Pro-LIFE NEWS

Vol. 12 No.2 - Winter Edition 1995                              Print Post Approved - 33L385/00042

Contents:

- New Victorian Threat
- Editorial
- Write For Your Life
- Pastoral Letter to All Australian Catholics
- Member for Alice Springs Speaks Out
- "The Whole of the French Trade was not Worth the Life of One Australian Unborn Child"
- World View

The last Pro-Life News carried a front page report of the "Threat from the North", the Northern Territory’s Chief Minister, Marshall Perron’s euthanasia bill. While we were preoccupied looking north, in a move reminiscent of the late Dr. Bertram Wainer who challenged the law against abortion by performing one, the Melbourne Age newspaper ran an extensive story on seven Victorian doctors Open letter to the Premier, Jeffrey Kennett, claiming they are helping patients die by euthanasia. Twice in the one week, The Age ran editorials strongly supporting them.

The response was immediate and powerful. And it came from widely diverse directions. Powerful letters were written by doctors, specialist oncologists, psychiatrists, nurses, clergy, former cancer sufferers and bereaved spouses. Who could ever forget the words of Dr Ian Gawler O.A.M., therapeutic director of The Gawler Foundation, leader of an active cancer-support program, himself a former cancer sufferer.

"Now, having assisted thousands of others in similar positions, I have come to know many people who also speak joyously of the benefits of suffering. For suffering transcended can be joyous. Death too, even slow death with apparent loss of function and pain, can be a dignified and certainly a natural completion of life".

Or the words of Rosalind Allingham in a letter titled "Reflections on one year in the life of the Dying" in a reference to her now deceased husband. "Ian Gawler survived, Bill Jessup died. But they had this in common, suffering was transcended and, I believe, all of us involved with Bill’s care, emerged with Gawler’s "deep respect for life and an urge to help others".

Or those of Professor Alan Rodger "It is patronising to suggest that today religious belief, a "minority" preoccupation, may be the sole aversion medical practitioners may have to euthanasia. My view that there is no place in medical practice for actively terminating life is based not on religious beliefs but on my admittedly subjective understanding of medicine and a more objective view of human nature."

Or of Portland’s Dr Berkely Vaughan "As an 89 year old, this topic is more than academic interest to me. When my time comes I do not want an executioner lurking in the wings but skilled and caring medical care and a loving family with me. I believe "The Noes" have it."

Sunday Age columnist Terry Lane, embracing enthusiastically the current culture of death, with the headline "Seven cheers for the right to die:" (April 2) however, got it painfully right when he wrote "If the seven doctors are prosecuted......  it will be permissible to ask your doctor to help kill yourself and the doctor will be permitted to do it..... and will not be prosecuted." This is where we come in. The action of these seven doctors was intended to pressure the Victorian Government to legalise patient killing.

As members of Pro-Life Victoria we urge you to take up your pens and write three letters opposing euthanasia in your own state. Last time we asked you to oppose it in the Northern Territory. We now have to ask you to oppose it here in Victoria.

Please write to:

... seeking assurance his Government will not legalise euthanasia. Remind him this State has had an exhaustive enquiry into options for Dying With Dignity which recommended against euthanasia. Tell him what you think of his support for Marshall Perron’s Euthanasia Bill as evidenced in his comments on Radio 3AW’s Neil Mitchell Program. Tell him the government should protect the rights of people instead of allowing them to be killed.

Protest about the pro-euthanasia stance of its editorials and the slant of its opinion poll. Inform him you will! or have stopped buying the Age because of its embrace of "culture of death".

complaining about the deliberate action of the doctors in breaking the law and in advertising that they will carry out euthanasia. Ask if they are to be deregistered. Use your own words. Be brief simple and polite.

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Right to Life Australia’s Margaret Tighe, quoted in The Age April 22 report "Move to block foetal risk law suits" is spot on when she states "It is not surprising that the report should fail to stand up for unborn children, given that some of the Australian Medical Association’s members are the biggest abusers of them".

Quoted in an article titled "Ethics in Embryo" (Age Good Weekend April 6, 1991) Adelaide abortionist Dr Robert Jones said "Abortion is murder You’re extinguishing a life and if you don’t face up to that you’re not being honest with yourself". Faced with such damaging evidence from a medical colleague the Australian Medical Association is surely ethically obliged to call on doctors to stop the annual killing of 80 to 100,000 unborn Australians. If the AMA showed the effects of abortion inflicted by doctors on a baby to the public as former President Dr Brendan Nelson once showed the damaging effects of smoking on a lung to the tobacco lobby, the AMA could do for Australia’s babies what it has done for Australia’s lungs. Save them!

