Local Groups Take Up Wichita Abortion Fight : Protests: Operation Rescue organizers are leaving after six weeks of demonstrations. Activists in the city will push for a referendum on the issue.

WICHITA, Kan. —  The long, hot “Summer of Mercy” is over.

After six divisive weeks of continuous anti-abortion protest--six weeks of confrontation, polarization and fear--Operation Rescue has packed up and left town, at least officially.

But far from being relieved by the departure of the militant protest organization, local abortion rights activists are gearing up for the next phase of the abortion battle, and with no guarantee that the clinic blockades will completely end.

Operation Rescue is leaving in its place a galvanized coalition of local anti-abortion groups. Compared to the national organization, the locals have less confrontational, but perhaps more far-reaching, plans.

Their goal is to enact an ordinance banning abortions in Wichita, and they say their chances of achieving that are far more reachable now than before Operation Rescue arrived.

Peggy Jarman, director of the Pro-Choice Action League, said: “I don’t think (the battle over abortion) will ever be over.” But, asserting that “Kansas is a pro-choice state,” she predicted that a plan to push a referendum on the abortion issue would fail. “This is yet another attempt by one group of people to dictate their religion to another group of people,” she said.

Her organization has supported the abortion clinics during the protests and sponsored a rally Saturday to counter the anti-abortion demonstrations.

A spokeswoman for a coalition of local anti-abortion groups said more blockades would not be a part of their strategy, although other groups affiliated with Operation Rescue plan to continue them sporadically.

“A lot of people in the pro-life movement oppose Operation Rescue’s tactics,” said Mary Wilkerson, spokeswoman for Hope for the Heartland, a coalition of 25 local organizations that formed two weeks ago to carry on the fight against abortions here.

Rather, the main thrust of the local movement will be a petition drive, drawing on considerable anti-abortion sentiment in the community, to force a referendum on the abortion issue. At the same time, Wilkerson said, the group is working on establishing a support network for pregnant women.

“We believe that passing a law in the city of Wichita to outlaw abortions is useless unless you are prepared to take care of every single person who cannot get an abortion,” she said.

The Compassion Network, she said, will provide free medical care and financial, emotional and spiritual support to pregnant women.

On Monday afternoon, the once-perpetually clogged lobby of the hotel that had been the local headquarters of Operation Rescue was nearly empty.

And a rumored blockade at the Wichita Family Planning Inc. clinic never materialized. Instead, a handful of anti-abortion demonstrators arrived at the east side clinic to nail fake coffins into the ground and sing and pray.

“Is there a baby dying in there,” one little boy asked his father as they joined the demonstrators.

Another boy of about 6 years old held a hand-lettered sign: “Choice begins in the bedroom.”

One abortion protester was arrested after confronting an abortion rights advocate who unfurled a banner. Police said the man was arrested on charges of disobeying a police officer’s order.

For six weeks this city has been sorely divided. The mayor, a federal judge and doctors who perform abortions have all received death threats. More than 2,600 arrests have been made at abortion clinics, where demonstrators have blocked the entrances in violation of a federal court injunction. The almost-daily demonstrations have sometimes turned violent.

Operation Rescue’s Wichita campaign--the organization’s first foray into the Midwest--has proven wildly successful, said Mike McMonigle, one of the few national leaders of the organization who is not in jail for violating court orders to cease the blockades.

“We have mainstreamed rescues in the pro-life movement,” he said, refering to the tactic of blockading abortion clinics. “We think we’ve left (Wichita abortion fighters) in a better place to win the battle.”

Wilkerson agreed, although she acknowledged that initially many anti-abortion activists had been opposed to Operation Rescue coming here.

Because of the momentum generated by the group, she said, 25 local anti-abortion organizations with different philosophies and tactics have come together. “We all started meeting in the same room for the first time ever,” she said. “Things that had never happened before are happening.”

Jarman charged that “a couple of very skillful men used the emotional issue of abortion to come in and capture in a cult-like way Catholics and fundamentalists, whipped them into a frenzy and manipulated them,” she said. “I think this is very frightening. Any kind of cult-like activity is frightening to me.”

She questioned whether Operation Rescue would really leave Wichita. But McMonigle said the group is already planning its next activities: blockades in Washington in January and in New York and Houston for the Democratic and Republican conventions.

All that is left behind for the national leadership in Wichita are a few legal matters, he said, including planned lawsuits against George Tiller, who heads the Wichita Family Planning Clinic.

McMonigle said the group will allege that Tiller is not properly licensed to operate the incinerator he uses to dispose of fetal remains. He also contends that the doctor violates the law by not issuing death certificates for third-term abortions he performs when the fetus weighs more than 310 grams, as required by state law.

Jarman, who is a spokeswoman for Tiller, said, “We are in compliance with the law.”

Operation Rescue claims that Tiller is one of only a handful of doctors who perform abortions late in the third trimester. Jarman said that “a small number of fetal abnormalities” are aborted “very, very early in the third trimester.”

Operation Rescue’s protests here attracted more attention, both locally and nationally, than the group had mustered in its previous campaigns in cities such as Los Angeles, Washington and Atlanta. In part this was because the group found the community more receptive.

Wichita’s mayor and the state’s governor both are opposed to abortion, and earlier in the summer the City Council defeated by only one vote an ordinance to make abortions illegal in the city.

Kansas legalized abortions in 1969. The council vote was spurred by a recent opinion by the state attorney general that municipalities in the state could legally enact abortion legislation more restrictive than the state law.

That same opinion now is the legal spur behind the move to force a referendum on the abortion issue.