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Amsterdam, Abortion & an Angel |
In August, I was blessed to be able to travel to the World Congress of Families in Amsterdam due to the instigation of fundraising efforts by Jenny, and thanks to the readers of AD2000 and The Catholic Leader. Our Cherish Life — Redcliffe & Northern Suburbs branch president, Julie Borger, also attended under her own initiative and found it very educational and rewarding.
The theme of the World Congress of Familes was — “Families: more than the sum of its parts”. The program was very full with speakers giving very interesting overviews of what was happening in their countries in the areas of abortion, euthanasia, homeschooling, family support, work versus family issues; and everything from the coverage of the political scene across many nations to the efforts of individuals making a difference in their immediate environment.
 Austin Ruse, (who writes the Friday Fax now delivered by email — sign up at www.c-fam.org) spoke extremely well and received a standing ovation. He was very inspiring although it was very concerning to hear what he had to say about the UN. He stated the United Nations has been taken over by some very anti-family, anti-life radicals and how what becomes ‘accepted’ often becomes law. They (the UN) are in the greatest power grab of all time and although the USA has never ratified UN documents, they are being quoted in US courts! The strategy the UN has used is to coin the term ‘global governance’ rather than ‘one world’. His final comment was “Church, state, family — if any go wrong, we are harmed. If they all go wrong, we will be totally lost!”
There was a strong encouragement to those present and indeed to anyone who felt called to be a presence and a voice for life and for the family at UN gatherings. If you feel you would like to know more about being a representative at the UN, feel free to contact me (
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) and I can put you in touch with the relevant people who can guide you through the processes needed to enable you to attend.
There were far too many speakers to include in this short article, however the entire set of 20 DVDs from the World Congress of Families can be obtained from www.worldcongress.org. There are a number of pro-life and pro-family groups in Queensland who are hoping to bring the WCF to Brisbane in 2013 — please pray for the success of this should it be in God’s grand plan.
With my feet barely back on Aussie soil, the motley crew screeching for the liberalisation of abortion laws started their push in Queensland, trying to piggyback their efforts on the case currently before the court in Cairns. We were interviewed on The 7:30 Report (ABC TV), Channel 9 news and Channel 10 news, as well as by The Courier-Mail and The Australian. Whilst little of what was recorded actually aired or was written up in the papers, we were working hard to have the pro-life voice heard. A fuller discussion of the political scenario and resulting outcome in regards to this abortion push is to be found on page 3.
 In September we had a wonderful young man, Angel Soto, out from Puerto Rico to talk about the movie he wrote, edited, produced and directed “22 Weeks” (www.22weeksthemovie.com). When he heard about the real life situation involving an abortion on a woman called Angele he felt compelled to show this horrible truth to the public. At 26 years old and with a passion for speaking and showing the truth, Angel will go far in his field. For those of you who missed the event, please go to the homepage of the Cherish Life website (www.cherishlife.org.au) and view the video of his Brisbane talk on the night. The DVD of the movie is available from our office. Thank you to our Caboolture and Redcliffe/Northern Suburbs and Toowoomba branches for hosting an event in their areas for Angel to speak at and show the movie.
I will leave you with an “action” that came out of the World Congress of Families —
“Speak with passion, back your information up with figures and communicate it gently and lovingly to others” — and remember, everyone can do something.
Teresa Martin
State President
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When is an abortion NOT an abortion? |
There is often confusion as to what the term abortion means.
Abortion is an action, by either surgical or chemical means, the direct intent of which is to have an unborn baby die at some point between conception and birth.
Abortion is not the removal of an unborn baby as intact and unharmed as possible from the womb prior to “viability” (the stage at which a baby can survive outside the womb) where the baby is given every care and comfort. Even though the death of the baby is foreseen, it is unintended.
For example, if a mother is 16 weeks pregnant and has a cancerous womb and she will die without immediate treatment, it is totally ethical and moral to remove the baby from the womb intact in order for the mother’s life to be saved. Whilst the baby is too young to survive outside the womb at this stage and sadly, the baby’s death is foreseen, it is not the intent or purpose of the operation and every care and comfort is to be given to the baby whilst he/she is alive. Similarly, with the removal of an ectopic pregnancy, the intent is not to kill the baby but to save the life of the mother. Note: in almost every case with an ectopic pregnancy, the baby is already dead by the time the mother feels pain and the pregnancy is discovered to have attached in the fallopian tube.
So please be very careful when you use the word abortion — the intent of an abortion is to cause the death of the unborn baby.
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Increasing Evidence of “PVS” Misdiagnosis! |
(Excerpt taken from www.terrisfight.org 1.10.09)
Yet another story regarding the misdiagnosis of the Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) diagnosis. In addition to this new report, there has now been a finding that PVS patients may in fact be able to learn! This new report again validates just how subjective and unscientific the PVS diagnosis is for persons with profound brain injuries.
