The National Organization for Women held a rally Saturday morning just down the street from where the first women's rights convention in Pennsylvania was held in 1852.

The rally was held at the Chester County Courthouse, where a bronze plaque displaying the Ten Commandments hangs on an outside wall.

The location could not have been more apt for what proved to be a showdown between feminists supporting abortion rights and those opposed to abortion.

The NOW rally was held to denounce the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the U.S. House of Representatives' health care reform bill.

Co-authored by U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts, whose 16th District covers Lancaster County and parts of Chester and Berks counties, the amendment forbids the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, or to cover "any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion," except when a woman's life is in danger, or a pregnancy is the result of incest or rape. Saturday's rally was held just a few miles from Pitts' home.

NOW supporters stood on the lawn in front of the courthouse, holding signs that read: "Justice for Women," "Fight the Radical Right," and "Stop the War on Choice."

 Across the street, anti-abortion activists chanted, "Kill the Bill! Not the Baby!" in reference to the health care reform bill. Some held signs showing images of aborted fetuses. One sign featured a photo of President Barack Obama kissing a baby, and suggested that Obama was "another Judas," delivering a "kiss of death for unborn babies." Another sign hailed the Republican Pitts as a "defender of life and liberty."

War of words
Tensions between the opposing groups ran high, as some of the anti-abortion protesters crossed the street, and attempted to shout down the rally speakers. One such protester was asked by Chester County sheriffs to leave, after shouting vulgarities at NOW supporters.

Some anti-abortion activists said they protested regularly at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic, which provides abortion services.

Speakers at the NOW rally charged that the Stupak-Pitts amendment would make abortion effectively unavailable to low-income women.

NOW contends that the amendment will prevent women who receive tax subsidies from using their own money to buy private insurance that covers abortion. National NOW President Terry O'Neill said she believes the amendment will cause private insurers to drop abortion coverage.

"We're not trying to eliminate private insurance coverage for abortions," Pitts' spokesman Andrew Wimer said last week. "At any time, they can use their own money to purchase supplemental insurance. We're not preventing that."

Poll results
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last week indicated that 6 in 10 Americans supported a ban on the use of public money for abortions.

But Lois Herr, who is running against Pitts in the 16th Congressional District, said she believes there is widespread support for the right of women to make their own decisions about their health.

And on a "fundamental level," the Stupak-Pitts amendment "makes the choices of women more limited," she said.

Herr, a Democrat from Elizabethtown, was officially endorsed by NOW at Saturday's rally. In a speech, Herr said Pitts and "his radical friends" want to return America to a time when women had no control over their major life decisions.

Herr castigated Pitts for using a health care bill meant to improve the lives of millions of Americans in order to push his aim of banning abortion. She described him as "mean-spirited, narrow-minded and a hypocrite," and charged that the Republican has said "no" to everything from health care for children to cheaper college loans for students.

Rob Gleason, chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, said in a press release last week that Herr is "carrying the banner for the extreme liberal left wing of the Democratic Party."

But she was cheered enthusiastically at Saturday's rally by supporters who included Lancaster City Council President Louise Williams. As supporters chanted her name, anti-abortion protesters countered by chanting Joe Pitts' name.

State Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith, a Democrat from Chester County, told the crowd that the Pitts-Stupak amendment was a "step back for women."

Joanne Tosti-Vasey, president of Pennsylvania NOW, said that Pitts was "out of touch with reality."

"We will remember in November 2010," Tosti-Vasey said, referring to next year's congressional election.

Tosti-Vasey said that NOW intended to work hard to unseat Pitts and other Pennsylvania representatives who voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

Political experts consider Pitts' seat to be safe, and don't rate Herr's chances of defeating him very highly. She has challenged him unsuccessfully twice before, in 2004 and 2006.

Still, the national NOW president has hope. "Women are energized, and you never say never," O'Neill said.

There also seemed to be plenty of energy on the other side of the issue.

'Speaks against life'
Jack O'Brien, a parishioner of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in West Chester, said he believes the health care bill passed by the U.S. House was "wrong and destructive," with content "that speaks against life."

He contended that the bill would harm the elderly, and he believes that it represents "an immoral act to destroy the economy of this country."

Kathy Myers, of West Chester, who attends the same church, said she is not opposed to all health care reform. She said she supports the Stupak-Pitts amendment, and suggested that the NOW supporters were misguided in their defense of abortion rights.

Female babies are being killed by abortion, Myers contended, noting, "There's not going to be any future feminists. ... They're going to obliterate themselves."

Sally Lyall, a Lancaster Township resident who is active in the Lancaster County Democratic Committee, faced off, at one point, with a male anti-abortion protester. Lyall quietly held her patch of ground on the courthouse lawn, as the protester shouted comparisons of abortion to slavery and the Holocaust.

"I'm here to support women," Lyall said. "I think these people against us, I don't think they're sensitive to the desperate situations some women find themselves in."

Barbara Wank, who also traveled from Lancaster to rally against the Stupak-Pitts amendment, said there are "so many [untruths] and so much demagoguery" around the issue of health care reform. "It really worries me," she said

Contact Sunday News staff writer Suzanne Cassidy at scassidy@lnpnews.com.