MALPRACTICE AS A WEAPON

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

THE OFFICES OF LIFE DYNAMICS, INC., SEEM ANYTHING BUT DYNAMIC. L.D.I. is located in a drab brick building in Denton, Texas, a few blocks away from the Howdy Doody Drive-In Grocery. Inside, the office has the businesslike air of a real estate brokerage--yet it soon becomes clear that there's a political passion here you won't find on display at Century 21. At L.D.I. coffee is served in mugs that read ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART. A smiling young man sitting in front of a word processor, one soon learns, was once arrested for his role in an antiabortion demonstration. And L.D.I. founder Mark Crutcher, a friendly man with a Texas drawl, becomes deadly serious when he talks about an impending "civil war" between pro-life and pro-choice forces.

Crutcher is a marketing consultant by training, not a lawyer. Yet Life Dynamics, which he founded in 1992, is one of the more innovative, and aggressive, outposts of the Christian legal offensive against abortion. While other groups provide free representation to clinic demonstrators or help states draft antiabortion laws, L.D.I. has developed a new program called AbMal-short for abortion malpractice-that encourages patients to file lawsuits against abortion providers. L.D.I. claims to have a network of more than 600 lawyers nationwide ready to file such cases and has been recruiting more with a mailing to thousands of personal-injury lawyers and the distribution of a how-to video and a brochure promising that "abortion malpractice is poised to become the most prolific litigation opportunity of a decade!"

To assist lawyers in such actions, L.D.I. offers an impressive range of free and low-cost services. It provides lawyers with professional quality ads and brochures to attract clients. It claims to have 500 expert witnesses on call to testify about everything from retained fetal parts-one type of abortion malpractice-to "postabortion trauma,'' a form of emotional harm that L.D.I. lawsuits hope to establish in case law. Life Dynamics also offers the services of 8,000 "Spies for Life"-moles who use a variety of methods to collect information about abortion clinics. L.D.I. has a computer data base on abortion providers and is working on computer-generated 3-D animation that will dramatically illustrate botched abortions for juries and judges.

So who pays for all this? Janie Bush, director of the Choice Foundation, a Dallas-based pro-choice group, says L.D.I. seems to have "virtually an unlimited supply of finances behind it." Crutcher won't say exactly where his outfit's funding originates, only that L.D.I. relies on sympathetic donors and that it will "not take a penny" from possible malpractice awards in any of the 71 cases it currently supports, none of which have yet gone to trial. In a 1992 issue of the L.D.I. publication, Firestorm: A Guerrilla Strategy for Pro-Life America, Crutcher advocated using such suits not just to "protect women'' but to "force abortionists out of business by driving up their insurance rates."

L.D.I.'s emergence has many abortion-rights supporters worried-and outraged. Bush says the emotional and financial toll of fighting malpractice suits will probably shut down some abortion clinics, but many will dig in and fight. "It's absolutely bunk that they care about women," says Bush about Crutcher and his organization. "Everything I have seen from Life Dynamics is very specifically focused on driving the abortionists out of business." But Crutcher argues he's keeping women safe and keeping abortionists honest. Of course, what troubles abortion-rights advocates is that L.D.I.'s ultimate goal isn't better abortion services, but no service at all.

--By Christopher John Farley. Reported by Adam Cohen/Denton

With reporting by ADAM COHEN/DENTON