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ACT Right to Life AssociationN E W S L E T T E R |
Second Quarter 1999
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Inside This Issue
Forum and Agin 'em
President's Report
In Brief
Chinese Woman Forcibly Aborted
Right to Reply
A Women's Legal Centre Forum at Olim's Hotel in Ainslie on 10 March this year addressed the recently-passed Osborne legislation - the Health Regulation (Maternal Health Information) Act 1998. Representing ACT Pro-Choice, speaker Lara Pullin said that the Osborne legislation was a step backwards for abortion because:
Overall, Ms Pullin argued that the new legislation increases the red tape stretched between women and abortions, and makes each abortion the subject of more external, and possibly pro-life, involvement and publicity.
Lawyer and abortion activist Natasha Cica, writing in Women's Electoral Lobby newsletter Inkwel (1999/1), stated that "... the amended Bill that was finally approved by the Legislative Assembly, was much less restrictive than Osborne's original proposal. It nonetheless subjects the practice of abortion in the ACT to more legal constraints than was formerly the case."
The rights of people with disabilities have supposedly come a long way in the past 15 years, with the introduction of equal employment opportunity and anti-discrimination legislation. However, it is evident that many people are failing to see the valuable contribution that people with disabilities make to society, not to mention the intrinsic value of all human beings.
I am filled with a great sadness when I hear that students in the schools we visit as part of our education program are questioning whether it is wrong to abort a child with a disability. Or blatantly stating that someone with a disability would be better off dead!
Our society is promoting this attitude. An employer is not allowed to discriminate against a person with a disability. However, a mother is encouraged and even pressured into aborting a child with a disability.
The whole culture of prenatal screening often twists what should be simple and life promoting ultrasound checks into opportunities to search for "defects" in what we are increasingly encouraged to regard as a product - the unborn child. When by ultrasound or some other means a child is found to have a disability - a fate feared by some medical staff more than death - attitudes, body language, and reinforced fears all push parents towards disposing of that child.
The Association's role of education in order to change community attitudes is just one of the huge challenges we face for the future.
Nicola Pantos
President
ACTRTLA ran its regular stall at the ACT Alive fair in the grounds of the Old
Parliament House on Monday, 15 March. Once again, good weather saw thousands of
people filing past the display, which included life-size foetal models and various
information handouts on euthanasia and abortion.
The seven members of the Advisory Panel on Abortion Information, set up as a result of independent MLA Paul Osborne's Health Regulation (Maternal Health Information) Act, were appointed by the Government in April. The seven member panel includes three members appointed by Calvary Hospital, three members appointed by the ACT Health and Community Care Services Board and a specialist in psychiatry nominated by the ACT specialist college or institution. ACTRTLA will be monitoring the progress of the Advisory Panel.
To mark Life Day, members of ACTRTLA and a number of other groups set up an information stall with pro-life information in Garema Place in the city at lunch time on 25 March. This particular day had been nominated by the president of Argentina as the Day for the Unborn Child and has been adopted by a number of groups.
Inquiries are now underway into the case of a Chinese woman who was deported by the Australian Government while she was eight and a half months pregnant and was subsequently forced to have an abortion under China's one-child policy.
On 5 May, while the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee was considering Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs additional estimates, Independent Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine raised the case of a Chinese asylum-seeker who had been deported from the Port Headland detention facility back to China. The woman was approximately eight and a half months pregnant with her second child when she was deported. The woman claims that she asked to stay in Australia at least for the couple of weeks until her baby was born. Though she quite naturally expressed concern about how she and her second child would be treated on returning to China, she said she was given assurances by Australian authorities that she and her baby would not be punished.
Senator Harradine raised the case while questioning immigration officials, as one of three examples he had of Chinese women who had been deported by Australia and forcibly aborted on their return to China.
It is most unfortunate that in defence of his Department's actions Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock argued, according to The Canberra Times (6 May 1999), that Australia can't "... have an obligation ... to take every pregnant woman from China". Some Chinese asylum-seekers have been granted asylum in Australia on the strength of their political activities against the Chinese Government - and rightly so - but the Immigration Department does not acknowledge that pregnancy in China has been politicised by the one-child policy. Australia has a humanitarian obligation to save women and their unborn children from the persecution of forced abortion or of being listed as a unauthorised second child and therefore being excluded from education and health cover.
Both the Government and the Senate have now announced inquiries; the Government into the incident in question and the Senate into Australia's refugee program, including the case of the Chinese woman who was forcibly aborted. The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee has invited submissions to its inquiry into the Operation of Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program to be lodged by 18 June 1999.
The independence of the Government inquiry was questioned by Senator Harradine, when the head of the inquiry was announced as being Mr David Sadleir, a former ASIO head, former ambassador to China and a member of the Australia China Council. On 19 May Minister Ruddock announced that Mr Sadleir had stepped down "due to the pressure of other professional commitments which needed his full attention" and that former public servant Mr Tony Ayers would take over.
Commenting on Minister Ruddock's announcement, Senator Harradine said that "… Mr David Sadleir did the honourable thing and that is, remove himself from that position because of his business contacts with China. Now, I have a high regard for Mr Sadleir. He is a senior public servant, distinguished public servant, for this country. And he probably would have done a good job but it's ... one of the problems there was that he was part of the Public Service and part of the culture, as it were, which regarded the coercive fertility control program, where coercion exists as being ... [an exception] … I think that it should have [not been] … a public servant.
"I mean, again Tony Ayers is a distinguished mandarin from way back. A very distinguished person but, let's face it, the departments have swallowed the Chinese cover story, that coercion does not exist, apart from the over-zealous officials. Now, that's complete nonsense, as in this case proved. It was dreadful. Eight and a half months, the baby was forcibly aborted" (Ten Network, Meet the Press, 23 May 1999).
Dealing with anti-life slogans
Slogan #4: Nobody knows when life begins
We do know that life is passed on at every conception, so what this slogan really means is: I don't care when life begins! In this, pro-choice people are admitting that abortion might be taking life but they don't care about it much one way or the other. Even if it is not possible to define the exact instant when life begins, it is obvious that life does begin. After all, the only biological difference between a child and an adult is the amount of time and nourishment. A 21 year old adult is simply a 261 month old "product of conception" who wasn't aborted. A human foetus is not a "potential life" as some claim; rather, it is a "potential adult" who is very much alive.
Everything on the earth is either alive or it is not. Cows and people are alive, rocks and clouds are not. There is no in-between. If the foetus was not alive, (ie, it was dead) then the natural miscarriage process would take place and the woman would not need an abortion.
So, in using this slogan, anti-lifers are effectively saying that abortion should be allowed because we might not be taking human life. Yet in just about every other aspect, society errs on the side of life. That is why ambulances race to hospitals with accident victims, why we can't discharge firearms in public places, and why planes do not take off if there is evidence of the slightest malfunction. In fact, it is why smoking is banned in many public places -- because second-hand smoke may be harmful to others.
However abortion advocates are arguing that abortion should be allowed because we might not be taking human life. But as they don't know when life does begin, they can't guarantee it.
So, where does one draw the dividing line? In dealing with this slogan, a pro-lifer can get the pro-choicer to define precisely when life begins and then ask what is the difference between a foetus one day before this mythical dividing line and one day after.
The genetic code determining everything about us is present from the moment of conception, from two-cell zygote to two trillion cell adult. Women don't give birth to cauliflowers or koalas. Whatever comes out of the womb was in the womb during pregnancy.
Leroy Behnke, (1994) The Big Lie and what to do about it, Our
Sunday Visitor, Indiana
Brian Clowes, (1998) Basic Pro-Life Training Course, Human Life International