Terri Schiavo’s court ordered death issued by Judge George Greer was based on the criteria that Terri was PVS. It is also repeatedly being used by the USA mainstream media as justification for Terri’s dehydration death. Just as alarming is that the PVS diagnosis is being used on a daily basis as criteria to end the lives of those with similar cognitive brain injuries.
The findings of this new report questions the legitimacy of the PVS diagnosis and it supports the 40 medical professionals that submitted affidavits to Judge Greer and the dozens of accounts from Terri’s family and friends that Terri was not in a PV state.
Not only is the term “vegetative” offensive and dehumanizing to a person, but it illustrates just how widely misunderstood and confused most of our general public are when it comes to persons with profound brain injuries. Not to mention how dangerous this diagnosis can be when it is being used to end the life of our cognitively disabled and it is why the term “PVS” needs to be abolished, or at the very least, immediately stopped being used as a criteria to impose death on those with these types of brain injuries.
(CLQ comment: Many of you heard Terri’s siblings, Bobby Schindler and Suzanne Vitadamo, speak at our Conference in June last year. It is with sadness that we learned that their father, Mr Robert Schindler (Snr) passed away on 29 August 2009 of a heart condition. Please keep the family in your prayers.)
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$100 Fundraising Dinner — Friday 6th November |
 Included with this newsletter is an invitation to attend our Annual Cherish Life Fundraising Dinner. Please fill in the bottom section and post back ASAP. 10% discount for booking a table of 8. Children attending and eating a children’s meal are at reduced prices — call the office for further information. Bookings close 30th October.
We also call upon your generosity — If you are unable to attend, would you consider covering the cost of a person (or a table) to attend?
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 Leon Stark, all 6ft 8inches of him (2.03 metres) battled heat and hundreds to finish the Bridge to Brisbane Fun Run in under an hour. Due to his great fund-raising efforts $5000 was raised to provide each student Cherish Life presents to in the schools with a “Precious Feet” or “Precious Hands” pin. Blistered and breathless at the finish line he gave an undertaking to do it all again next year (and even lead a team of runners). What a man!
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Personal Development Presenters needed for Primary Schools Program |
Do you relate well to primary school children? Are you comfortable talking under values-based parameters with them about changes that take place within the human body as children grow and develop? Do you have a Blue Card?
If you answered yes to the above, please contact either Cherish Life Queensland (
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Ph 3871 2445) or the Priceless Life Centre (
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Ph 3856 3007)
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 Please remember to bank the contents of your Cherish Life money box. Every little bit helps. Should you wish to drop off the contents, please contact our office for a ‘drop off’ person in your local area (most areas covered).
Alternatively you can bring it along to our end of year Fundraising Dinner (details on p4 this newsletter).
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Criminal Code (Medical Treatment) Amendment Act 2009 |
On 5 September 2009 with the Governor’s assent the provisions of the Criminal Code (Medical Treatment) Amendment Act 2009 came into operation in Queensland.
It is important for prolifers to understand the political and legal context in which this amendment to the law on medical treatment, including abortion, has come about.
On 26 September 2008 Supreme Court Judge Margaret Wilson handed down her judgement in the case of State of Queensland v B. The case hinged on whether it was lawful for a 12 year old girl who was 18 weeks pregnant to be aborted by medical means. (There was evidence before the court that a surgical abortion would be more dangerous than delivery).
Abortion is an offence in Queensland unless excused by law. The 1986 case of R v Bayliss and Cullen, Justice Maguire interpreted Section 282 of the Criminal Code which provides a defence from criminal responsibility for “performing in good faith and with reasonable care and skill a surgical operation upon an unborn child for the preservation of the mother’s life, if the performance of the operation is reasonable, having regard to the patient’s state at the time and to all circumstances of the case” as allowing abortion where pregnancy posed a serious danger to a woman’s physical or mental health.
Justice Wilson found that because Section 282 explicitly addressed a “surgical operation” it did not apply to a ‘medical’ abortion. (Under Section 286, finding that those who had the care of the child had a duty to avoid a danger to her health by giving her a ‘medical’ abortion, she allowed the abortion to proceed.)
 The prosecution of a Cairns couple for procuring an abortion led Dr Caroline de Costa and, separately, doctors at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital to seek legal advice on the medical abortions they were performing. They each were told that medical abortions were not legal in Queensland under any circumstances.
Pressure by various means — including a boycott of abortions at RBWH and other public hospitals and a one-sided media campaign, especially by The Australian — was put on the Bligh government to decriminalise abortion completely.
Premier Anna Bligh, despite her well-known and publicly expressed pro-abortion views, resisted this pressure. She has stated that she is opposed to a decriminalisation bill at this time because she fears that such a bill could be amended by a pro-life majority in the Queensland Parliament so that it actually restricted access to abortion.
