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Rifts hit Women's Year parleys

By the Associated Press

Thousands of women across the nation

met over the weekend to prepare for the International Women's Year national conference next fall. In most cases, the

meetings turned into a test of support for abortions and the Equal Rights Amendment.

Montana's meeting split into two groups, both claiming the right to choose the state's 14 delegates to the International Women's Year national meeting in Houston in November. Disputes arose over abortion, the ERA and whether disadvantaged and Indian women's interests were represented.

Alabama convention-goers failed to adopt any resolutions after a day of debate.

Capitol police in Albany, N.Y., were called to ward off a threatened confrontation at a lesbian workshop.

The federally sponsored International

Women's Year had urged that the meetings not be a forum to debate the ERA, but they clearly were.

Antiabortion and anti-ERA forces seemed to be well prepared for the meetings and targeted specific workshops where resolutions they opposed were to be voted on.

In Jackson, Miss., Laura Huff and Patricia Maddox of Pelahatchie, Miss., said they came to the meeting because they were against the ERA:

"We were told in our church that ERA meant the end of marriage, that schoolbooks would show pictures of people having sex with animals, and we've got to protect our children," Mrs. Huff said.

Several women were dismayed that the meeting had taken on political overtones.

Black women with experience in the civil rights movement said they thought the conference organizers were "naive to

think they could keep politics out of such a meeting."

"When you put blacks and whites together in Mississippi and there's some possibility that they'll sit down and work something out, then that's political," said Unita Blackwell Wright, the first black woman mayor in the state. "There are still people in this state that can't bear to see that happen."

In Alabany, N.Y., an estimated 10,000 women were drawn to the meeting to elect 88 delegates and adopt resolutions.

An anti-ERA group calling itself Operation Wakeup and the antiabortion Right to Life group managed several victories in the workshop sessions. But an antiabortion resolution failed and the ERA was heavily endorsed in floor votes by the delegates.

Capitol police ordered a large group of women to leave a workshop on lesbian

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households after the group attempted to disrupt the meeting.

One Albany workshop gave overwhelming approval to a proabortion resolution while women lacked outside. pounded on the doors trying to get in.

In Helena, Mont., there were charges that members of the Mormon church had jammed the meeting and reports that participants were being informed where to go and how to vote by floor-roamers using walkie talkies.

In Montgomery, Ala., the meeting was attended by about 3,000. One workshop was disrupted when a woman supporting abortion on demand was slapped by another opposing abortion.

The Ohio meeting was held last month · in Columbus. It was marked by multiple disputes.