New Heat Over an Old Issue

By Robert T. Zintl.

To the thousands of demonstrators on the Ellipse south of the White House, the message was a high point in their struggle against abortion: an open endorsement from the President. "I feel a great sense of solidarity with all of you," Ronald Reagan said in a telephone call broadcast to the crowd by loudspeakers. "Our response to the twelfth anniversary of Roe vs. Wade . . . must be to rededicate ourselves to ending the terrible national tragedy of abortion . . . I feel these days, as never before, the momentum is with us."

His listeners were participating in the March for Life, held each Jan. 22 to mark the Supreme Court's 1973 decision legalizing abortion. Some 70,000 people turned out, the largest number to date and double the size of last year's rally. For the first time, the protest included acts of civil disobedience: 28 people were arrested for picketing without a permit on the steps of the Supreme Court.

The show of antiabortion sentiment came at a time of increasing militancy by the movement. Recent months have seen a record number of bombings, as well as instances of arson and harassment, at abortion centers. Pro-choice supporters, fearing more of the same last week, organized protective vigils at some 30 clinics around the country. Reagan again disavowed antiabortion extremists, urging a "complete rejection of violence as a means of settling this issue." His endorsement of the marchers was more qualified than it first seemed: a White House spokesman said Reagan still favored abortions when a mother's life ! is threatened. In any event, the Administration is not expected to push the issue this year on Capitol Hill.

But activists on both sides of the abortion controversy think Reagan's statements have created a momentum of their own. Said Ray Kranz, a South Dakota farmer who traveled to the march in Washington by bus: "Reagan has helped us out a lot. He's been an inspiration." Judy Goldsmith, president of the pro-choice National Organization for Women, expressed concern that "the President could send us back to the time when women risked their lives to be able to determine what happened with their bodies."

The President also called attention to a just released antiabortion film, The Silent Scream, a startling 28-minute documentary that shows ultrasound images of a twelve-week-old fetus being aborted. Activists predict the film will become a high-technology Uncle Tom's Cabin, arousing the public just as Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 antislavery novel ignited the abolitionist movement. Declared Reagan: "It's been said that if every member of Congress could see that film, they would move quickly to end the tragedy of abortion." The producer, American Portrait Films of Anaheim, Calif., plans to mail the movie to all 535 lawmakers and the nine Justices of the Supreme Court.

Portions of The Silent Scream aired on network news shows last week. "Never have so many millions of Americans seen such a graphic representation of a baby being ripped apart," said Congressman Robert Dornan, an antiabortion Republican from California. "The other side is now on the defensive." Admitted Nanette Falkenberg of the National Abortion Rights Action League: "I think we're in for some hard times."

The Silent Scream was filmed by New York Obstetrician Bernard Nathanson, who once ran the largest abortion clinic in the country. He said he switched sides after ultrasound made it possible to view a fetus in motion. "For the first time," he said, "we have the technology to see abortion from the victim's vantage point."

In The Silent Scream, Nathanson shows the fetus apparently shrinking from the probes of the abortionist's suction tube. He notes how the fetus' heartbeat speeds up and how it seems to open its mouth in a "chilling silent scream." Nathanson describes a "child being torn apart . . . by the unfeeling steel instruments of the abortionist." Critics say the real impact of the film comes from Nathanson's loaded language. "The pictures themselves are just not clear and convincing," says Falkenberg. "If eleven different doctors saw the film, there could be eleven different interpretations of what they saw." Indeed, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists went on record last year as saying the unborn child does not feel pain during an abortion.

Proponents of legal abortion argue that despite Reagan's involvement and the stepped-up activities of the Right to Life movement, public support is moving in their direction. They cite a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken Jan. 18-20 indicating that 52% of adult Americans are in favor of women having abortions as they choose, compared with 40% in 1981.

The battle for public opinion escalated on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. At the Routh Street Women's Clinic in Dallas, 800 antiabortion demonstrators holding roses staged a sidewalk vigil while some 100 clinic supporters carried balloons that read THE MORAL MAJORITY IS NEITHER. In St. Paul, 3,500 people attended a pro-life prayer service and a rally at the capitol; the Minnesota Abortion Rights Council presented five women who told why they had terminated their pregnancies. In Fargo, N. Dak., 90 abortion-rights activists formed a human chain around an abortion clinic as a caravan of antiabortionists drove by, led by a hearse carrying a small white casket.

Both sides agree that the struggle may soon move from the court of public opinion into the Supreme Court. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, author of Roe vs. Wade, and two allies, Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan Jr., are 76 or older and likely to retire soon. Since the President who may appoint their replacements wants to overturn Roe, antiabortion leaders are confident that they will get a new, and possibly sympathetic, hearing.

With reporting by Carolyn Lesh/Washington, with other bureaus