012374 Anti - abortionists stage protests



By BARTON REPPERT Associated Press Writer

Abortion supporters and opponents rallied. picketed, petitioned and staged symbolic funerals to mark the one-year anti anniversary of a Supreme Court. decision which invalidated most antiabortion laws.

In New York City, several hundred midtown Manhattan strollers crowded the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral as a feminist group crowned a woman "pope." The bogus pontiff then issued an "encyclical- denouncing "1,900 years of blasphemous sexist oppression by the Catholic Church."

About 30 members of the New York chapter of the National Organization for women demonstrated outside the Manhattan offices of Sen. James L. Buckley, R-Con.-N.Y., the sponsor of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

They, carried chains and chanted: "Compulsory child birth Is Slavery for Women."

Terence Cardinal Cooke Catholic archbishop of New York, repeated his support for the B u c k I e y antiabortion amendment. He also participated in the announcement of plans for a Center for Parent and Child Development at New York Foundling Hospital  which would include a program for unmarried mothers.

About 10.000 persons gathered Tuesday at Independence Mall in Philadelphia for an antiabortion rally sponsored by the National Right to Life Committee, which is pressing for a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court's ruling.

John Cardinal Krol. Roman Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia. told the crowd:

"No human has the right, the power to say a human being is not worthy to life.. A fetus is not a wart, not a tumor, it is not anything else but a human life. I do not stress it as a Catholic issue--this is a human issue.

Many of the demonstrators wore black arm bands. They carried signs reading, "I'm glad you were born," and Thank God Mary Didn't an Abortion.