ORANGE : Anti-Abortion Flyer at Home Irks Mother

When Lori Dickens sent her 7-year-old daughter, Sara, out to play in the front yard last weekend, she never expected her daughter to come back into the house carrying a graphically illustrated anti-abortion pamphlet.

“She came walking in, looking through it, and said, ‘Mom, what is this?’ ” Dickens said. “I am pro-choice, but that wasn’t what was going through my mind. I was angry that someone put that literature on the doorstep for a 7-year-old to find.”

The pamphlet Sara Mosher brought to her mother was entitled “America Must Decide.” It was distributed to homes in parts of Orange and Santa Ana last Saturday morning by the Life Literature Distribution Committee of Fountain Valley.

The four-page pamphlet contains several articles opposing abortion and three pictures of aborted fetuses.

“It’s the pictures I found most offensive,” Dickens said.

The Life Literature Distribution Committee did not return phone calls. But Royce Dunn, the president of Please Let Me Live, the Yuba City anti-abortion organization that printed the pamphlet, said the photographs are necessary to convey the literature’s meaning.

“Parent distress over the pamphlets truly concerns us, but we weigh that against what we believe (is) the certainty of a life saved through the distribution,” Dunn said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Children commonly say, ‘Look at what someone has done to this baby,’ and if the pictures bring grief to their hearts, it should bring grief to every American heart.”

Dunn said that he has received several phone calls from distressed parents since Saturday but that he believes that it is mainly abortion rights supporters who call to complain.

Several parents complained about the pamphlets at the Orange City Council meeting Tuesday night. The council in turn authorized the city attorney to write a letter to the Fountain Valley organization, informing it that some local parents were upset by the photos.

“The pictures can be offensive,” Councilwoman Joanne Coontz said.

One of the parents said she just wanted to be left alone by advocates on both sides of the abortion issue.

“Hold your rallies, pro-choice or pro-life. I have the option to attend or not,” said Janelle Chiu, a mother of three from an unincorporated area near Santa Ana who spoke to the Orange City Council. “But don’t leave it on my doorstep.”