Frightened Physicians : Slaying of Florida Surgeon Prompts Local Debate Over ‘Wanted’ Flyers Used by Abortion Foes

A Torrance obstetrician who occasionally performs abortions was rudely surprised last year when he saw his photo and those of other local doctors on an anti-abortion flyer titled: “Wanted! For killing unborn babies in the South Bay!”

Then came the chilling news this month that a fellow physician, Dr. David Gunn, had been shot to death outside a Florida abortion clinic during a protest. That doctor too had been featured on a “Wanted” flyer.

“I don’t know how crazy these people are, so I’d rather not be singled out,” said the Torrance doctor, declining to be quoted by name. “I have a relatively secure, easy life that I’d like to finish off in the time God’s allotted me.”

In the South Bay, as in the rest of the country, the Florida shooting has frightened doctors who perform abortions. Local abortion rights supporters and opponents are debating whether the fears are well-founded.

Abortion foes say they are nonviolent. They say they are being wrongly portrayed as fanatics and terrorists.

“The pro-life movement’s been around for 20 years, and this is the first and only time that someone’s been killed,” said J. T. Finn, director of the South Bay Pro-Life Coalition. “For them to stereotype all pro-lifers as violent, and to say all pro-life strategies lead up to this sort of killing, is a flat-out distortion and lie.”

South Bay abortion opponent Tom Leonard said he sees nothing incendiary about the “Wanted” flyers, which do not specifically advocate violence but instead urge: “In a loving way, please ask these ‘doctors’ to protect innocent life.”

Said Leonard: “They have signs like that up in the post office, don’t they? That’s not instigating an individual to take the law into their own hands.”

The state director of Operation Rescue, however, said that because of public concern about the issue, he may redesign a planned media campaign that was to use the “Wanted” theme.

Abortion rights advocates express outrage at such campaigns, asserting that the tactics turn doctors into targets.

“They’re ‘Wanted’? What does that mean? . . . They’re just throwing that out there and saying, ‘Hey, do whatever you want,’ ” said Vanessa Poster, coordinator of the Women’s Coalition South Bay.

The South Bay has become a center of activity for and against abortion in Southern California, in part because of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles’ longtime plans to open an area clinic that would offer abortions, among other services. The clinic is slated to open in May at a still-undisclosed site and is expected to foster demonstrations by both sides.

The “Wanted” flyers first surfaced in Torrance last May in a campaign targeting 10 private obstetrician-gynecologists who were said to perform abortions as part of their regular practices. Anti-abortion forces labeled them “Lomita Boulevard abortionists” and picketed weekly outside their offices in a joint effort of the Pro-Life Coalition and Operation Rescue.

A second campaign began in February with a new flyer--this one with 13 doctors’ photos, apparently clipped from the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. directory of members. Many of the doctors have offices in a Torrance Boulevard medical building, where abortion foes are expected to assemble at lunchtime every Friday until Good Friday, which falls on April 9.

One physician whose photograph appears in the most recent flyer, Dr. Yuichi Ito, said he is actually a urologist--a doctor dealing with the urinary system--and does not do abortions. He suspects abortion foes confused him with another doctor. Finn said an error may have been made and that those flyers have been withdrawn.

The tactic of targeting doctors is called the “No Place to Hide” campaign, and Operation Rescue of California reports it was employed last month in 40 cities statewide against both abortion-clinic physicians and obstetrician-gynecologists.

In the wake of the Florida shooting, several targeted Torrance doctors--all of whom said abortions account for only a small part of their practices--expressed concern that the specter of violence will have a chilling effect on the willingness of some physicians to do abortions. But most said they have no plans to stop offering abortions.

“Personally, I think it’s horrendous that this has happened. There’s nothing illegal about doing an abortion. It’s the right of a woman,” said Dr. Reinhold Ullrich, a former president of the county medical association who has practiced in Torrance for more than 35 years.

Although Ullrich’s photograph appeared on both Torrance “Wanted” flyers, the doctor said he is not intimidated.

“I accept it as part of being in practice. It’s like malpractice,” he said. “It’s like driving the freeway.”

Another physician who has appeared twice, Dr. Stephen Colodny, called the flyers “the kind of thing that can lead a fanatic to a target.”

Abortion foes have picketed at the homes of at least two South Bay physicians.

“I’m expecting them back any day. They’re feeling their oats right now,” said one Redondo Beach doctor who said protesters have approached his Rolling Hills home twice, most recently just a month ago.

“It’s a fascistic movement,” said the doctor, who asked not to be identified by name. “I think anyone who’s fanatic enough to spend their free time picketing in front of doctors’ homes and offices--maybe they should be out looking for hungry children that they can take care of.”

One doctor who has been targeted said he only did three abortions in the last year--and that for personal reasons he has been thinking of stopping them.

Even so, “I’m definitely pro-choice, and I think someone should do it,” said the doctor, who requested anonymity. He remembers seeing victims of illegal abortions before the procedure was legalized in 1973. As a resident at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, he once treated a 13-year-old girl after a botched, back-alley abortion left her with a punctured, gangrenous uterus. He was forced to perform a hysterectomy.

The campaign targeting the Torrance doctors has met with increased criticism in recent days from South Bay abortion-rights advocates.

Debra Berman, co-coordinator of the Palos Verdes/South Bay chapter of the National Organization for Women, urged abortion foes to stop using the “Wanted” poster. “It just instigates the violence,” she said.

Berman said she was shocked but not surprised by the Florida killing.

“It shows they don’t care about life and people. It shows they care about controlling people,” she said.

Abortion foes counter that their opponents are attempting to capitalize on the Florida death. At the Pro-Life Coalition, Finn was particularly critical of New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis’ piece last week characterizing most anti-abortion activists as religious fanatics.

“It’s just pouring gasoline on the fire in terms of fueling the emotions of pro-abortion forces,” Finn said. “This writer lumps me in with a killer in Florida.”

Monika Moreno, a spokeswoman for the Pro-Life Coalition, said that local abortion opponents are praying for the families of both Dr. Gunn and the man who allegedly killed him, Michael F. Griffin.

“We disagree completely with Mr. Griffin’s tactics,” said Moreno. The South Bay’s anti-abortion movement emphasizes peaceful demonstrations, she said, contending that the local “Wanted” flyers were intended simply as educational tools.

Operation Rescue’s state director, Jeff White, said he founded California’s “No Place to Hide” campaign, which deployed those flyers.

The state group has been planning to use a similar theme in a national campaign involving full-page advertisements in 15 religious and secular publications.

But White said Tuesday he is rethinking use of the theme because the public may perceive that the tactics of anti-abortion activists are to blame for the shooting of Gunn.

“For me, I don’t think there’s any connection. But, right now, the media is insinuating that there is,” White said. So he said he is considering a different advertising tack--one that still uses a doctor’s photograph but with the slogan, “Your neighbor . . . is an abortionist. Love your neighbor enough to ask him to stop killing babies.”

White said that, although he has not decided on the switch, “I want to stop and pray about the whole way in which we present the ads.” He said Operation Rescue is committed to nonviolent civil disobedience as exercised by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“You can take Martin Luther King’s literature and put our name on it, and there is no difference,” White said.

Robin Schneider, associate director of the California Abortion Rights Action League, disagrees. Operation Rescue, she said, encourages violence “by the language that they use, by the winks and nods, by the statements they issue after the violence occurs, making excuses for it.”