The Greens all voted for abortion right up to birth and all voted for no ban on the partial birth abortion procedure. They all voted against a requirement to provide care for any babies that survive abortion. Whatever happened to human rights?
Abortion and the Greens
Written by Rev. Dr. Peter Barnes
Recent elections in Australia have seen the rise of the Greens as a political force, and the Labor Party in particular has become beholden to them. Some of this should be regarded as a protest vote more than anything else. It would not be altogether unreasonable for any person to pronounce a Shakespearean plague on both the houses of Labor and Liberal. However, to issue a protest by voting Green is more than lunacy - it has to be labelled immoral and ungodly.
To some voters, the Greens are a group of tree-huggers who have embraced the nature-loving philosophy of Blinky Bill. That is certainly not how the Greens view themselves. In 1996 Peter Singer and Bob Brown co-authored the Greens' manifesto, and Singer went on to run as a Victorian Senate candidate for the Greens that year. Thankfully, he was unsuccessful, although that was partly due to the strength of the Australian Democrats.
The Greens have declared policies in favour of:
- same-sex marriage;- campaigns in schools in favour of sexual diversity (i.e. the promotion of homosexuality as a lifestyle):
- tax-payer funded abortions; and
- euthanasia.
These are the people who so often hold the balance of power in our parliaments.
Peter Singer is, not surprisingly perhaps, a specialist in bioethics. He considers that there is nothing wrong with societies that practise abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, and bestiality. This comes from believing that there is no fundamental difference between human beings and animals. Each is equally precious or equally disposable. If God is dead, so are human beings. The Bible says that we are created in God's image (Gen.1:26-28; 9:5-6; James 3:9), but Singer has no God, and has some difficulty in distinguishing man from cockroach. Certainly, he contends that a healthy dog is of more worth than a disabled child. To reject this is to be guilty of a new sin, that of 'speciesism'. Singer has even written in defence of infanticide which, in his view, 'threatens none of us, for once we are aware of it, we are not infants'. On this logic, it would be quite moral to commit murder provided the victim is not aware that he or she is being murdered.
The solution to life is supposedly to be found in this anti-life message. In 2006 David Benatar wrote a book called Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. This work propagated the notion that sterilization would save the planet, and Singer thought it 'a fine book with an arresting title'. The official Green philosophy is that there are some human beings (the unborn and those wishing to die) who can be classified as non-humans; a legal euthanasia programme will improve eugenics; governments are best run by coercion all in the name of compassion; vegetarianism is good while meat-eating is evil; and spirituality is linked to a mystical commitment to mother-earth concepts of blood and soil. This should sound somewhat familiar - indeed, frighteningly familiar. Green Shirts can look like Black Shirts.
We are not supposed to be alarmist these days, but naivety can open the door to alarming things. God tells us that 'all who hate me love death' (Prov.8:36). The Greens are yet another illustration of this truth.