anything to do with our movement,” Shanks said Saturday. “But it hurt our cause as well as giving the ‘pro’ people the martyr they wanted.”