Abortion-Rights Advocates Attack Opposing Views at Ventura Rally

In a year when the issue of abortion is reverberating through political campaigns, several hundred abortion-rights advocates gathered Sunday in Ventura to rally for their cause and rail against politicians who oppose their views.

“We are not going back to the back-alley butchers for someone else’s religious fanaticism,” Jamie Cox-Nowland, head of the Ventura-Oxnard chapter of the National Organization for Women, told the crowd.

A festive atmosphere hung over the predominantly female crowd in the courtyard of the Ventura County Government Center.

Booths were set up to register voters and promote women’s-rights groups and local Democratic Party candidates who support those rights. Business was brisk for sloganeering buttons and T-shirts.

The speaker’s podium was placed under a blue sign that read “Keep Abortion and Birth Control Legal.” Over the sign was an arch of red, white and blue balloons and a brace of small American flags fluttering in a light breeze.

Cox-Nowland said in an interview that the rally was “not necessarily a political event. Its main purpose is to get people motivated and involved.”

But the fact that it was held about five weeks before the general election and less than two weeks before the voter-registration deadline gave the occasion a decidedly political flavor.

“We would like them to vote for candidates who care about our issues,” Cox-Nowland said of the crowd.

A number of Ventura County candidates used the event to stump for their causes.

But it was a 55-year-old Ventura resident, Lily McClintock, who received a standing ovation.

In a poignant moment, McClintock recounted in a shaky voice having an illegal abortion 25 years ago in Pennsylvania.

“I feel that all women will be protected from such danger” if abortion rights are protected, said McClintock, a mother of four.

The rally, sponsored by the local NOW chapter, did not draw as many people as another abortion-rights rally held in Ventura three years ago. The local NOW chapter said that more than 900 people recorded their names with volunteers circulating among the crowd. However, the gathering appeared smaller.

At a rally in 1989, more than 1,000 abortion-rights advocates gathered to protest the U. S. Supreme Court’s Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services decision upholding the states’ rights to prohibit the use of public facilities for abortions.

Still, Cox-Nowland called Sunday’s rally “a huge success.”

“It shows that people are willing to put their bodies where their mouths are and stand up to the opponents and say, ‘I’m pro-choice and proud of it,’ ” she said.

A few hundred yards away, along Victoria Avenue, a small group of antiabortion demonstrators carried placards. One, Marie McHarg of Ventura, said her group was planning a rally that would dwarf Sunday’s crowd.

Organizers for Life Chain ‘92--sponsored by several organizations, including local church groups--hope to have demonstrators lined up next Sunday in Ventura for a couple of miles along Victoria Avenue between the Ventura Freeway and Telegraph Road, McHarg said.

“Let people understand that abortion means killing children,” said McHarg, 38, a mother of four.

The antiabortion stance of the Bush-Quayle ticket and the Republican Party’s national platform took some heavy hits from the speakers.

“The Republican Party is a very lonely party for women these days,” said Nicolette Worley, former coordinator of the Ventura-Oxnard NOW chapter.

She took special aim at Republicans who have criticized Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton for allegedly having extramarital affairs.

“I don’t care who Bill Clinton may or may not have slept with,” Worley said, adding that the real issue was the deteriorating state of the nation under the Bush Administration.

What role the volatile abortion issue will play in luring Republican voters to Democratic candidates is not certain this election year. But the issue has caught the attention of a number of Republican women torn between their party’s platform and the abortion-rights plank of the Democratic Party.

Marla Buckert, a Ventura realtor who is a registered Republican, attended Sunday’s rally. She said she is still struggling with the issue.

“I don’t know yet,” was her response to whether she would desert her party over the issue. What she was sure of is, “I believe in abortion rights.”

Another registered Republican, veterinarian Karen Anderson Moore, 36, of Ventura, said she has made up her mind: She is voting for candidates who support abortion rights.

“I’ve spoken with numerous women,” Anderson said, “and they wouldn’t necessarily choose abortion for themselves, but they certainly believe it’s up to each person to decide.”