‘Pro-life victory’ in U.S. elections

Press, 22 November 1980, Page 12

‘Pro-life victory’ in U.S. elections

The recent United States elections were an “incredible victory for the proLife movement” and the effect would influence New Zealand’s General Election next year, according to leaders of the United States Right-to-Life group in Christchurch.

American candidates had campaigned on abortion as a special interest in the same way they campaigned on the gun issue, or on other moral issues such as the Vietnam War in the past, said Dr J. C. Willke, president of the United States Right-to-Life group. Dr Willke and his wife, Mrs Barbara Willke, authors of the “Handbook on Abortion,” were in Christchurch as part of a three-day visit to New Zealand to tell local “proLife” groups what was happening in the United States.

The Right-to-Life movement took credit for the election of at least six senators, and the removal of enough pro-abortionists in the House of Representatives and the Senate to give the pro-Life lobby a majority in both Houses. Dr Willke said the proLife lobby had a twbthirds majority in the House and a narrow majority in the Snate. It also had in Mr Ronald was commited to an anti* Reagan a president who

abortion stance. The Republican Party was committed to a constitutional amendment and opposed State funding of abortion through the medical services, he said. An amendment had to have the support of twothirds of the House and the Senate before it could be put to the 50 State legislatures for ratification. The amendment would then need the support of three-quarters of the states. Dr Willke said such an amendment could come from the House and Senate by 1983. Wtih another presidential election due in 1984, this would be fought before the amendment proposal could go to the States.

Asked how confident he was that the amendment would be passed into law, he said: “We’ll get it.” The increased support for the Right-to-Life group had come from, “committed Christians” according to Dr Willke. The same poeple who had voted for Mr Carter as a “bom again Christian” turned against him because of his “incompetence,” which extended to his pro-abor-tion stand, and his failure to appoint “born again Christians” to his administration, Dr Willke said. There were 60 million practising Christians in

the United States, and the Right-to-Life group counts most of it's support from these people. Dr Willke said only one in four members of the group were Roman Catholics. “Some of the strongest pro-abortionists are Catholics,” he said. The strength of the proLife vote showed, he believed, .in swinging the vote in southern States to the Republicans, and in turning the votes of ethnic Catholics and fundamental Protestant's in northern states behind pro-Life candidates. Americans were polarised on the issue of abortion in a way that they were not in New Zealand, said Dr Willke. “People in the United States understand that there is no middle ground: a baby is either alive or dead. New Zealand has yet to come to this stage,” he said. Abortion would have an effect on the General Election in New Zealand next year as pro-Life groups started to “educate” the public on the abortion law's, said Mrs Willke. “We will accept limiting legislation on the way,” said Dr Willke. "We are asking for equal civil rights by law from conception, and we are winning the battle far more decisively in the United States than in any other nation in the world.”