Repeal petition methods ‘cause for concern’

Press, 10 April 1978, Page 6

Repeal petition methods ‘cause for concern’

Methods employed by the Repeal organisation to gain signatures for its petition to repeal the abortion legislation should concern everyone said the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Walker) in Christchurch on Saturday. Mr Walker was speaking at a seminar run by the Society for Protection of the Unborn Child (S.P.U.C.). When a first-year student had gone to enrol at Canterbury University, one of the first forms she was handed to sign for her language course was a Repeal document, which she declined to sign, Mr Walker said. Many young students must have found themselves l in a dilemma with the • thought that refusal to sign • this form might affect their I future at university, he said. ■ ‘‘l am not a member of |S.P.U.C„” Mr Walker said. “I lam simply an ordinary New I Zealander who happens to ' share the view of most other New Zealanders that abortion is an abhorrent desecration of a women’s | body. Recentlv he bad received more than 700 messages from people throughout New Zealand supporting the way .he voted in the recent debate in Parliament, and 21 against. The only defence that the .pro-abortionists could muster was to assert that all

support came from S.P.U.C. or Roman Catholics, but that was wide of the mark, Mr Walker said.

Repeal claimed to have 125,000 signatures on its petition: about 4 per cent of the population. This, he said, was not very impressive, particularly when many of those who had signed did not know what it was all about. “I have not been intimidated by the tactics of the pro-abortionists,” Mr Walker said. Actions included the painting of slogans on his house, fence, and driveway in Papanui and on the driveway of his Ministerial residence in Lower Hutt, as well as abusive telephone calls to his wife and himself, and obnoxious anonymous letters.

Abortion was more than just the termination of pregnancy, Mr Walker said. Its proliferation was a threat to the very basis of New Zealand society — strong family life.