Pro-Life News

On the eastern edge of Kew Junction there is a small memorial garden to Raoul Wallenberg credited with saving the lives of 95,000 Jewish people during World War II. I always think of these words, attributed to him in the play "Another kind of hero", when I see it on my left as I drive past on my way to the office of Pro-Life Victoria. All prolifers should be encouraged by them when set backs such as the recent passage of amendments to the Northern Territory’s euthanasia legislation occur

Mr Neil Bell, Member for McDonnell, N.T.

Marshall Perron’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Legislation was always intended to be available to Australians living interstate. We Victorians mustn’t give up now. In fact there is a real chance now and a cleaner cut opportunity, to stop the killing before it starts. The formerly anti-euthanasia Chief Minister Shane Stone may have disappointed us all in wishing to see the legislation be given "a chance to work" but Mr Neil Bell (ALP) the member for MacDonnell, is determined to go ahead with his Repeal Bill.

Congratulate him and offer your support and encouragement. The other 24 MPs, listed overleaf, should also receive letters urging them to support Mr Bell’s Bill.

This may seem a tall order. Twenty four letters. But in 1996 with access to word processors and photostat machines, we need to do this.

The same draft can be used for all 24 members. Address it simply: "Dear Member of Parliament" and begin "I am writing this letter to each of the 24 members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly... ", photostat the letter 24 times and address accordingly to those Northern Territory members listed overleaf (page 2).

The result of the recent Federal Elections is also cause for optimism. Whilst the ALP and Coalition had pro-life and anti-life members in Federal Parliament, the 13 year track record of the past Labor Government on life issues was bad.

A vote on abortion funding was denied, trials of the French abortion pill RU 486 were allowed, the Federal Health Department endorsed the National Health and Medical Research Council’s review of abortion services and Dr Carmen Lawrence signed the approval for a grant of $41,000 to the country’s three leading euthanasia advocates to conduct a survey of doctors attitudes to euthanasia, causing one wit to liken it to a grant to the mafia to survey organised crime.

With the new Coalition Government we have the opportunity to write, inform, visit and lobby new faces in Parliament. We can appeal to them afresh to stop abortion funding, ban RU 486, put an end to the NH&MRC infamous review of abortion services and prevent any "uniform" euthanasia legislation.

There is every possibility the new makeup of Federal Parliament will be more open to such appeals.

Remember, in the second of the two Great Debates, Prime Minister John Howard was at least unequivocal in his statement of opposition to abortion on demand. In defending his question to both John Howard and Paul Keating, to his media colleagues, television compere Ray Martin stated "abortion to many, is a deeply felt issue." It is up to us all to start conveying this to the new Australian Parliament.

At the beginning of this year I received a very interesting review of 1995 from Rehame Australia Monitoring Services. Rehame is a media monitoring company, the first in the world to provide analysis coverage of a country’s entire electronic media. Almost all the daily metropolitan papers around Australia ran stories or editorials about Rehame Australia’s yearly analysis statistics which detailed the top news and current affairs issues in 1995. The national and state top five talkback issues were listed.

Whilst French Nuclear Testing, Bosnia, Carmen Lawrence (and the Penny Eastern affair), OJ Simpson, Woodchip Licenses, the Republic, Australia Remembers and Superleague dominated national and state issues, in one state only did a "life issue" dominate as a state issue, and then not as a talkback issue. The state was the Northern Territory and the issue, euthanasia.

I felt there was an important message here for us. That is, it is up to us to make human life, or rather the deliberate destruction of it, by human embryo experimentation, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, the top issue. Over 1.5 million Victorians listen to talkback radio every week. The airwaves provide us with an excellent opportunity to make the sanctity of human life the top issue.

For as long as I can remember, prolifers have used talkback radio; for so long there’s a danger of losing an appreciation of its effectiveness. I was therefore very struck by Rehames reference to a quote from former Labor powerbroker, Graham Richardson on SBS’s The Cutting Edge regarding talkback callers. "... they are powerful people. In fact much more powerful than we’ve tended to realise. I think politicians and others have far too much tended to believe that television and newspapers were the main game. I’m not sure in modern Australia if they really are any more "

Such a statement is surely some incentive to us to lift those telephones more often.

It has always been my responsibility in the prolife movement in this part of the world, to give out a lot of orders, to make a lot of requests of rank and file supporters. Something I learned very early on and have always tried to live by is the maxim "Never ask someone to do anything you haven’t already done yourself or are prepared to do." I can faithfully report to you now, that during the recent Federal Election Campaign I phoned talkback radio and raised the issue of the National & Health Research Council’s recommendations on Partial Birth Abortions with none other than the former Health Minister Dr Carmen Lawrence and spoken to Victorian Opposition Leader, John Brumby.

