Publisher Pushes One Issue Above All Others: Abortion

"Jim is devoutly Catholic, and everything he does is informed by his faith," said Bob McPhail, editor of La Cruz de California, Holman's Tijuana-based paper. McPhail said Holman is legendary among nuns and priests in Tijuana -- where he once lived in a spartan apartment in the city's red-light district -- for his financial support of church schools, homes for unwed mothers and programs for the poor.

Abortion has long been one of the publisher's overriding concerns, stemming, friends say, from his belief in the sanctity of life. Holman has been to jail for protesting outside abortion clinics, and has given money to politicians who share his views.

In years past, supporters of abortion rights picketed his office because of articles in the Reader and Holman's refusal to accept ads offering abortion services. One cover story was particularly controversial. It was headlined "What Becomes of San Diego County's 20,000 Fetuses Each Year," and, unlike most stories in the paper, was based on an idea of Holman's, he acknowledged in a 1989 interview with The Times.

In the same interview, Holman explained his ban on ads for abortion services -- a choice that distinguishes him from publishers of most other urban weeklies. "There are some things that are legal that I find so heinous, so horrible morally, that I wouldn't want to be an agent to it," he said.

He also declines to run same-sex personal ads. And though the Reader is full of scantily clad women promoting breast augmentation and bikini waxing, it does not carry the sexually explicit ads sometimes seen in other alternative papers.

Opponents of Proposition 73 say the publisher's personal beliefs prove that the measure's backers have an agenda beyond notifying parents about a minor's abortion. They say proponents -- stalled in their efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion 32 years ago -- are nibbling away at it by making access more difficult.

Holman's initiative would insert into the state Constitution language defining abortion as causing the death of "a child conceived but not yet born." The adoption of such language would lay the foundation for encroachment on reproductive rights, said Kathy Kneer, president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, which is leading the fight to defeat the measure.