This message is so dear to my heart. It was given at the launch (4 Nov 2018) of ‘Christians In Politics’, a grass roots self-organisation of some Christians in Newcastle concerned about how we can be better informed about and involved in the future of our nation – our neighbours. Here’s what one person had to say after the event…  

This testimony was sent by a reader, and shows just how destructive long-acting hormonal contraceptives can be to a woman's health. As usual, my desire in publishing these testimonies is not to promote the practice of using contraception, but to alert women and men to the health risks involved in the use of these unnatural interventions. (More testimonies can be found here: ) Names have been changed and the text has been edited slightly for clarity - Kathy  

In addition to being an author, speaker, and blogger at The Bridgehead and other websites, Jonathon van Maren is part of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, an organisation best known for their pioneering use of abortion victim imagery. A few months ago, Jonathon approached me to give him a rundown of the Australian pro-life scene for his website, (you can read that here) so it seemed like a good opportunity to ask him to use the same questions to describe the landscape in Canada. I also asked Jonathan to elaborate on something that stuck with me from his book, The Culture War: in it, Jonathan wrote that addiction to pornography was holding men back from involvement in pro-life work.

Artificial reproductive technologies (ART) are leading to more and more degradation of the dignity of human life as embryos are being completely devalued and new techniques are being developed. Last year, I reported on an Australian midwife who was creating jewellery from thawed, frozen embryos, so that couples could have a lasting memory of the excess children they created via IVF. [read Killing for a Keepsake] I've also written about apps for finding donors, males seeking fertility treatment and more about the manufacturing of human beings here. [read Same-Sex Marriage: Good for the IVF Industry]  Now things have devolved to the point where embryos are being swapped on Facebook and Craigslist, and lesbians can share a pregnancy.

Almost ten years to the day after Victoria created the most liberal abortion laws in the world, Queensland has followed suit and decriminalised abortion there. While many thought the change was a foregone conclusion due to the reigning Labor government's self-avowed love of baby-killing, there was hope that the law could be voted down by the many pro-life parliamentarians, notably from the LNP. But the final vote was 51 to 41 in favour of abortion law reform. Three LNP members crossed the floor to vote for the bill: Tim Nicholls, Jann Stuckey and Steve Minnikin. Remember those names. This law passed despite months of intense campaigning from pro-life groups and individuals, including many fora held to educate voting MPs about the reality of abortion.

Blue skies and plenty of sunshine – a great day to march for the babies again. The ninth annual March for the Babies in Melbourne just finished. Several thousand passionate and peaceful marchers – men and women, children, grandmothers and grandfathers – marched to remind Melbourne, Victoria and the world that we do not accept the mass slaughter of the unborn. Since the horrific abortion on demand law was passed here ten years ago, there have been over 200,000 babies killed with official state sanction. Some 20,000 poor preborn children are taken to their slaughter each year thanks to one of the most liberalised abortion laws in the world. But we were not alone. Prolifers also marched this afternoon in Brisbane because they are about to vote on a similar nasty piece of legislation.

[ON 19 September the ACT Legislative Assembly voted 15-4 to allow the abortifacient drug RU-486 to be prescribed and dispensed in the ACT. The four MLAs opposing the move were Mrs Vicki Dunne, Mrs Elisabeth Kikkert, Mr Alistair Coe and Mr Andrew Wall. The new legislation allows “medical abortions”, as distinct from “surgical abortions”, to be conducted away from a medical facility in the privacy of one’s own home.

This article is taken from the Western Australian Legal Theory Association and is reproduced here with permission. The entire document can be downloaded at the WALTA website here: Dr Joseph Turner (B Med Sc (Hons), MBBS, Ph D, FRACGP, FARGP, FACRRM and DRANZCOG (Advanced)* Debbie Garratt (BN, Grad Dip Counselling, B Ed, M Ed (La Trobe), PhD candidate (UNDA)** Dr Simon McCaffrey (MBBS (Hons Class II), MRCOG, FRACOG and FRANZCOG)*** 

The High Court will consider in October the constitutionality of Victorian and Tasmanian laws prohibiting protesting, offers of assistance and other types of communication around abortion clinics. Those supporting the laws claim that they are needed considering the significant harm that may be caused by this conduct. There are, however, substantial problems with the medical evidence provided to the High Court in support of such claims. This article critiques this evidence and highlights key questions that remain unaddressed by the expert medical opinion.