More than 10,000 people wrote to members of Parliament to oppose Michael Law’s Death with Dignity Bill, estimates a Wellington prolifer who has surveyed MPs on the response.

"This does not include the many hundreds of people who phoned direct to electorate offices or visited their MPs," says Lance Huxford, of Raumati South.

In response to his inquiry to "most MPs," 53 provided information on their correspondence for and against the Bill. About 84 percent were against the Bill.

Most of the mail was in the form of personal letters but many organisations sent standard letters opposing the Bill to all MPs, and petitions and faxes were also received. Over 500 people telephoned the Beehive to oppose the Bill.

"At first, nearly all the correspondence was against the Bill, but as the vote got closer correspondence supporting it, mostly in the form of letters or coupons from newspaper advertisements, also arrived "Mr Huxford says.

Of MPs who responded, Christchurch North’s Mike Moore (who voted to introduce the Bill) received the least number of letters - 26 against and four in favour. Timaru’s Jim Sutton (who opposed the Bill) received most - 331 against and 24 in favour.

Dr Lockwood Smith, who received 112 against and only 11 for, said he "endeavoured to reflect the majority opinion in voting against the Bill."

"Most MPs appreciated receiving the correspondence as many were undecided and lacked information on the issue," Mr Huxford says. "Many were unaware of the situation in the Netherlands."

"Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak/Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break"

Take a moment, if you will, and reflect on the power of the message conveyed by the extraordinary photo that appears on this page. I know that many of you have been co-laborers for decades in this the greatest human rights struggle of the 20th century I ask you, candidly, even in your wildest "what if?" imaginings, did you ever think you would see the day when Norma McCorvey, peacefully comforting three adoring children, would be seated in front of a sign that read "Abortion Kills Children"?

While the most trite of cliches, it remains true. Having the very symbol of the triumph of the abortion ethos embrace the cause of unborn babies has sent shockwaves through the precincts of the pro-abortion establishment. Naomi Wolf s unvarnished, brutally honest New Republic assessment of the self-delusions that permeate the pro-abortion community seems to have been initiated in equal parts by this self-described pro-choicer’s status as an expectant mother and McCorvey’s shocking reversal.

But it is not just Wolfs frank confession that, for example, the prolife slogan "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" is incontrovertibly true" that bears witness to the conclusion that there is a crisis of confidence in pro-abortion circles. More and more you see telling confessionals such as "A Small Memorial," an essay that appeared in the September25 issue of the New Yorker.

The author, Peter Carey, tells the story of the 1961 abortion under-gone by his girlfriend (later first wife) and the emotional upheavals that ensued later with the loss of three babies to miscarriage and the premature birth of twins. Understand that Carey remains both pro-abortion and (in many ways) as insensitive as a cactus.

But as myopic as he is, Carey does understand that his girlfriend was "strangely unchanged and yet also changed absolutely" by the abortion. What Carey doesn’t care to fully probe - probably because the truth would hamper with his self-image - is how much he was altered by his part in the abortion death of his first child. Other accounts you read are unabashedly sorrowful.

Which is why I don’t think it’s going too far to observe that there appears to be almost a compulsion to come, if not clean, at least half-way. The essay cited in the beginning, by Candice Crandall, was penned by an "abortion rights" sympathiser. In her first paragraph, she flatly declares, "Defenders of the right to an abortion - once so supremely self-confident - now express unprecedented doubts and misgivings about their cause." Why?

"The answer couldn’t be simpler," she writes. "Proponents of abortion rights overcame Americans’ qualms about the procedure with a long series of claims about the benefits of unrestricted abortion on demand." Those immodest promises include the virtual elimination of child abuse (now that every child would be a "wanted child"), the rapid plunge in illegitimate rates and the arrival of the day when the abortion decision would be made "between the woman and her doctor." Looked at from the other side = absent legal abortion - pro-abortion sloganeers warned that thousands of women would die in illegal abortions, women’s equality would be impossible, and the world would be levelled by a population bomb. To her credit Crandall says bluntly, "Without exception, those claims have proven false."

I take away from the January 22 March for Life two images which I doubt I will ever forget. The first is of Bill Clinton. Racing by in his presidential motorcade, protected by his legions of Secret Service agents he leans forward to look out the window at our sign "Stop Abortion Now." I wonder what went through his mind. No doubt it was not the stark contrast that struck me between the sense he had of absolute serenity and the terror experienced by an unborn child whose sanctuary has been violated by the abortionists.