The protection of these babies however, is not only up to the AMA. The report on Foetal Welfare and the Law commissioned by the AMA may claim "the mother’s interests should always override the rights of the foetus" but as Judge Newman reminded us in the NSW Supreme Court last year, Section 65 of the Crimes Act is in place in Victoria to protect unborn children and carries a penalty of up to 15 years imprisonment for any doctor who aborts a woman without a serious danger to her health. It is the Governments responsibility to enforce it.

At a time when Australians are making reparation for denying fundamental rights to our indigenous people, today’s Government, by failing to enforce the law against abortion has abandoned another entire class of people. It can’t pretend this is just another issue among a laundry list of issues. Nothing is as important as the protection of human life.

Please keep writing to the Premier urging him to enforce this States law against abortion.

Denise Cameron

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All pro-lifers will be familiar with the words of Dr R. A. Gallop of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. "Once you permit the killing of the unborn child, there will be no stopping. There will be no age limit. You are setting off a chain reaction that will eventually make you the victim. Your children will kill you because you permitted the killing of their brothers and sisters. Your children will kill you because they will not support you in old age. Your children will kill you for your homes and estates. If a doctor will take money for killing the innocent in the womb, he will kill you with a needle when paid by your children. This is the terrible nightmare you are creating for the future."

But few of us, I suspect really believed our beloved country Australia would be the first to legalise this form of killing - or that we would "live to see this day".

The Passage of former Northern Territory Chief Minister Marshall Peron’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill was a dreadful day for Australia. That a "bill to kill," a bill that will forever alter the relationship between the sick and their doctors, could be passed by such an unrepresentative assembly, in the last of Australia’s frontier towns is a mortifying embarrassment for Australia.

Even as this newsletter goes to print The Australian newspaper reporter David Nason who has reported on the NT euthanasia debate from its launch writes "The only interpretation is that in the end, Perron became the supreme autocrat, using government to have his own way and leaving behind what is increasingly looking like a mess, for others to sort out". Elsewhere he writes: "The Northern Territory’s euthanasia debate lasted just four months, and until it was clear the numbers were against him, Perron fiercely opposed any moves for a study by experts or any process aimed at involving and educating the community. He labelled such moves as delaying "tactics" and insisted it was up to the politicians to decide. But even when the community did become involved, not everyone got a fair go".

The most disgraceful image during the passage of Marshall Perron‘s Right of the Terminally Ill Legislation was of the former Chief Minister ushering in the Aboriginal member for Arnhem Land, whose constituents urged him to vote against euthanasia, into the chamber like a lamb to the slaughter, to vote for it. Like the "red neck" that he is in his attitude to capital punishment, aids sufferers and drug dependents, Marshall Perron, who has failed to lift the life span of the aborigines of the territory to equal that of his own, used a man grieving for the loss of his wife, for his own ends. Wesley Lanhupuy needed bereavement counselling, not the ignomy of voting for a "world first" Kill Bill.

The Fallout

Reaction to the Northern Territory’s new euthanasia legislation has been stunning. Widespread, diverse condemnation. Our national newspaper The Australian has already called for the repeal of the bill. The Australian pro-life movement should be heartened and encouraged to know it has been condemned by:

· The Australian Medical Association
· Sir Gustave Nossal, one of Australia’s most respected medical researchers.
· Dr Ian Gawler, former cancer sufferer and Director of the Gawler Foundation, an internationally renowned sanctuary for cancer sufferers.
· Mrs Nadia Maffei, 33 years old breast cancer sufferer ("If my family had listened to doctors I’d be dead").
· palliative care specialists doctors and nurses
· Aboriginal activist Sharon Firebrace
· the Jewish Association of Rabbis of Australia and New Zealand
· the Islamic Council
· the Head of the Anglican Church in Australia, The Most Reverend Dr Keith Rayner
· Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane The Very Reverend Peter Hollingworth
· Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Sir Frank Little
· 91 percent of callers to the Herald-Sun Vote Line "Should Victoria introduce euthanasia laws"
· Time magazine’s Man of the Year 1994, Pope John Paul II.

The Christian Nurses Fellowship held a forum on August 5 with three speakers opposed to the legalisation of euthanasia. Quadrant magazine editor Robert Manne has written two outstanding articles in the Melbourne Age as has Jim Dominguez, a former non-academic Fellow of the Senate of Sydney University. The newly appointed Minister of the Collins Street Baptist Church, the Reverend Tim Costelloe and former Minister of Scots Church, the Reverend Gordon Powell have expressed their public opposition in letters to The Age. The crassest comment on the legislation came from Victoria’s Premier Jeff Kennett on Radio 3AW’s Neil Mitchell Program May 25. He referred to his experience in visiting "nursing homes and hospitals, where you literally see men and women propped up around the wall sitting. Their minds have gone, their body may be able - might be the other way around, their mind is able and their body’s gone. And we can keep people, and increasingly we’re going to be able to do it, keep them alive indefinitely, regardless of their condition.