It is the best of times. At no other time in human history has there been less war or invasion, plagues or pestilence, slavery or poverty. There has never been more knowledge, education and instant availability of information literally in the pockets and at the fingertips of more people than there is now. We are empowered, free and masters of our own destiny. We are civilised and enlightened and the major problems which plagued humanity for millennia have largely been solved.

But it is the worst of times.

We boast of social progress from the pagan ignorance of slavishly worshipping idols crafted by human hands. Instead, we cast aside the lofty ambition of discovering natural law or objective Truth and claim that the morality of whatever is legislated is derived from the mere authority to legislate it. We are worshipping precedents & laws crafted by human hands as somehow holy or sacred. Regardless of all their other virtues or accomplishments, we pull down statues of slave owners who had the callousness of heart to treat any fellow man as mere property to be acquired or disposed of, ignorant of the infinite worth & inherent dignity of every living human. We stand in condemnation of those who barbarically cast their own babies into the fires of Molech in vain hopes of personal prosperity millennia ago. Discarding the progress of centuries before us, our social enlightenment has not progressed.

Once again we are barbaric, treating certain classes of human life as second class or worse, disposable property. We may not be able to hear the heart-breaking screams of newborn infants in the searing hot hands of a stone idol, but we are a society that deliberately terminates the lives of many, many more unborn children each year. As many living humans as fill the stadium for the AFL Grand Final each year are sacrificed in the sterile abortion clinics of Australia. We enjoy blissful ignorance of the actual procedures used to kill little humans and take comfort that surely no practitioner of the honourable trades of medicine or law would betray our trust in them to do no harm and defend the innocent. We actively censor and ban all knowledge of the fact that children are sliced and diced in the womb before being vacuumed out like garbage, or when more developed, have their skulls crushed and are torn limb from limb before the bloody gore is reassembled on a stainless steel surface to ensure no piece of this new person was left inside her mother.

There is no independent counselling for the poor women or girls who find themselves in incredibly difficult circumstances, no compassion for the numbers of them there without free choice but by the abusive coercion of their partner or parents or rapists. There is no informed consent with full disclosure of the many well documented risks, balanced presentation of the other choices she may prefer, or cooling off period to consider the weight of the consequences of termination of life. We lie without flinching when we call ourselves “pro choice” and offer no funding or encouragement for more than one choice. The manifest truth is we are only pro the abortion choice.

In Queensland, whose unaccountable government is currently railroading the parliament into grossly liberalising abortion, there are about 14,000 children killed every year in abortion clinics and a mere handful, not even a dozen, adopted by the many families desperately wanting a child, offering those unwanted by others a permanent, safe home with them. Qld offers no government support or services to pregnant mothers choosing to permit their babies to live with the choice of adoption. But the bad Jackie Trad abortion bill, already rejected twice and overwhelmingly opposed in polling, petitions and parliamentary submissions, ignores the needed solutions and seeks only to offer more children on the fatal altar of personal autonomy and prosperity.

Our social conscience has buried the objective reality of the science and the ethics which demand acknowledgement that every single successful abortion kills a living human and significantly harms his or her mother. We use confected outrage and evasive language to change the topic and camouflage the facts. We prefer to talk about secondary issues which require us to assume there is only a woman’s body and woman’s rights to be considered. But that assumption is grossly ignorant of the inescapable fact that science conclusively observes that every human life began at conception. From the moment the spark of life occurs, when sperm & egg fuse to create a new person, that embryo is human by species and living by scientific definition. The term fetus is not an escape from the inconvenient reality: its definition acknowledges it is a “little one”. Like a stowaway on a ship at sea, whether the passenger is there with or without permission of the captain of the vessel, the captain has a moral obligation to fulfill her duty of care to that person, little or large, until they can be delivered to a safe harbour.

