Wednesday March 10, 2010
Rocks Thrown at Australian Pro-Life Election Candidate
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
ADELAIDE, Australia, March 10, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-life candidate running in the upcoming South Australian state election says he has had rocks and a garbage bin thrown at him when he attempted to stop vandals from taking down his election posters.
Trevor Grace, founder of the Save the Unborn Party, says his pro-life election posters, which feature a baby grasping the finger of an adult hand, are designed to create awareness about the high abortion rate in South Australia.
Mr. Grace told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News that the party has faced a string of threats during the South Australian election campaign.
“We’ve had phone calls, we’ve had death threats, you know particularly on Facebook, we’ve been intimidated again and again when we put up posters,” he said.
“There’s also been people coming up to my place, my driveway, stalking me and also tearing up, vandalizing posters.”
However, Mr. Grace said he will not be intimidated by the violence and threats and has refused to take the election posters down.
“I’ve seen what abortion does to women, I’ve visited people who’ve been traumatized by abortion and what they keep on saying to me [is] ‘Why wasn’t I told, why wasn’t I told the truth about what I was doing?’ That was predominantly the message,” he said.
Leading Democrat candidate Jeanie Walker told ABC she thinks the pro-life posters are offensive and said she wasn’t surprised that they elicited the violent attack.
“Unfortunately it doesn’t surprise me and that’s why I’ve been calling for the posters to be taken down right from the first day they were put up,” she said.
“I don’t think Trevor Grace or any of his supporters actually realize how much they are upsetting and hurting the people of South Australia with these posters and their website.”
Walker told ABC earlier in the campaign that abortion should be kept out of public debate for fear of stigmatizing women who have aborted their children and doctors who perform abortion.
“Women don’t just lightly go in and decide to terminate a pregnancy,” she said. “There’s a multitude of reasons why they may do that so we need to sort of keep this out of the political arena.”
Mr. Grace countered that the violence directed against him by those who object to his pro-life stand did not surprise him. “We are now seeing a strong link between rising social and economic problems and society’s disregard for the unborn,” Mr. Grace notes on his election campaign website. He also points out that political parties that protested against the killing of whales have not had the courage to “stand up against the systematic killing of unborn babies.”
“A brutal reality occurs in our state – day after day. It is the most detestable practice carried out by modern society. Behind sterile clinic doors, thousands of tiny human beings are quietly executed. 90,000 unborn babies are aborted every year in Australia – 5,000 in South Australia,” Mr. Grace’s campaign website states.
Trevor Grace is a high school teacher and has been campaigning for the rights of the unborn for over ten years. He and his wife Robyn have also been actively involved in providing practical and financial support for pregnant women and their families. Visit his website here.