"It concerns us that someone with such deep personal and religious views is able to enter the arena of public policy and essentially force those views on everyone else," said Kneer, whose organization offers family planning and abortion services.
Rhomberg says the initiative's goal is strictly to protect parents' rights, and that Holman, whose four daughters range in age from 9 to 18, "obviously has a real interest in this matter." He acknowledged, however, that "we believe a side benefit of this initiative is that it would reduce the number of abortions, and of course Mr. Holman would be happy about that."
Raised in the Los Angeles area, Holman attended Carleton College in Minnesota and served with the Navy in Vietnam. He was awarded the Purple Heart and, friends say, still experiences pain from shrapnel in his back.
He taught English in Colombia for a while, then briefly pursued graduate studies in philosophy at UC San Diego. In 1972, he founded the Reader in his Mission Beach apartment, building on his experience selling ads at a Chicago paper by the same name.
Alex Farnsley, an early partner in the venture, said the early years were lean. He and Holman used pseudonyms for their articles and photographs "so it wouldn't look like it was the same people doing everything."
Initially about eight pages, the paper struggled for a long time. Farnsley had a falling-out with Holman and received a cash settlement after seven years of litigation, an ending he describes as "very sad."
Gradually, the Reader grew and became a coveted destination for San Diego writers. One former reporter, Paul Krueger, described Holman as generous with salaries, a gifted and inspiring editor and fearless when it came to printing hard-hitting stories. He also kept his views from influencing the journalism, Krueger said, with one exception: abortion.
"As my memory serves me, that was really the only taboo subject," said Krueger, who spent a dozen years at the Reader and now is a television news producer in San Diego. "If you had a story that made a pro-choice person or position look 'good,' it wasn't likely to get in the paper."
The Reader today is a glossy tabloid that runs an average of 220 pages each Thursday. Though critics say it has lost its reputation for tough but balanced investigative work, the Assn. of Alternative Newsweeklies describes it as the largest publication of its kind in the nation, with a circulation of more than 171,000.
