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When Operation Rescue leaders announced the protest last January, they were counting on the fact that 65% of area residents are Roman Catholic and on the mayor's sympathy toward their cause. But that too was a miscalculation. According to Goldhaber, 57% of area residents describe themselves as pro- choice, and 63% of those who describe themselves as pro-life opposed the group's plans. As for Mayor Griffin, he is not terribly popular with his constituents. His approval rating stands at 38%, and last year he was trounced in the race for county executive.
The abortion-rights troops also caught Operation Rescue by surprise. Some of them, including members of the Feminist Majority Foundation, showed up a month ago to set up a secret command center, train people to defend the clinics with predawn human barricades, and monitor through a network of walkie-talkies and cellular telephones every move of the antiabortion forces. Last week the abortion-rights contingent of 500 matched Operation Rescue's body for body.
But in this largely symbolic contest, what really mattered was the level of shock theater. Some abortion-rights advocates spat, punched, screamed unprintable things and dropped cigarette ashes on their opponents. Between their prayers, some Operation Rescue forces returned the insults, and on Tuesday produced the ultimate visual ammunition: Schenck displayed with outstretched arms a 20-week fetus to pro-choice hecklers, a doll-like apparition that the minister said was aborted but which the county medical . examiner later said was stillborn. All this made the sheriff of Erie County, Thomas Higgins, 62, feel nostalgic about the antiwar demonstrations of the '60s. "The humor is not there anymore," he said. "This is a kind of gutter ugliness."