BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Women's clinics were closed, and both abortion rights advocates and Operation Rescue protesters rested on the seventh day of the 'Spring of Life' anti-abortion campaign Sunday.
The protests were expected to resume Monday.
Abortion rights activists said they were were successful in keeping the clinics open for business during the week.
'Eight days of victory's not bad,' said Kit Bonson, a spokeswoman for Buffalo United for Choice, a major abortion rights group.
She was referring to the fact that abortion rights supporters set up their elaborately planned and rehearsed clinic defenses before Operation Rescue began its campaign.
'We've been out since 5 in the morning with hundreds of people, and Buffalo United for Choice has made sure that every woman who has an appointment (at the four targeted clinics) got in,' she said.
Bonson said abortion rights forces had outnumbered opponents 2,000 to 500 during the first week of the campaign organizers have said could last a month.
'If this is their show of strength for a national rally, they're defeated,' Bonson said. 'This is not Wichita.'
Wichita, Kan., was the sight of a 46-day protest staged last summer by Operation Rescue that resulted in some 2,600 arrests.
'We all want to go home, but we're not going to go home until Operation Rescue leaves town,' Bonson said. 'There's an incredible dedication here to making sure Operation Rescue is stopped.'
At least 341 people had been arrested since the protests began. Mass arrests took place Wednesday in Amherst, a Buffalo suburb, as Operation Rescue protesters stormed police lines and then went limp in the streets, and Friday, when they tried to block openings in the police line around a clinic.
Another 79 were arrested Saturday.
A rumored hunger strike by detainees being held in a makeshift jail at an armory on Connecticut Street never occurred Sunday.
The exact number being held could not be determined, but as many as 200 people were still in custody at the armory, many reportedly refusing to pay their bail and demanding they be released on their own recognizance.
The detainees had also protested about the conditions under which they were being held, but authorities said the armory provided adequate room and board.
Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, addressed supporters at the Evangel Chapel Assembly of God Sunday afternoon.
The protesters daily shifted their attention from one targeted clinic to another during the first week of the campaign. Operation Rescue Executive Director Rev. Keith Tucci said the group has information on which clinics were scheduled to perform abortions on a given day from 'plants' and hired private detectives.
