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.

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.

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.]  

Debbie Garratt has had many years of involvement in counselling women and has observed, first-hand, similarities in the grief experienced by both post-abortive women and women who lost their children to adoption. This article is intended to urge pro-lifers to consider the impact of adoption on biological parents and their children. It is not meant to judge or shame those couples who have adopted and often made great sacrifices to do so, but should serve to draw attention to the deep loss experienced by adopted children.

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.

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.