The second is of a woman. Snapping pictures all the while, I was just ahead of the March about a block from where the crowd turns right off of Constitutional Avenue to approach the Supreme Court. I had just finished a conversation with a friend, a woman, now very prolife, who had suffered enormously from the abortions she had undergone when she was younger. As I stepped off the curb I looked to my left and then I saw her. In all my days in this Movement, never have I ever seen such transparent pain. Instantly, I knew she had had an abortion. Our eyes locked for of fly a second and then she began walking backwards towards the approaching crowd. I made a mental note to write about her.

Norma McCorvey provides a warm shelter for sisters Chelsie and Emily Mackey (left) and for Meredith Champion (right) at this prolife rally In Dallas, Texas. McCorvey was the "Roe" In the Roe vs Wade abortion decision, but in 1995 became a strong prolifer.

About 25 minutes later, I heard a half dozen teens enthusiastically yelling prolife encouragements even louder than usual. I turned and saw they were being filmed by a cameraman. Off to the left was the reporter doing a "stand-up". Her smile was wide and seemingly genuine. You could almost tell the gist of what she was saying by her expression and it was good. To my utter amazement, I saw that it was the woman I had seen before only then her face had been lined with hurt.

There are countless women just like these two, whose life paths have gone in very different directions. One now works full-time on behalf of unborn children. The other, like so many women, manages to keep her grief closeted most of the time except for those occasional unguarded moments when her defence mechanisms fail her.

That is but one reason why Wolf is so utterly naive. She imagines pro-abortionists like herself can have it both ways: retain the unfettered right to abortion, not with the old tried-and-true strategy of euphemisms and moral agnosticism but by employing a new strategy "us(ing) a darker and sterner and more honest moral rhetoric." She could not be more mistaken.

For while "treating abortion with grief and reverence" may make Wolf more comfortable with her late-b looming conscience for everyone else it brings into play the moral dimension. Once "choice" is no longer the ultimate trump card, it becomes proper to use an ethical yardstick to measure the decision to abort. this is precisely what pro-abortionists have worked night and day to prevent from happening for 23 years.

By designing roads for which there are no maps, our culture conspires against the woman who has allowed her unborn child to be killed. She is supposed to "celebrate" her decision to "exercise her rights" but in her heart she knows this is a dead end.

However, visions from the past do not wait for an invitation. Faced with the enormity of what has been done for her child, she tries to keep her conscience at bay and she fails.

And it is precisely because those defences are crumbling everywhere that we you and I have more reason than ever to hope.

Several years ago on a lecture tour in Europe, we were privileged to hear the world tamed Geneticist, Professor Jerome Lejeune, of the University of Paris recount a true story. Its message is profound. It happened at a meeting several years ago, where this famous scientist had spoken, after receiving an award for his research on Down’s Syndrome. Another professor of Genetics from a major US Medical College came to him privately to tell him this story:

Many years ago my father was a Jewish physican in Branau, Austria. On one particular day two babies had been born in his hospital One was a fine healthy boy with a strong cry his parents were extremely proud and happy The other was a little girt but her parents were extremely sad, for you see, she was a Mongoloid baby followed them both for almost fifty years. The girl grew up living at home and finally was destined to be the one who was to nurse her mother through a very long and lingering illness after a stroke. l do not remember her name. l do, however, remember the boy’s name, for he grew up to cause the death of millions He died in a bunker in Berlin his name was Adolf Hitler

Dr Jack & Mrs Barbara WilIke

Of all the things President Clinton will do in his term of office, none will be so heartless and misguided as his planned veto of legislation to ban partial-birth abortions.

It is so sickening that many pro-choice Democrats — men and women crossed the line and voted in favour of the ban.

The White House announced that Clinton would veto the Bill because it "eroded a woman’s right to choose". The defence is indefensible, given the abhorrent details of the act. In partial-birth abortions, performed after 20 weeks’ gestation, the baby is extracted feet first from the womb and through the birth canal until all but its head is exposed.

Surgical scissors are then thrust into the base of the baby’s skull and the brain is sucked out by a catheter.

The House voted 288 to 139 to ban these abortions — a margin wide enough to override presidential veto. The Senate voted 54-44 for the ban, not enough to kill a veto.

So it comes down to the president. Regrettably, he and his wife, Hillary, while pretending to want abortion to be "safe, legal and rare" have been the fiercest promoters of abortion in all its forms, not only in the United States, but abroad, as well.

The Daily News reported that the anaesthesia given to the woman "kills the fetus before the full procedure takes place"

False. Dr Haskell said he performed these abortions only under local anaesthesia, which would have no effect on the baby.

In congressional testimony, the American Society of Anaesthesiologists said claims such as those published in the Daily News have "absolutely no basis in scientific fact".

Eyewitness accounts tell the story. Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse from Dayton, told the House committee that when she was assigned to the Women’s Medical Centre, a local abortion clinic, she accepted the post without reservation because she was "very pro-choice".