It is said truly that in this age of information ignorance is a choice. Resources like AbortionProcedures.com fully empower us to be informed about the reality of what really goes on in first, second and third trimester abortions. I challenge you to open your eyes and watch all three and still insist it’s just a woman’s body, a woman’s choice. The lawyers and legislators who scorn the fight for the universal human right to life desperately try to hide the evidence of the humanity being rejected by even denying the mercy of pain relief for the little lives being extinguished in late term abortions, even though at the same stage of development children being operated on in utero would be given anaesthetic.

False Bipolar Diagnosis

Mine is a bit of a long one, so I’ll try to cut it short. I was in the Australian military when I had the Implanon put in at my request, then soon after I started to have mood swings. These were so severe that I ended up being diagnosed as bipolar, and was almost medically discharged. When a doctor I saw for a discharge medical review noted my diagnosis, and that I still had the implanon in, and he asked me if I knew that it had been known to cause mood swings. I did not know this .. maybe it was on the paperwork with the possible symptoms, but I don’t recall...

On 12^th September Dr Carol Portman, one of Queensland’s only later term abortion providers spoke at a Committee Hearing for the Termination of Pregnancy Bill.  When asked if she had ever experienced a woman attending for termination who may be experiencing her coercion, her response revealed all that typifies abortion discourse.  A discourse that upholds the concept of ‘abortion rights’ above all else, even a woman’s right to be free from coercion, to be entitled to the highest standards of ethical medical care and the right to say ‘no’.

The latest QLD abortion law reform effort was introduced on 22 August 2018, by the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Yvette  D'Ath. This is the third such attempt to decriminalise abortion in the state in recent years. Organisations and individuals, including medical professionals, counsellors, and members of the public made submissions to a government-appointed committee, which will evaluate them and release a report on October 5th. The bill will then be debated in mid-October.

"Birth control: more children from the fit, less from the unfit.” “No woman or man shall have the right to become a parent without a permit for parenthood.”

These quotes are from Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), the founder of Planned Parenthood. They are given by Elasah Drogin in her book Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society, a work which outlines the life and activity of the woman who founded Planned Parenthood, the organisation which has killed millions of pre-born babies. Unpleasant facts about the life and opinions of Margaret Sanger are ignored by her modern admirers, but they need to be seen if we are to fully understand the background of the current advocacy of abortion and of other evils.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald,  euthanasia advocate, Brian Owler thinks many of Australia's MPs are 'out of touch' with the desires of the public to be given access to assisted killing. However, pro-life senators tell us that the majority of submissions to a recent federal inquiry were advocating for life, rather than for euthanasia. Below are portions of the presentations given by three Australian senators who voted against the recent Leyonhjelm bill which would have allowed the territories to pass euthanasia legislation.

When we allow dominant discourses based on misinformation to drive legislative change, nobody wins. Abortion advocates in Queensland are again pushing for decriminalisation based on a lot of myth and very little fact.  The way in which the media allows this inaccurate portrayal of abortion is a sign of how low we’ve sunk in completely dismissing the evidence and the actual experiences of women. This article highlights a few of the very misleading tactics of the pro-abortion lobby in pushing an agenda that doesn’t serve the needs of women at all.  

Almost 10 years ago, Victoria became the first Australian state to decriminalise abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Tasmania followed in 2013. Now Queensland abortion activists are trying a second time to decriminalise abortion to full term in that state. This article looks at some of the inhumane aspects of these barbaric procedures. [A note on the use of the phrase 'late-term' abortion: there is some division over the use of this name to describe the deliberate termination of pregnancy past the first trimester. Some, including abortion providers, do not believe it to be medically accurate. But because the name is widely-accepted, I have stuck with it for this article, which focuses on deliberate abortions performed after 20 weeks' gestation.]  

