ABORTION-RIGHTS BATTLE TO BE REJOINED AT RALLY

Activists on both sides of the abortion issue, fresh from combat in state elections, are expected to clash again this weekend as they come to the nation's capital for rallies and protests.

Pumped up by the victories Tuesday of candidates supporting their position, abortion-rights demonstrators will be at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow for a rally, one of hundreds being held across the country to protest the Supreme Court's decision to allow states to consider new restrictions on abortions.

Antiabortion demonstrators are also concentrating in the Washington area. Abortion clinics in the District, Virginia and Maryland were bracing this morning for protesters from Operation Rescue and the Veterans Campaign for Life, antiabortion groups whose members are expected to try to block clinic entrances.

"These are not demonstrations or political protests; these are rescues," said Patrick Mahoney, a spokesman for Operation Rescue. Mahoney is coordinating Operation Rescue's D.C. Project, an antiabortion strategy and training conference to be held here next week.

Mahoney, whose group has staged similar actions at clinics in other cities resulting in thousands of arrests, said the Washington conference and clinic blockades also signal the broadening of Operation Rescue's activities to include participation in the political process. Operation Rescue opened a Washington office last month.

Abortion-rights groups got injunctions this week barring Operation Rescue demonstrators from blockading some local clinics. But abortion-rights activists expect blockade attempts to take place anyway, and they say they have prepared their supporters to counteract them.

"We've trained literally hundreds to secure access to the clinics," said Patricia Ireland, an official with the National Organization for Women, who is coordinating its Project Stand Up for Women. "We will form a human chain of people to keep the corridor open."

Many of the weekend's events are being held as part of the national "Mobilize for Women's Lives" abortion-rights activities. They got under way yesterday with an interfaith service at the Reflecting Pool that drew members of the clergy and lay leaders from Protestant, Jewish and Catholic religious groups.

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said the service -- occurring just days after the nation's Roman Catholic bishops turned back a proposal to penalize Catholics who aggressively support abortion rights -- gave Catholics a chance to "speak out for women as moral agents and for their right to choose."

An antiabortion memorial service, sponsored by the Veterans Campaign for Life, was held nearby on the Ellipse. About 65 abortion-rights activists from the Clinic Defense Task Force were surrounded by U.S. Park Police officers and threatened with arrest for demonstrating without a permit when the group made its way toward the antiabortion service, a police official said. The group left without incident, said Park Police Lt. Carl Holmberg.

Tomorrow, thousands of abortion-rights supporters, including political officials, Hollywood and other celebrities, are expected to attend a noon rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The rally is expected to be a more modest gathering than the abortion-rights march held here in April, which involved more than 300,000 people. NOW President Molly Yard said yesterday it is "impossible to tell" how many people will turn out for the demonstration.

Organizers said they are encouraging supporters to attend events in their own cities or states. In all, 1,027 abortion-rights actions are scheduled to take place tomorrow in 150 cities, but none has been planned for Maryland, Virginia or other neighboring states. There was an intentional effort to keep the regional focus on the Washington demonstration, according to Eleanor Smeal, NOW's national advisory chairwoman.

About 30 speakers are scheduled for the rally, including New York Mayor-elect David N. Dinkins, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), D.C. Council member Hilda H.M. Mason (Statehood-At Large) and Mary Dent Crisp, former vice chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and chairwoman of the National Coalition for Choice.

Entertainers on hand for the Lincoln Memorial demonstration are to include Jodie Foster, Arlo Guthrie, Raquel Welch, Helen Reddy, Pete Seeger, Mary Travers and Margaret Reed of the television series "As the World Turns." Reed organized "Daytime for Choice," an abortion-rights group of daytime television soap opera stars.

The events scheduled by both sides have sparked several other controversies this week. The abortion issue has pitted D.C. Council member Nadine P. Winter (D-Ward 6) against the governing board of the D.C. Armory, which has rented the facility for next week's antiabortion conference. Operation Rescue plans to hold a training session at the conference for future abortion clinic blockades.

Winter has asked that the group's lease of the Armory be canceled, and the Armory board is looking into whether the conference is using the facility to organize illegal activities.

The board's general counsel, Artis Hampshire-Cowan, said the facility can't be rented out on the basis of the board's "likes and dislikes. We really can't be in a position of censoring."

At Catholic and Georgetown universities, some students have clashed with administrators over attempts to publicize the abortion-rights rally or to bring the abortion debate to the campuses.

The Hoya, a student newspaper at Georgetown, was not published yesterday after student editors were told they could not print the paper if it contained an advertisement publicizing tomorrow's abortion-rights rally.

And at Catholic University, sophomore Linda Sullivan said she was blocked in her attempts to organize a "Students for Pro-Choice" group on campus, which already has an antiabortion Human Life Council. Another student, senior Chris Rodgers, said he tried to put together an abortion program featuring a representative of the National Right-to-Life antiabortion group and NOW's Yard.

Rodgers said the program was scrapped by university officials.

Catholic University, a spokeswoman said, "is not obligated to provide a forum for advocates whose values are counter to those of the university." Staff writer Carlos Sanchez contributed to this report.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.