WASHINGTON — The scene is both comic and tragic as Rep. Chris Smith tries to rush off to speak on the House floor after addressing an outdoor rally in support of Falun Gong, a sect banned by the Chinese government.

Sect members don’t want him to leave, and an elderly couple sticks close behind as he climbs a wall and runs up Capitol stairs closed to the public. He tells the couple to give information to a staff member, but they insist on following, right past puzzled Capitol police. Finally, the staff member diverts them and they stop chasing Smith.

“It’s an emergency,” Smith says, sympathetically. “A relative is about to be deported from South Korea back to China.”

People with causes are often chasing Smith, the veteran New Jersey Republican who has spent 28 years taking on some of the most emotionally charged causes any lawmaker can face: religious persecution, child abduction, human trafficking, torture victims, injured veterans, refugees and, especially, abortion.

“They come to me because they know I’ll get things done,” said Smith, who became a congressman at 27 and still has a young man’s energy and boyish looks.

He spends much of his time both listening to the complaints of those who believe they’ve been wronged by government, fate, other people, or a combination of all — and pleading their cases to bureaucrats whose sense of outrage doesn’t match his.

Smith often sees clarity where others see ambiguity — and he has a gift for embracing issues that touch nerves and generate publicity. Autism, for example.

He wrote legislation creating “centers of excellence” for autism research and is pushing for a law providing support for improved teacher training. But now he is making bureaucrats and medical specialists uncomfortable again by expressing sympathy for those who believe childhood vaccinations may cause autism.

“I believe in vaccinations,” said Smith, a father of four, “but I don’t think we can just dismiss a link. Maybe too many vaccinations are given at once.”

His questioning of the autism-vaccines link hasn’t always been well received.

“When I first brought it up to the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), some woman there shook her finger in my face and said, `Don’t go there.'”

Other causes are less ambiguous, but still controversial. Human rights, for example. He wrote 25 laws on issues like the treatment of Jews in Russia and Romania and the sexual trafficking of young women.

“They were the victims but they were treated like criminals,” said Smith. “We’d send them back to Kiev and Leningrad where they would be punished.”

He is pushing for sanctions against China for its treatment of Falun Gong and Muslim Uighers, and Vietnam for actions against Catholics. Smith’s efforts are not welcomed by the executive branch.

“Unfortunately, profit trumps human rights,” he said.

His work on human rights has carried him throughout the world. He can rattle off the names of members of the Russian parliament whom he calls friends. One recent visitor was the former speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Nino Burdjanadze, an obvious fan.

Politically, Smith, a onetime Democrat, describes himself as a “moderate conservative” but is strongly pro-labor. He even supports the Employee Free Choice Act, a Democratic bill aimed at strengthening union bargaining elections, that is toxic to the GOP.

“What my Republican colleagues often don’t understand is that labor is a human-rights issue,” Smith said. “I have to remind them Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement brought down the Communist bloc.”

Human-rights issues don’t win re-elections for House members, local issues do. But Smith has a knack for projecting a local drama onto a national or international stage. Last year, he flew to Georgia to help rescue two American children — from a constituent family — from the war zone as Russian and Georgian armies clashed.

“Casework — that’s important,” he said. Like most members, he delegates casework to district staff, but he watches closely for incidents that he can treat personally and even write a law to resolve. He ranks sixth in Congress for getting laws passed, and most, he said, began with a plea or a complaint from a constituent.

“I don’t just write letters,” he said. “I write laws.”

At Smith’s core is the issue that brought him to Congress 28 years ago with no experience as anything but a legislative intern in the state capital and a salesman in his father’s sporting goods store: abortion.

He is a devout Catholic — a large painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe hangs behind his desk — and headed Right to Life in New Jersey.

“That’s where everything began for me,” Smith said. “It’s a human-rights issue. It’s a logical extension. That’s why I went to work for the disenfranchised, the people who have been deprived of their rights. Life is the ultimate right.”

So, when he rushed to break free from the Falun Gong, it was to speak on the floor against public funding for abortion. Earlier, he had spoken on the need for money to clean up a polluted lake in his district. His delivery was calm, smiling, workmanlike.

Not this time. This time, his boyish mien gave way to a scowl and his blue eyes flashed angrily as he denounced what he called the “cheap sophistry of choice.” He was a different Chris Smith and, after the speech, he was subdued.

“It’s more than just a political issue for me,” he said.

(Bob Braun writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)