Clinic Seeking Action Against Abortion Foes : Courts: Orange facility says the group is accosting patients and blocking its entrance, which protesters deny doing.

ORANGE —  A family planning clinic has asked a judge to bar anti-abortion protesters from accosting patients and blocking its entrance, arguing the latter’s “menacing activity” has escalated and could turn suddenly violent.

In a complaint filed this week in Orange County Superior Court, Family Planning Associates Medical Group Inc. requested restrictions to prohibit protesters from trespassing, calling at clients through a bullhorn or videotaping clients and cars as they enter the clinic grounds.

“We’re very concerned about the lack of security,” said clinic attorney Carol A. Downer, citing the recent shooting rampages at clinics in Massachusetts in which an abortion foe is accused of killing two receptionists. Clients “are very vulnerable to attacks.”

But the protesters insist they are a peaceful group. And Orange County Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard handed them an initial victory early this week when he denied the clinic’s request for an immediate restraining order, finding that the clinic showed no evidence that it risked “great or irreparable injury.” In a brief ruling issued Wednesday, Millard said protests at the clinic have gone on since 1987 with no apparent increase in intensity.

The clinic, however, continues to press for a preliminary injunction against the activists. A hearing on that issue is set for Feb. 9 before Superior Court Judge Phillip E. Cox.

Meanwhile, a group of six abortion foes who gathered Friday at the clinic entrance with signs depicting aborted fetuses sharply disputed the contention that they are prone to violence.

“We’re here to exercise our First Amendment rights,” said David Rosen, 49, one of more than a dozen defendants named in the clinic’s Superior Court complaint. “We are against violence. We oppose it completely. The first time anybody kills anybody else it ceases to be anything that’s pro-life.”

Rosen, a 49-year-old salesman who describes himself as a born-again Christian, said protesters are being targeted for the content of their speech.

“If we were here to protest cruelty to animals, we wouldn’t be bothered,” he said.

He said they are not an organized entity, but a group of individuals who met on the clinic’s sidewalk. Some are born-again Christians and others are Catholic, Rosen said.

The local courtroom fight comes in the wake of shootings at clinics in Brookline, Mass., and Norfolk, Va., that shocked the nation last month. John C. Salvi III is accused of killing two women at the Massachusetts clinics and wounding five others before fleeing to Norfolk, where he failed to shoot his way into another clinic.

In response, abortion rights leaders have called on abortion foes to renounce the inflammatory rhetoric that they believe leads to violence.

The Orange County complaint accuses protesters of “yelling and screaming” at patients and heckling them, blocking cars and pedestrians from entering the clinic, and accosting patients as they exit their cars. It contends that protesters thrust “unwanted literature” into clients’ hands and create congestion and traffic hazards around the entrance on Chapman Avenue, near the busy Orange Freeway access ramp.

The tactics, according to the complaint, have become more menacing of late, as protesters have installed a video camera and increased their use of bullhorns. Patients, according to the complaint, have been rendered “distraught,” begging the clinic to change appointments and risking their health by delaying abortions.

“They come in shaking,” Downer said.

Rosen said protesters do not block anyone from doing anything. “Any woman who has come to this place wanting an abortion has gotten an abortion,” Rosen said. “We do not harass--we educate.”

The group, with two young children in tow, spent Friday morning waving down cars as they entered the clinic parking lot, approaching drivers with leaflets and calling out to patients as they climbed the clinic steps, “Can we give you some information, please?”

Their signs read, “Lord, Forgive Our Nation,” “Stop Killing Babies Now” and “Jesus is Pro-Life.” The literature included a list of pregnancy counseling centers and adoption agencies, along with renderings of aborted fetuses in various stages.

The video camera was perched on a tripod next to a playpen on the sidewalk, pointed at the entrance. Rosen said passersby have thrown things at the group and some of the women have been spit upon. The camera is needed both to protect the activists from charges of violence and to record instances in which they are attacked, he said. “The most violent thing we do is say, ‘Abortion kills children,’ ” he said.