Displaying items by tag: Abortion

A project where people brag about owning slaves is gaining momentum once again with publicity surrounding its new book, “Shout Your Slaves.” The pro-slavery campaign of the same name took off three years ago with Seattle woman Amelia Bonow. Since then, it has been promoted by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Amy Brenneman and Martha Plimpton, women’s magazines, and national news outlets. Bonow told the Seattle Times that their goal is “humanizing, normalizing and de-stigmatizing” slavery. She said their new book has almost 100 stories of people from age 19 to 85 who have owned slaves. Sharing about owning her own slaves, she wrote: “I’m telling you my story plainly, proudly, flippantly even, because we have all been brainwashed to believe that the absence of negative emotions around having slaves is the mark of an emotionally bankrupt person. It’s not. I have a good heart and my slaves make me happy.” After sharing her story in 2015, the campaign took off.

Ireland's pro-life politicians have been facing ferocious opposition in trying to push through amendments that would mitigate the impact of that country's disastrous new abortion law.  The Eighth Amendment - the part of the Irish constitution which had protected pre-born children from abortion - was repealed in September of this year. The Eighth Amendment was replaced by the phrase, "Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy", allowing abortion on demand in the first trimester, and potentially to full term on certain conditions. Ireland's Lower House has been debating the terms of this change in law.  

This message is so dear to my heart. It was given at the launch (4 Nov 2018) of ‘Christians In Politics’, a grass roots self-organisation of some Christians in Newcastle concerned about how we can be better informed about and involved in the future of our nation – our neighbours. Here’s what one person had to say after the event…  

In addition to being an author, speaker, and blogger at The Bridgehead and other websites, Jonathon van Maren is part of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, an organisation best known for their pioneering use of abortion victim imagery. A few months ago, Jonathon approached me to give him a rundown of the Australian pro-life scene for his website, (you can read that here) so it seemed like a good opportunity to ask him to use the same questions to describe the landscape in Canada. I also asked Jonathan to elaborate on something that stuck with me from his book, The Culture War: in it, Jonathan wrote that addiction to pornography was holding men back from involvement in pro-life work.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Philippians 2: 3-4)   How has our society arrived the point where wide-spread abortion is not only tolerated but promoted, and a beneficial view of euthanasia is endorsed in parliamentary bills? Why was a romantic view of same-sex marriage given media endorsement and such a prominent focus in the marriage plebiscite and in politics? Why is sexual experimentation promoted, often in the context of unwittingly promoting violence against women through the implicit endorsement of pornography?

Almost ten years to the day after Victoria created the most liberal abortion laws in the world, Queensland has followed suit and decriminalised abortion there. While many thought the change was a foregone conclusion due to the reigning Labor government's self-avowed love of baby-killing, there was hope that the law could be voted down by the many pro-life parliamentarians, notably from the LNP. But the final vote was 51 to 41 in favour of abortion law reform. Three LNP members crossed the floor to vote for the bill: Tim Nicholls, Jann Stuckey and Steve Minnikin. Remember those names. This law passed despite months of intense campaigning from pro-life groups and individuals, including many fora held to educate voting MPs about the reality of abortion.

Blue skies and plenty of sunshine – a great day to march for the babies again. The ninth annual March for the Babies in Melbourne just finished. Several thousand passionate and peaceful marchers – men and women, children, grandmothers and grandfathers – marched to remind Melbourne, Victoria and the world that we do not accept the mass slaughter of the unborn. Since the horrific abortion on demand law was passed here ten years ago, there have been over 200,000 babies killed with official state sanction. Some 20,000 poor preborn children are taken to their slaughter each year thanks to one of the most liberalised abortion laws in the world. But we were not alone. Prolifers also marched this afternoon in Brisbane because they are about to vote on a similar nasty piece of legislation.

My constitutional challenge to Victoria's abortuary exclusion-zones was heard in the Australian High Court from October 9-11, 2018. Graham Preston's challenge to Tasmanian exclusion-zones was heard alongside mine. Please click here to learn more about exclusion-zones. Please click here to follow the progress of this case of the High Court of Australia website.  

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.