Guest Post
Our Vigil for the Voiceless
Anne Rampa and her husband, Jim Dowling, are veteran pro-life activists of almost 4 decades. Last December, they were arrested for breaching an abortion mill exclusion-zone in Brisbane; and honoured the truth by stating that 'the law itself is a crime.' In this exclusive article, Anne writes of her experience - and how exclusion-zones have hampered their 35-year-old vigil for the voiceless.
Social engineering evident in Victorian law
Branka van der Linden writes on Victoria's dystopian assisted-suicide law. This article first appeared on the HOPE: No Euthanasia website and is reproduced here with permission. The architects of Victoria’s euthanasia and assisted suicide legislation have joined together to write a playbook for other states wanting to push through euthanasia and other “social change” laws. The seven “experts” appointed by the Victorian Health Minister to advise on the implementation of euthanasia and assisted suicide are now using that “expertise” to show others how to get public support for “changes to dominant policy and community practices.”
Our Children Need Protection NOW
This article was written by Jack Sonnemann, whom I had the pleasure of knowing when I lived in Tasmania. Jack's tireless work to protect children from the effects of pornography is well-known both here in Australia and in his home-country of the United States. Here's how his bio read when he appeared at the 2016 Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Summit in Houston Texas:
"Jack Sonnemann says we cannot win the war if we do not fight the battles. He has been fighting the "Winnable War" against sexual exploitation in Australia for over 30 years. His organisation, the Australian Federation for the Family (AFF), produces a newsletter (and blog) read by thousands of concerned Australians.He has appeared in all the major media Down Under. Playboy's Australian editor was fired after debating Mr Sonnemann on national television and he has been ridiculed, attacked and demeaned in virtually all of Australia's porn publications. Playboy magazine is now bankrupt in Australia due to AFF's sustained boycott campaigns of its advertisers and retailers. Sonnemann's actions have resulted in the banning of all X Rated material on Pay TV services in Australia (the only country in the Western World that can make this claim!); stopping the use of 15, 16 and 17 year-olds in all Australian porn; defeating Australia's once vibrant Dial-a-Porn industry; closing X Rated bookshops and stopping applications for new ones; initiating and passing legislation to close houses of prostitution and stopping the once-common use of child magnets and pseudo-child imagery in all Australian porn.AFF has been successful in a raft of measures regulating the sale and display of porn in the family marketplace nationwide. He is currently lobbying to enact Opt-In laws for internet porn and for the Territory governments to enact the same law banning the sale, hire an display of X Rated DVDs as now exists in each state of Australia. The X Rated DVDs that are banned in each state are freely and legally available in Australia's two territories and are literally devastating the native Aboriginal population.Mr Sonnemann regularly appears before Federal and State parliamentary forums and public meetings documenting the harm caused by pornography, prostitution, etc."
McCarrick's Seminarians
I happened to come across the article and found it to be so insightful that I asked the author, Maureen Mullarkey, for permission to reproduce it here. Maureen, an artist and blogger at StudioMatters.com, generously agreed; the original article can be found here. The following will mosty be of interest to Roman Catholics, but its main point can be applied across denominations, and indeed, across society: holiness, that is, the desire to perfectly align our wills to God's will, is rarely the goal of contemporary Christianity. Instead, holiness has been replaced by selfishness and worldliness and, frequently, by a life of entrenched sin.
Women are Unexceptional
In response to those dangerous extremists who believe that a woman’s testimony against a man is ipso facto an unquestionable first principle in ethics; to the irrational mob who would stampede over the presumption of innocence, due procedure and the rule of law; to those rabid revolutionaries who would gladly dehumanise a man on the basis of his gender, political persuasion, “privilege” or class, and then destroy him—the logical outcome of which attitude is the return of the guillotine for conservatives (I would not be surprised if this is their unspoken fantasy)—and finally, to all those “intellectuals”, such as Martha Nussbaum, who in their desire for recognition by other chattering academics have steeped so low as to come to the defence of these mobsters: these words are for you.
The High Court, Abortion Clinic Speech Restrictions and the Assessment of Harm
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.