In a letter of protest to every member of State Parliament, Pro-life Victoria claims such words are "particularly offensive in that they are evocative of another era when for a start, nursing homes were cleared out and eventually six million humans were cleared out for a variety of reasons unrelated to unrelieved pain".

Please write - for your life!

The Chief Minister
Mr Shane Stone
Parliament House
State Square
Darwin NT 0800

Urge Mr Stone to repeal Northern Territory’s Kill Bill. Draw his attention to our national newspaper The Australian’s editorial calling for just this. Tell him it is not only pro-lifers who are protesting. Tell him opposition is unprecedented and widespread. Remind him of how afraid aboriginals are. of this legislation. Appeal to him to do this for Australia’s sake.

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On Sunday 14th May, in a move that signals the Catholic Church’s strongest protest since the abortion debate of the early 1970’s - Catholic priests around Australia read from the pulpit a two page pastoral letter that condemns euthanasia as legalised murder. We reprint below the text of that letter and express our gratitude for such a lucid explanation of the issues involved and its unequivocal defence of human life.

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference
Pastoral Letter to the Catholic People of Australia

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Euthanasia is when a doctor, not an illness, kills the patient.

No Doctor in Australia at the present time has the right to kill anyone. If we accept euthanasia we give a doctor a licence to kill.

There are big steps and there are little steps. The biggest step is a leap from saying "no one may kill" to saying "some may kill". The little step from saying that "someone may kill this person" to saying that "someone may also kill that person."

Euthanasia would put at risk all those people whom others think would be better off dead.

The Dutch took the big step some years ago, ever since then they haven’t been able to stop taking many little steps.

"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s". (Romans 14:7-8)

Human beings must not start playing God.

Australians must not take the big step.

A private member’s bill to legalise euthanasia has been introduced into parliament in the

Northern Territory. Similar legislation has been foreshadowed in other Australian Parliaments.

The debate over euthanasia is a highly emotional one, for everyone is afraid of prolonged suffering, and it is heartbreaking to see others suffer.

This is the force of the argument in favour of euthanasia, but we appeal to all people to think seriously about whether euthanasia is really the answer to this problem.

No patient and no doctor is under any obligation to prolong life unnecessarily. Indeed, it is the patient, not the doctor, who should decide whether painful, expensive or complicated means should be used to prolong the life of a dying person. The patient is free not to receive such treatments, and we would welcome public debate on this topic, so that patients might be more aware of their options and their rights.

It is also legitimate for a doctor to use any and every approved drug to take away the pain and suffering of a dying person. Those who argue for euthanasia usually do not give modern medicine the credit for what it has achieved in this field. The science of palliative care, as it is called, has made remarkable progress. We commend and praise the work of all those who devote themselves to the care of the terminally ill.

Euthanasia goes beyond not prolonging life. It is direct and intentional killing.

We argue that this involves playing God and it places a most dangerous power in the hands of human beings.

Most doctors are opposed to euthanasia. Their profession is one of saving life not extinguishing it, and legalising euthanasia would place intolerable pressures on them.

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single seed; but if it dies it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).

The fear of suffering should not so dominate our thinking as to prevent us from seeing the true and positive reality of death. Death is the supreme moment of life when we enter most deeply into the mystery of the life that God has given us. There is no virtue in suffering for its own sake, but the experience of death is a profoundly Christian experience when we go to meet God at the moment when God chooses to call us.

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Dr Lim: They are saying that there are doctors in practice who are prepared to step outside the law to perform illegal acts, because they disagree morally with the current laws regarding the killing of patients. These doctors are now prepared to put themselves above the law. They believe they have the right to act outside the law as the law is inadequate and immoral. What safeguards would there be to ensure that these doctors will remain within the new law? If these doctors are already of the mind that they would step outside the law if the law is inadequate or immoral, then they will still step outside the law if they consider that the new law is still inadequate or immoral.

The bill relies on the integrity of the medical practitioner to maintain honesty within himself or herself and to comply with the laws of humanity - laws developed over centuries of philosophical thought. I say it is not possible to trust doctors - and I am one of them - with such profound responsibility Philosophically, these doctors see themselves as the moral guardians of society, making their own laws according to their conscience.

They do not see that they comply with society’s laws. They will always do as they wish, according to their conscience. No legislation will control this cohort of practitioners.

These hands have healed, these hands have delivered babies, and these hands have retrieved many a patient who would have had an untimely death. These hands also have the power to kill. These hands can be the hands of any doctor in the world. This Assembly must not tarnish these hands with the legal sanctioned power to kill.

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Remember when former Prime Minister Bob Hawke said this on television in 1973 when President of the ACTU? 

