Abortion Foes Hold Prayer Vigil Outside a Pacoima Clinic : Protest: A Catholic bishop leads parishioners into ‘spiritual warfare.’

Choosing “spiritual warfare” over confrontation, about 550 demonstrators led by Catholic Bishop Armando X. Ochoa marched Saturday from a Pacoima church to a nearby women’s clinic for a prayer vigil against abortion.

After an early morning Mass at the Guardian Angel Catholic Church, the mostly Catholic and Latino crowd walked several blocks to Her Medical Clinic in the 13300 block of Van Nuys Boulevard, singing hymns and praying.

A few abortion-rights advocates and at least 25 uniformed police officers were on hand to greet the procession. But demonstrators did not try to block entry to the clinic, and no incidents occurred.

Ochoa later joined organizers in urging participants to pledge their attendance at regular Saturday morning prayer vigils at abortion clinics. “I would hope this is not just a one-shot thing,” he told the crowd. “What happened today is certainly something we’d like to see repeated.”

The clinic remained open during the 1 1/2-hour vigil but appeared to have few patients.

“No comments,” said a clinic employee, who would not give her name, when asked about her reaction to the vigil. “They can express whatever,” she said, and then added: “They’re crazy. They’re terrorists.”

While the vigil continued in front of the clinic, several “sidewalk counselors” stood near the main entry to talk to incoming patients. The sidewalk counselors promised medical and financial support to women who would change their minds and forgo an abortion.

By late morning, according to sidewalk counselor Angela Ruiz Maida, 10 patients had been persuaded not to enter the clinic. But she said she did not know how many of the 10 had come for abortions. The clinic also performs pregnancy tests and Pap smears, and provides other services.

Cookie Pemberton, one of a half-dozen counterdemonstrators, carried a sign that read: “This Catholic Believes in God, Family & Choice.”

Some in the crowd were veterans of militant Operation Rescue protests, in which anti-abortion activists have blockaded clinic doors and have been arrested in mass numbers. But most participants Saturday appeared to be local parishioners not previously involved in the abortion protests.

Organizers said the event represented a new effort to mobilize large numbers of people by emphasizing prayer and eschewing confrontation. They said the action was modeled after those carried out by Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, a New York group that has used prayer vigils at clinics and sidewalk counseling to persuade women not to abort.

Organizer Bob Wassell, a 39-year-old aerospace worker from Ventura, brought the idea from New York to Southern California. Impressed by what he read of the New York group in a Catholic newspaper, Wassell said he spent his own money in March to fly to New York to confer with its leaders.