THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408210079
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
William Powell repeatedly excuses himself and hustles up the sidewalk Saturday, sidestepping his 7-year-old daughter sitting cross-legged on the ground as she dresses her Barbie dolls.
``Seven thousand babies a year are killed in this building!'' he calls out to a woman 40 yards away, walking toward the Bel Aire Building at 1600 E. Little Creek Road.
To others he shouts offers of information: ``We can help! Please come over and talk to me!''
Most everyone ignores him.
It's midmorning on another Saturday outside Hillcrest Clinic, South Hampton Roads' only abortion facility.
About a dozen abortion protesters are on the sidewalk. They are there most Saturdays. Some hold signs. Four walk the sidewalk, praying the rosary out loud. Several call to women they believe are entering the clinic, asking them to reconsider.
The protesters greet one another warmly with hugs and jovial questions about family and the previous night's dinner, but this is deadly serious business to them.
It's becoming that way for many of those who use or work in the clinic, too. Three people have been killed outside Florida abortion clinics in the past 18 months; anti-abortion activists were charged. The two most recent slayings, of a doctor and his volunteer escort outside a Pensacola clinic last month, have resulted in federal marshals being dispatched to protect a doctors at Hillcrest and other facilities.
Hillcrest is on the front line of an escalating war.
8:50 a.m. A tall, beefy man in a dark gray suit pulls two black bags out of the trunk of a car and walks quickly into the Hillcrest building. He is the federal marshal.
Across the street, David Crane, director of Life Ministries, and spearhead of the daily Hillcrest protests, pulls several signs from the back of his older, gray Pontiac station wagon and sets them along the road: ``Abortion Kills Children,'' ``Businesses Here Support Abortion,'' ``We Will Adopt.''
Armed guards have been letting in women for a half-hour - a young couple, a group of three well-dressed women, a woman who hugs a girl goodbye and enters with a second woman.
Other offices in the building are closed, except for a bank's entrance to an automatic teller machine.
9:22 a.m. The Powell family pulls up in its van and unloads Mom, Dad, two daughters and several signs, some containing graphic color photos of aborted fetuses.
William Powell is a 41-year-old food-service buyer for an area hospital whom Crane calls his ``Saturday anchorman.'' Powell's wife, Rae, a Navy mess-hall manager, stations herself at the Bel Aire Building's front entrance, cheerily handing out anti-abortion fliers to departing bank customers. Daughter Melissa, 13, works the far side of the building, holding a red sign with a black-and-white picture of an aborted fetus.
William Powell, wearing thick glasses, a Nike sport shirt, slacks and tan suede bucks, is quick to laugh as he talks.
He's been protesting abortions for 4 1/2 years now, and has taken part in sit-ins and other civil disobedience here and in other states. He disapproves of the violence in Florida, but is angry and frustrated that more attention is paid to those shootings than to the far greater number of babies aborted.
Being here is a religious and a personal calling: His wife had an abortion 18 years ago when they were in the Navy and not yet married. Rae Powell immediately regretted it; it began bothering her husband about five years ago, when he was baptized a Christian.
He continues calling out to people who don't turn their heads. One perplexed woman retorts: ``I'm going to the bank!'' But another woman passing in a pickup gives the group a thumbs-up sign and takes some reading materials. Powell recounts other times that helped ease the frustration of his fight: women who turned away from the clinic at the last minute, protesters being invited to a christening of a baby whose parents changed their minds at Hillcrest, a teary-eyed woman who stopped to ask where they were eight years earlier when she had an abortion.
``Yeah, it gives me a lot of encouragement,'' Powell says.
10:36 a.m. A Norfolk police sergeant approaches the group. A woman has called police, complaining that the protesters were filming or photographing her to harass her.
``I'm not taking sides,'' he says. ``I'm playing middle-of-the-road.''
The only one with a camera is Melissa, who has a pink, child's point-and-shoot hanging from her wrist. Crane asks whether, even if someone had taken pictures, it's illegal. The sergeant agrees that it's not; he's just passing on the complaint.
10:40 a.m. Jennifer Patterson, 22-year-old Norfolk mother of three, pats her month-old daughter, Alexandra, on the back and calls out to a woman in a soft, high voice:
``I'm not trying to change your mind. I'd like to help you, if I could. I've been through it, so I know what I'm talking about.''
She has forgotten her megaphone, which helps boost her voice. She also didn't bring her 2-year-old daughter, whom she admits to sometimes ``using'' because adults are less likely to refuse to take a flier from her. She'll leave it up to the girl to decide whether to continue protesting when she's old enough to make up her own mind.
Patterson - who uses her maiden name while protesting - says her mother coerced her into getting an abortion at 16 in Michigan after she became pregnant by a married teacher 23 years older than her.
``There was no one on the sidewalk the day I went into the clinic,'' she said. ``If one person had been, I would've changed my mind.''
She, too, scoffs at the idea that she might be dangerous.
``A lot of times,'' she says, ``especially when I have my kids with me, I think: `What am I going to do? Drop my kids and come after you?' ''
11:15 a.m. Patterson counts one victory this Saturday. One woman accepts her fliers and counselors' phone numbers, and Patterson returns without incident. ``I was terrified,'' she says.
The woman says the protesters' shouts and fliers didn't bother her ``because I could be with a friend or something.'' She declines to give her name, then climbs into an arriving car and leaves.
Noon. The Florida shootings also have made the building's armed security guards edgy.
All but two of the protesters have left. One guard pronounces Saturday's 3 1/2-hour protest as ``about average.'' He glances warily at the remaining handful of protesters, and declines to give his name.
``We're more uneasy, you know that,'' he says. ``Dealing with those people, it could happen anytime.'' by CNB