French President Jacques Chirac’s announcement that his country is to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific has provoked spontaneous righteous indignation. Calls from lust about everyone to boycott just about everything - are very heartening to those of us living in the Antipodes who value our health and lives. When were these voices heard however, when the French Pharmaceutical Company Roussel Uclaf started marketing its deadly abortion pill RU 486? Right now, Dr Edith Weisberg, of the NSW Family Planning Association is trying to persuade the World Health Organisation that the results of the Australian trials of RU 486 revealed fewer side effects than any other emergency contraceptive on the market.

RU 486 kills newly conceived babies. And Dr Weisberg talks of mere "side effects".

And what of our Health Minister Dr Carmen Lawrence? She too will undoubtedly join the chorus of protest against French Nuclear testing in the South Pacific, while allowing this RU 486 Pill to be used to kill Australian babies.

You can join the choruses of protest - to Dr Carmen Lawrence - against the French Abortion Pill RU 486.

Write to;

The Hon. Dr Carmen Lawrence Minister for Health
& Human Services
C/o Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

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ARGENTINA: The strongest supporter of the Vatican’s criticism of the Draft Document for the International Conference on Population and Development last year, was Carlos Menem President of Argentina. Carlos Menem has just been reelected.

I am writing to you out of gratitude and responsibility.

My gratitude is owed to the Holy Father, John Paul II for his letter of the 19th March in which his Holiness made known to me his concern about a number of topics related to "the respect for cultural and ethical values" which underlie human development, care for youth and the defence of human life "as a natural and fundamental element of society" (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 16, 3).

I cannot deny, Mr President, that reading of the Pope’s letter has made me think.

For the sake of the need to link population and development, man’s existence ends up becoming subordinated to environmental and economic imperatives. In short, it has been forgotten that economic and technical development has been made for man not man for them. In particular, it has been forgotten that there is a link between an ethical reference point and the notion of development that we want to promote. Hence, we are thinking of a politics of development which includes the protection and welfare of the family and which respects its foundational principles.

The indices of fertility in our countries are falling almost everywhere, and, bearing in mind the rates of infant mortality and life expectancy..., the populations on our continent are aging and will be renewed only with difficulty.

Therefore, I feel that reassigning the human and financial resources destined for certain population problems would have far more positive effect in key areas such as the intellectual and ethical education of men and women and the creation of more just social structures.

Thus, after considering matters solely, and moved by a humanitarian sense of responsibility which you doubtless share, I have decided to write to you.

I sincerely believe that we must think about these issues. And I will suggest a kind of common action upon which we can agree to defend certain fundamental values which underlie the way our people think of themselves. It would be a noble gesture of our identity as a nation and of our sovereign freedom.

I have therefore written to you to propose for your consideration the possibility of working on some form of document or on a common statement from the President of Latin America, independently of our personal responses, in which we reaffirm a common position on those fundamental points which sustain our societies ethically.

One of these is, without any doubt, the right to life. The care for human life should be exercised with the greatest sense of responsibility so that, in the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, "from here (from Latin America) will shine an example of attention to the weakest of beings, those children who have not yet been born." If we propose to ourselves the kingdom of justice and peace in this world, "then (we will have) been faithful to the principles of the founders of (our) societies".

I once again assure you, Mr President, of my friendship and my personal esteem.

Carlos Menem
President of the Argentine Nation
June 1, 1991

POLAND: Polish abortions reduced drastically. Ever since the Polish people rebelled openly against the Communist system, the number of abortions has declined. Official reports list 123,534 abortions in 1987, 105,333 in 1989, 30,878 in 1991, 11,640 in 1992 and 777 in 1993. This is a great achievement, and it proves to the world that abortion can be reversed and almost eliminated from a culture.

Who was responsible? The clergy, certainly, with the backing of our Polish Pope. What’s more, Polish doctors monitored their peers and threatened to suspend doctors who committed abortions.

The number of Polish women’s deaths during pregnancy, birth and delivery has dwindled over the last 10 years, according to the Ministry of Health and Public Welfare. In 1984 there were 122; in 1988, 68; in 1992, 51; and in 1993, 44. This gives the lie to IPPF’s assertion that giving preborn babies legal protection will lead to more maternal deaths from botched, "back-alley" abortions. When society encourages women to have their babies, and gives them some human support, there’ll be fewer abortions, not more. Women don’t want abortions unless they’re driven by desperation and sense of hopelessness.

What happened in Poland could happen everywhere. The law not only protects babies, but also protects mothers! Remember, the country that has the healthiest mothers and the lowest rate of maternal mortality is Ireland, where up to now all abortions have been banned. Isn’t it interesting that IPPF doesn’t hold up Ireland as a model of maternal health? Should IPPE conform its theory to reality, or should we distort reality to fit IPPF’s theory.

from Human Life International Australia Inc., Special Report No. 120, December 1994.

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