Queensland has moved a step closer to decriminalising abortion with Labor's outrageous bill set to be put forward in August. The bill will draw heavily on Law reform Commission recommendations, and take extreme abortion laws existing in other states even further. While mainstream media emphasises that abortion would be made legal up to 22 weeks, there is less emphasis on proposals for babies over 22 weeks' gestation. That may be due to the public's distaste for late-term abortion: Premier Palaszczuk wants to allow abortions to full term, with merely a sign-off by a second doctor required.

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.

John Young has summarised the submission made by my legal team to the High Court of Australia, which we propose will show that abortion-facility exclusion zones are unconstitutional. The entire document is 24 pages long and can be read here on the High Court website, along with submissions from the Attorneys-General of the states and territories, and the Commonwealth Attorney-General - all of whom oppose us. American readers may be interested to note that SCOTUS and the Massachusetts bubble-zone case are mentioned in our submission on page 12. Careful readers will see that, on the day of my arrest, twenty police officers were briefed regarding my life advocacy within the exclusion zone. Twenty.

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".

[Note: This article was updated to include a more informative screenshot from Emma Husar's Facebook page.] In the wake of the passing of another  'Safe-Access' zones bill,  a NSW MP has sanctioned the idea that violence against life advocates is acceptable. Emma Husar, Labor's member for Lindsay, made the comment in a thread on her public Facebook page. Husar - or an aide who runs her Facebook account - allowed this comment on her page: "...Anyone who gets in their faces to make a point needs a high five in the face with a brick. It's a horrible, s***** thing to do. Leave these women alone," to which Husar replied, "Agree." If Husar was referring to the end of the comment - that sidewalk advocacy is a 's*****  thing to do', then this should have been made clear. She's wrong, of course - sidewalk advocacy is a loving thing to do. It's the last hope for women who are ambivalent about their abortion, and who feel they have no choice but to go through with one. To publicly agree to a comment suggesting violence is very irresponsible for anyone - but especially for a member of parliament, in a conversation about a highly emotional topic. Members of the pro-life community are no strangers to false accusations, violent threats and even actual violence being perpetrated against them. It is only a few years ago that an elderly man was violently attacked outside an abortion facility in Albury, NSW. Yet, during the debate, parliamentarians continued the false narrative that pro-lifers engage in bullying tactics to 'shame women' and 'shove their ideas onto others.'

Conservative MPs Fail Mothers and Babies

New South Wales voted last week to join Tasmania, Victoria, the Northern Territory and the ACT in setting up, what is in effect, a censorship law designed to stop pro-lifers from offering help to vulnerable women. This outcome was particularly disappointing for conservative voters who have long held confidence in the Nationals to maintain Christian values. National MP Trevor Kahn betrayed his conservative, pro-life base to co-sponsor the bill with the rabidly pro-abortion Penny Sharpe. Many Liberal MPs, also ostensibly conservative voted in favour of the bill. NSW Premer, Gladys Berejiklian, who had previously described the law as 'flawed', gave her party a conscience vote - this was denied to the Labor Party - but voted in favour of the bill. All 19 amendments to the bill were rejected. The final vote was 61 to 18. and the MPs who stood for life - a counter-cultural stance in Australia's contemporary climate - were like a shining light in that dark, dim place. The pro-life speeches were very good, with Minister for Women, Tanya Davies, defending sidewalk advocacy and reaffirming the fact that pro-lifers are in no way confrontational or intimidating. Liberal MP Dominic Perrottet, gave a particularly good speech which can be found in full at his website:

  .... It is fundamentally a crude attempt to sanitise our public places To silence those who refuse to turn a blind eye to the value of both mother and child. And to remove from our public spaces any trace of the witness that is a daily reminder of the dignity of every human life. Speaker, it is no surprise the collectivists opposite have a binding party position on this issue. Their ideology is rooted in the very idea of trampling freedom, denying agency and erasing individual rights in favour of the state. What a damning indictment it is that a party which cannot even offer its own members internal freedom is now in the business of denying the freedoms to others.

David and Goliath

The High Court challenge to exclusion-zones, which is already underway, initially involved the Attorneys-General of both Tasmania and Victoria, since the law was violated by the appellants in both of those states. Both cases are being heard together since the law is very similar in these states, as distinct from the bubble-zone law in the ACT, which has its own features. [See more about a recent ACT case here.] However, a more recent development is the intervention from the Attorneys-General of other Australian states: New South Wales, Queensland, WA and SA as well as the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth have all made submissions to the High Court regarding our case. [Progress of the submissions can be followed here.] Michael Quinlan, dean of Sydney's Notre Dame University, explains that states without exclusion-zones won't be able to automatically introduce them if the High Court challenge is unsuccessful and that states with similar legislation would have to remove existing exclusion-zones - and redraft them -  if the challenge is successful:

Various State AGs getting involved in the Clubb/Preston case is disappointing but it’s not unusual. In constitutional cases, states have a right to appear in the High Court. The state may see this case as a state’s rights issue. If the High Court finds the legislation unconstitutional it probably impacts on other state laws; it stops a state from choosing to pass laws which restrict free speech and probably not just around clinics. If Clubb and Preston lose, a state without exclusion zones would need to prepare and pass a bill in the usual way. If the present Tasmanian or Victorian legislation is read down, such a state will have details about how to draft a constitutional bill, which will be in the written judgment in the way it reads down the existing laws.

Life Advocacy Has a Long History of Success

Exclusion-zone laws protect abortion businesses and allow them to continue to slaughter the innocent while traumatising women and men for life. The laws have been introduced despite the embarrassingly meagre evidence of harassment and intimidation which is alleged to have been perpetrated by the pro-life community. And it is also despite the overwhelming evidence to support the effectiveness of pro-life outreach. Abortion advocates consistently disregard this evidence. Living, breathing babies, children (and now some adults) are the proof! These are the children whose mothers accepted help outside Australian abortion facilities. This can only happen when life advocates are allowed to peacefully witness, pray and offer help to these women in their time of need. The process is underway to gather totals from around Australia, but some of the numbers already available are:

• 600 women helped, and babies saved in Sydney;
• 20 mothers helped and babies saved at Croydon, Victoria,
• 300 mothers helped and babies saved at East Melbourne.
• 24 mothers helped and babies saved at Albury, NSW.

  The pictures below say a thousand words about life advocacy: [from left] Paul Hanrahan with one of the Sydney babies; Kathy with one of the Croydon babies; Anna von Marburg with one of the Albury babies. But, due to the climate of hostility against the pro-life community, due to misrepresentation and outright lies, these numbers will dwindle. And politicians like Emma Husar, not content with condoning Australia's worst human rights abuse, simply highlight the truth about the abortion industry's violent secrets. 

[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.

What do you give a wealthy country for its birthday? A country that has everything: sunshine, beaches, forests, cities voted the 'Most Liveable in the World', abundant energy, fine healthy people, enterprise, enthusiasm. One might look forward to more of the same and perhaps even a small increase to share around with friends. What one does not want is someone taking it all away.

26 years ago, I had an abortion here in Melbourne. Even back then, it was quite easy to obtain an abortion. I told the abortionist I was about to buy a business so I couldn't have the baby. That was enough reason for the abortionist to classify my reason for the abortion as ‘mental health’. The business deal fell through a few weeks after the abortion. The irony of this didn’t dawn on me until many years later. I sacrificed my baby’s life for a business that never eventuated. There were no 'sidewalk' counsellors back then. 26 years later, I have suffered indescribable psychological trauma as a result of that abortion.