Boston Demonstrators Mark First Year of Legal Abortions

More than 350 supporters of an antiabortion group, wearing black armbands and carrying red roses, met on the Boston Common yesterday to commemorate the deaths of the 1.5 million fetuses aborted since the Supreme Court decided to legalize abortions last January.

Fifty counter-protestors marched across the street in front of the State House chanting "Abortion, Freedom Now." Twelve women dressed in white robes, chained together and carrying a ten-foot wooden cross, led the line of picketers from the pro-abortion Parent's Aid Society.

William R. Baird, director of the society, explained the costumes: "We are trying to free women from the cross of religious oppression," he said, "so we think that it is about time in history to have twelve female disciples."

Baird accused Massachusetts Citizens for Life, the anti-abortion group, of attempting to make "every woman's uterus a ward of the state."

Accompanied by muffled drum rolls, Roy R. Scarpato, president of Citizens for Life, led his supporters in five minutes of silent prayer at noon. Four clergymen from different faiths then addressed the crowd, each expressing opposition to abortion and calling for God's forgiveness.

Rabbi Samuel Fox, president of the Massachusetts Council of Rabbis, compared the liberalized abortion attitudes to the willingness of the German people to exterminate 6 million Jews during World War II. "We are turning our doctors and nurses into accessories to murder," he said.

At the end of the service, Scarpato spoke again and called for support of a constitutional amendment to override the Supreme Court decision.

A number of the anti-abortion demonstrators, including school children with signs written on the backs of book covers, then began to march between the Parent's Aid Society picket lines. Others went up to the State House to talk with their legislators.