011074 10,000 March For Life in Britain 

LONDON (RNS) - In probably the biggest "Parliamentary lobby" every held over a single moral issue, nearly 10,000 people from all parts of Britain converged on Westminster to ask members of Parliament to revise the liberalizing Abortion Act of 1967.

The lobby was sponsored by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which was founded in January 1967, while the Act was still going through Parliament.

Meeting point for the thousands who came here by plane, bus, train and car was the Central Hall, the Methodist administrative and conference center which stands just across the road from the House of Parliament.

At one point there were 5,000 people inside the hall while a long line of others snaked their way along adjacent thoroughfares to get into the Parliament building itself to lobby before their members of Parliament.

Their plea stated that the MPs must work for drastic modification, if not repeal of the Act, which, they charged, has caused the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of unborn babies.

Inside the House I of Commons, lobbyists besieged members in the corridors and in committee rooms. Copies of a manifesto which had been launched the previous day by the society were pushed into MPs'hands.

The nine-page manifesto declared, "The Abortion Act of 1967, which denies legal protection to the unborn, is an immoral and disastrous piece of legislation which has produced tragic results for both mothers and babies. Parliament was warned that the number of abortions carried out in Britain would escalate uncontrollably and that National Health Service doctors and nurses would be blackmailed to carry out such operations regardless of their conscience."

It also declared that before the Act came into force,approximately 27 legal abortions were carried out daily in Britain. "Now," the document added, "there are at least 500 legal abortions done in Britain every day. The large majority are carried out for reasons of  social convenience  with no medical justification at all, and over half are done privately for large fees in profit-making clinics, effectively on demand by the patients, contrary to the clear intention of Parliament when the Act was passed...

''A society which shows so little respect for the rights of the unborn must, surely, reassess its values for each abortion involves the destruction of a human life. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency on the part of authorities to shelve the problems of the very poor by using the palliative of abortion."

The  manifesto went on to quote testimony from gynecologists, social workers, health visitors, and women who have consented unwillingly to abortions which they now regret. and others who were assisted through the help of, organizations such as Lifeline, Let Live. Life and Family Advice Centers.

One MP, Selwyn Gummer, who represents a southeast London district, said as yet unpublished Gallup Poll statistics reveal that only 17 per cent of people want abortion on demand and more than 60 per cent wanted the present Act amended. Those opposed to the Act, he said, must also demand proper support for one-parent families and "there must be no more illegitimate parents and children."

Mr. Gurnmer, an Anglican, said the Churches had been partly responsible for the blame attached to illegitimacy but they must now show they care.

"There are only parents and children," he added.

In Scotland, meanwhile, Cardinal Gordon Gray, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, made a strong attack on the "extermination" of millions of children by abortion.