Philip Ney MD FRCP(C) MA RPsych is an academic and clinician of over fifty years, has done research into child abuse for more than forty years and has published many papers and books on this subject. In his early research, he became increasingly aware of the connection between child abuse and abortion. Dr. Ney and his wife have also studied children who are survivors of abortion. From their experience conducting therapeutic groups for women and men suffering from the effects of child abuse and/or abortion, Philip Ney wrote "Ending the Cycle of Abuse" (Taylor Frances, New York) and "Deeply Damaged" (Pioneer Publishing, Victoria, BC). The extract below is taken from the 1997 book, 'Deeply Damaged." [Bio: the Hope Alive Australia website.]

This is the second part of a briefing paper prepared by Debbie Garratt of Real Choices Australia. The first part critiques a recently-released draft White Paper from Marie Stopes Australia, which deals with the topic of Reproductive Coercion. Click here to read part 1. The majority (>95%) of terminations in Australia occur for psychosocial reasons including not having enough resources, whether financial or material, not feeling able to cope with a baby due to age or lack of support, fears about the impact of pregnancy and parenting on other life choices, as well as consideration for the needs of other people a woman cares for.

This is the first part of a briefing paper by Debbie Garratt, of Real Choices Australia, on the topic of reproductive coercion. This article critiques a draft White Paper by Marie Stopes on reproductive coercion, while the second article examines the society's many subtle and coercive influences on pregnant women. Click here to read part 2.   Marie Stopes, one of Australia’s biggest abortion providers recently released a draft White Paper entitled Hidden Forces: Shining a Light on Reproductive Coercion.

Those even on the periphery of the Catholic world are likely to be aware that this July marks the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Humanae Vitae. That controversial Catholic document, authored by Pope Paul VI, created a demarcation line between orthodox and liberal Catholics over the issue of contraception. And that demarcation has continued to this day. It is often sadly acknowledged within Catholic circles that if the advice given in Humanae Vitae, and its forerunner, Casti Conubii, had been faithfully promulgated by all priests and obediently followed by the laity, then today's astoundingly high abortion rate could never have been realised.

The late Professor of Law at the University of California, John Noonan, stated that " once or twice in a century an issue arises so far reaching in its consequences and so deep in its foundation that it calls on every person to take a stand". He contended that in 19th century America slavery assumed those proportions and that abortion has become one of these issues. Saint Teresa of Calcutta gave the following powerful message during her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize - " the greatest destroyer of peace in the world is abortion. For if a society can allow a mother to kill her own child in her own womb, how can we tell other people not to kill each other.Any society which permits abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use any violence to get what they want".

The abortion industry would have women believe that once the first abortion-pill is taken, then their children's fate is sealed. But it is possible to save babies if intervention is made in time. In fact, more than half women who undergo an abortion-pill reversal go on to give birth to healthy babies. Abortion-pill reversal has been available for some years overseas but has yet to become widely accessible in Australia. Still, despite many obstacles, successful reversals have been taking place in this country. Below is the case study of one such successful procedure.

[Photo credit: IndiaTimes.com. In the wake of the Irish referendum, which has failed to protect human life, abortion advocates are still using tragic hard cases to justify their position. Savita Halappanavar's death was one such case. Dave Pellowe put together this concise summary after his interview with the abortionist, Leah Torres, and it's a useful reference to bookmark.

If I wanted to kill someone I would find it helpful if I could convince myself that I was not really killing a human being. There would be a further advantage if I could convince other people, and especially the law, that this were so. It is no wonder then that advocates of abortion usually refuse to face the reality that abortion is the killing of a baby. There are exceptions, notably Professor Peter Singer, who agrees that a human baby is being killed, but generally, pro-abortionists shy away from this truth.

[It's a sad day for Ireland, whose citizens have voted to repeal the 8th Amendment, that which ensured protection for the preborn. No longer does she "acknowledge the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantee in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right." Pro-life campaigners have been hampered by an extremely pro-abortion press, vast sums of foreign money funding abortion groups and even politicians apparently deliberately misrepresenting Catholic Church teaching.