Obama victory worries group

About 600 donors gathered Thursday in the Balboa Bay Club for the annual fundraiser for Birth Choice, a Santa Ana-based chain of clinics aimed at preventing abortions, with programs for transitional housing for new mothers and abstinence education. The socially conservative crowd met to raise money for the group and for a new center in Long Beach, but they also met on a day of mixed feelings for California foes of abortion and same-sex marriage.

It was just two days after a nation swept Barack Obama into the White House and his fellow Democrats into more places of power, while California banned same-sex marriage and failed to pass a parental notification law for teens seeking abortions. A rapt audience at the club listened to former Family Research Council president and 2000 presidential candidate Gary Bauer give what was billed as “the first unofficial pro-life response to the election of Barack Obama.”

Bauer, who has worked with Focus on the Family and started the nonprofit American Values, praised the “sense of pride” felt by African-Americans, but called Obama’s election a major setback for those trying to halt abortion, and asked attendees to pray he would change his mind on Roe v. Wade.

Bauer didn’t shy away from saying there was a “war” on in American culture, before going on to liken Roe v. Wade to the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which said a slave suing in the North for his freedom had no legal standing to do so because he was property. Bauer called it a shame that Obama was against one but not the other.

“Pray for him that he will have a ‘road to Damascus’ experience,” Bauer said to a loud applause. “He has campaigned very effectively as an advocate of the little guy, but this is the littlest guy of all.”

But Bauer also praised those who voted for Proposition 8, which ends same-sex marriage in the state.

“God bless you for doing it; and congratulations on winning,” he said.

Corey Melia, a San Clemente pastor who sits on Birth Choice’s board of directors, said that like many in the crowd, he was “celebrating that marriage is between a man and a woman.” He was disappointed, however, at the failure of Proposition 4, which would have required doctors to notify parents and wait 48 hours before performing an abortion on a teenage girl.

But Melia had only positive things to say about the group’s progress, saying Birth Choice planned to expand in places where its archrival, Planned Parenthood, was doing healthy business.

“That’s why we’re based right in downtown Santa Ana,” he said. “We chose that deliberately. We’ve strategically placed ourselves where there’s a lot of that kind of activity.”

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes. com.