On the third day, she stood at Dr Haskell's side as he performed three partial-birth abortions.

"What I saw is branded on my mind forever," she said. "Dr Haskell delivered the baby’s body and arms, everything but the head. The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping and his feet were kicking.

"Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, the doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out".

"I have been a nurse for a long time and I have seen a lot of death — people maimed in auto accidents, gunshot wounds, you name it". she said.

"I have seen surgical procedures of every sort, but in all my professional years, I had never witnessed anything like this. After I left that day, I never went back".

The sentiment is widespread. Former mayor Ed Koch, who is also pro-choice, talked about these abortions on his radio show one day. He read how they were performed and concluded, "That’s murder".

Senator Edward Kennedy does not see it that way. Opposing the Bill, he said it is "extremist legislation at its worst".

That’ s very curious, because the Senator’s son, Republican Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, voted for the legislation.

Teddy apparently thinks his own son is an extremist. The father, of course, is the real extremist.

If President Clinton vetoes the legislation, as promised, it will be a dark day in American life.

The obvious French product to boycott is the French abortion pill RU 486. Nuclear radiation damages unborn children. RU 486 kills them. When women claim the "liberty" to use RU 486 the words of Madame Roland on the way to the guillotine "0 Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name" are recalled.

Abortionist Dies - James McMahon, who originated the brain-suction (partial birth) abortion, died October 28 in Los Angles. Earlier he had bragged that killing partially born children was his "speciality — that’s my expertise, that’s my passion .... there’s a great deal of craft to this procedure .... frankly I don’t think I was any good at all until I had done 3,000 to 4,000."

He was struck down by a rapidly growing brain cancer. We are told by Congressman Robert Dornan that he "repented of his entire life’s work and begged for Extreme Unction, the last rites of the Catholic Church. He is buried in consecrated ground". He further relates that a fellow-abortionist, at the graveside, "eulogised McMahon’s self-described ‘monomaniacal’ serial killing but not his repentance.

Believe it or not - The famous "Tiller the Killer", a 2nd and 3rd trimester abortionist in Wichita, Kansas, has the following instruction to the mother/parents, of a late term baby after he has killed him/her by an abortion. Part of it reads:

"The time following your delivery is very important. Many couples elect to view or hold the baby after they have recovered from anaesthesia. Some couples initially find this a very frightening thought but, in our experience, couples who wish to view or hold their child are able to work through the grief process better. When couples elect not to see their child, they may later regret omitting this option. Grief is a very complex process, and we attempt to make your experience in our centre comforting under very stressful circumstances. Unless previous arrangements have been made for funeral transportation of the baby to your local funeral home or further scientific studies are needed, the baby will be cremated in our mortuary-type crematorium located at our centre. If your doctor or generic counsellor suggests an autopsy or other confirmatory studies, they must call prior to your arrival to make these arrangements. Feb. 1996

The Pill in Japan - Thirty-five years after the pill was introduced in most other Western nations, the Japanese Health Department has finally given permission for the production and sale of birth control pills. For reasons known only to that bureau, it has publicly concluded, "There is no connection between the pills use and the spread of HIV". Furthermore, "The advent of the pill will change the reliance on condoms, abortions and sexual abstinence". It correctly stated that the high condom failure rate has led to a high number of abortions, but stated that sex has lost its appeal to the average male and to Japanese married couples" and that legalisation of the pill "may revive men’s interest in sex and lead to an increase in the birthrate".

Can you imaging a greater flight of fancy than to say that the introduction of the contraceptive pill in a nation will lead to an increase in the birthrate? Your editors wonder what references these health department bureaucrats used. Jan. 1996

The moratorium was announced by Health Minister Diane Marleau. It was voluntary, but according to the article in the Lancet Medical Journal, "Ottawa will withdraw federal funding from facilities that use prohibited techniques or undertake prohibited research". Those procedures prohibited include "sex selection for nonmedical reasons, commercial pre-conception or surragacy arrangements; buying and selling of eggs, sperm and embryos; egg donation in exchange for in-vitro fertilisation services; germ-line generic alteration; ectogenesis; human embryo cloning; the creation of animal/human hybrids; and the retrieval of eggs from fetuses and cadavers for purposes of donation, fertilisation, or research". Feb. 1996

Poland - The new Minister of Health has announced that he wants to reinstate the former law and to widen the legal grounds for abortion. In 1987 there were 123,534 abortions. In 1991 Poland recorded 30,877. In 1992 it was 11,640. In 1993 it was 1 208 And in 1994 it was 782. Since the presidency and parliament have been taken over by the former Communists who are already promoting pro-abortion propaganda, we will probably see the body count go back up once again. Feb. 1996