Vandals tear down pro-life posters and attack Australian campaigner

Adelaide, Australia, Mar 11, 2010 / 23:45 pm

A pro-life campaigner in Australia was assaulted with rocks and a waste bin after he recorded people taking down pro-life election posters. He suffered a possible broken arm in the attack, which caused pro-life candidate Trevor Grace to voice concern about the well-being of his supporters.

Grace is an independent with the Save the Unborn party running for the Upper House of South Australia.

One of his supporters, an election volunteer in Adelaide, filmed youths jumping up to a campaign poster high on a telephone pole and ripping it down.

The poster in question showed a 3-D sonogram of an unborn child with X-shaped lines drawn over it. It is captioned “Save the Unborn,” encouraging a vote for Grace and publicizing the web address of the campaign, abortSA.com.

The election volunteer’s video, posted on the site of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), then shows one of the youths throwing rocks and a large waste bin at the cameraman while shouting.

Responding to the attack, Grace reported that his party has received 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 told ABC.

"There's also been people coming up to my place, my driveway, stalking me and also tearing up, vandalizing posters."

The other abortSA.com poster shows an infant in a crib reaching out to grab a woman’s index finger.

Jeanie Walker, a candidate with the Democrats, claimed that Save the Unborn acts in a way that provokes attacks, calling the posters offensive and inflammatory, according to ABC.

The incident where youths tore down posters, she said, "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."

Posters have been dumped at Grace’s house 2,000 of the 3,000 produced have been either vandalized or stolen.

The assault, the theft of the posters and the online threats have been reported to police.