O.C. Clinics on Their Guard After Shooting

The day after a physician was gunned down outside a Florida abortion clinic, Planned Parenthood officials beefed up security at one Southland clinic and reminded staff and patients to guard against terrorism.

The shooting death Wednesday of Dr. David Gunn outside a Pensacola clinic, and the immediate arrest of an armed anti-abortion activist for the crime, sent shock waves through the community of abortion rights advocates that reached all the way to the West Coast, Planned Parenthood officials said.

“The first reaction was a kind of sickening feeling, the second reaction was ‘Oh my God, it finally happened,’ ” said Margie Fites Seigle, executive director of the group in Orange and San Bernardino counties. “And the third reaction was, ‘How do we ensure that it doesn’t happen here?’ ”

In Orange County, where five Planned Parenthood clinics offer counseling and prenatal care but do not perform abortions, Seigle said a concerted effort was made Thursday to spread the word to workers and patients that safety is a concern.

In San Bernardino, a security guard was hired late Wednesday for the Upland clinic, which does perform abortions, she said. The organization serves 22,000 clients in Orange and San Bernardino counties.

Seigle said the guard would also deter attempts to use noxious chemicals to damage clinics, a tactic used against five of them in San Diego this week. The foul-smelling chemical, described by Seigle as comparable to “manure and vomit,” both corrodes and leaves a stench that prevents use of the targeted areas.

“The public needs to understand that this has gotten out of hand,” Seigle said. “It’s no longer a discussion between reasonable people. There are fanatics that will do anything to impose their will upon others.”

Even as local Planned Parenthood officials looked for ways to safeguard their operations, a 50-year-old woman was cited by police for trespassing at the Doctors Family Planning Clinic in Tustin, police said.

Carrying a sign reading “Abortion kills babies,” Judith Wiczek was placed under citizen’s arrest by clinic employees for entering the building despite previous warnings not to, police said. An administrator at the clinic declined to comment on the one-woman protest, or the handful of activists that picket the clinic weekly.

“We don’t want to be rude, but we just don’t want to comment right now,” the administrator said. “We don’t want to draw any more attention than we have to.”

The arrest was the first at the clinic since last Easter, the administrator said. She also said employees of the facility have been the targets of leafleting campaigns, both at work and at home, by the anti-abortion activists.

Officials with the Family Planning Assn., which has locations in Cypress, Newport Beach and Orange, also declined to comment on any new measures in the wake of the Pensacola incident, which is believed to be the first fatality connected with a protest.