Neighbors Seek to Shut Family Planning Clinic : Abortion: A Tustin group tells City Council that demonstrations disrupt the neighborhood and even close their street.

TUSTIN —  Last year, a councilman tried without success to close down a family planning clinic that performs abortions. Now residents near the clinic want to do the same thing, but for different reasons.

Some residents on North A Street, around the corner from the clinic, want the clinic closed because the demonstrations there disrupt their neighborhood, making parking difficult and prompting police, on occasion, to close their street.

“For a moment, I will ask all here to put aside their feelings, beliefs and opinions regarding this highly controversial issue,” said Daniel M. Bigos, presenting the council with a letter signed by 18 North A Street residents asking that the clinic be closed.

“It’s not unusual for a parent to take their children for a walk or a wagon ride around the block,” Bigos told the council. “But what do you do when you unexpectedly encounter someone with a grisly poster that makes ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ look like a Walt Disney production?”

City Manager William A. Huston said the city lacks authority to shut the clinic. The City Council last year considered a request by anti-abortion council members to try to force the clinic out of Tustin.

Huston said his staff is studying several options, including levying large fines on people who are arrested while demonstrating at the clinic. Huston declined to elaborate.

“If you’re going to come to a community and do your thing to protest, you should be aware that there is a significant cost to doing that,” Huston said.

Lone picketers or small groups holding placards in front of the clinic are a common sight, and several demonstrations in the last year have been on a much larger scale.

On Good Friday, 350 Operation Rescue supporters and about 200 abortion rights activists clashed in front of the clinic. Police arrested 47 people for misdemeanor trespassing after Dr. William M. Moss, the clinic’s main physician, asked police to remove demonstrators.

Almost 100 officers from four law-enforcement agencies responded to the nine-hour protest in April, costing $14,624, about half of which will be paid by Tustin, police spokesman Charles Carvajal said. The city has also spent about $6,500 to police other protests at the clinic, Carvajal said.

“Were those . . . officers donating their time?” Bigos asked the council. “Surely the definition of public servant has its limits. Will the city of Tustin send the bill for police services to Operation Rescue, NOW and Doctor’s Family Planning? That would be nice.”

Zipora Shifberg-Mencher, a Main Street resident whose podiatrist’s office is in the same building as the family planning clinic, told the council the problem is caused by protesters, not the clinic.

“I think we should protect the victims, not the perpetrators,” she said.

Last year, after an emotional two-hour hearing, the council tabled a request by then-Councilman John Kelly to label the clinic “morally reprehensible and ethically unconscionable” and ask the building’s owners to break the lease.