Pro-lifers may be more inclined to think, that despite the Premier’s denials, she is also concerned at the potential electoral cost of supporting abortion decriminalisation, especially in the light of the swing against pro-abortion MP Bonny Barry at the last election.
The Bligh government settled on an amendment to Section 282 of the Criminal Code — to extend the defence for surgical abortions to cover medical abortions on the same terms — as the way to defuse the situation.
Because the amendment would also apply to all medical procedures and not just abortion Premier Bligh denied Labor MPs a conscience vote on the amendment bill. While — unless challenged — this prevented pro-life Labor MPs such as Michael Choi from opposing the bill it also had the advantage of preventing any pro-abortion Labor MP from moving an amendment to the bill to decriminalise abortion, say by repealing the abortion offences in the Criminal Code altogether.
Pro-life Labor MPs could have challenged the denial of a conscience vote at the National Executive and would probably have succeeded. However, this could well have paved the way for a decriminalisation amendment that no-one could be certain would not have succeeded.
Given the Labor dominance of the Legislative Assembly it was not possible for LNP and Independents to defeat the bill. Many LNP pro-life members did seriously consider voting against the bill — however, it must be remembered that whilst the change to the bill may be “interpreted” by a judge to cover ‘medical’ abortions (in reality, they are chemical abortions), the intent of the original bill was to protect doctors doing normal surgical operations (eg appendectomies) and the change to the bill was to protect doctors prescribing normal medical treatment (eg prescribing antibiotics etc). So in all conscience, pro-life politicians could vote for the change in the law as the original intent of the law was as described earlier in this paragraph. Pro-lifers can be grateful that a situation that could have easily led to Queensland decriminalising abortion was averted.
It was not in the pro-life interest to make the vote on this bill, as it were, a test vote on abortion but it did give rise to the opportunity for a number of politicians to speak out against abortion.
Of course it is not a good thing that the Criminal Code (Medical Treatment) Amendment Act 2009 has now formally made it legal (by interpretation) to perform a ‘medical’ abortion of an unborn child “for the preservation of the mother’s life”. If this phrase were properly interpreted there would never be a case to which it applied.
However while the Maguire ruling stands, abortion to avoid a serious danger to a woman’s physical or mental health may be legal whether they are performed surgically or medically.
Interestingly, both Dr Caroline de Costa and the RBWH doctors have received legal advice which suggests that many of the abortions they were doing would still be illegal even after the passage of the Criminal Code (Medical Treatment) Amendment Act 2009. The RBWH doctors have been told that abortions for fetal disability are not in themselves legal and that they would need real evidence that the birth of the child with a disability poses a serious danger to the woman’s mental health.
Dr de Costa has claimed she won’t resume doing abortions using RU486 as long as there is any doubt about the legality of these abortions and absolutely no possibility of prosecution. (So at least temporarily, some babies will now escape the womb alive). She says this can only be achieved by repealing the abortion provisions on the Criminal Code or at least giving doctors an immunity from these offences.
The RBWH doctors are at least going to approach abortions for fetal disability with more caution.
So after this episode it is not quite back to business as usual in Queensland since the passage of this bill.
There is also a little sleeper introduced into the Criminal Code by the bill. Section 282 now defines “patient” to mean “the person or unborn child on whom the surgical operation is performed or of whom the medical treatment is provided.”
Any pro-life doctor can now say that his or her view that the unborn child is a second patient is the view of the law in Queensland. As much should be made of this as we can.
Whilst the passage of the Criminal Code (Medical Treatment) Amendment Act 2009 has made it less, rather than more likely, that a bill to decriminalise abortion will be introduced during this parliamentary term, with the Cairns case still to unfold we must be on the watch out for yet another move to decriminalise abortion in Queensland.
It will be up to the pro-life movement to send other pro-abortion candidates and sitting members into early retirement from political life at the next election. As shown by the loss of seat by Bonny Barry, being pro-abortion is not a vote-winner and will be politically costly.
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PULSE adds life for the young ones |
 The PULSE team was fortunate to share dinner with Angel Soto, director of the movie “22 Weeks”, during his recent stay in Brisbane. At a quiet table on the balcony of Jo Jo’s restaurant, overlooking Queen St, six young Brisbanites and a 26 year old Puerto Rican film director chatted, laughed and shared a meal. The team were inspired by Angel’s initiative and passion and were encouraged to know that young adults really can make a difference.
Organisers of the Ignite Conference (24th-27th September 2009) invited PULSE to hold a stall at their Vocations Expo. The stall was visited by a regular stream of youth and young adults, who were surprised to see how beautifully formed unborn babies were, even as early as 12 weeks. Many expressed a willingness to be involved with the group and wished to be kept informed with news regarding abortion in Queensland.
It is encouraging to see young adults are recognising the need to be involved and stand up for the voiceless.
To join PULSE, contact Dave on 0411 694 191 or email
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Rachel’s Vineyard Retreats Brisbane — Healing after Abortion — 23-25 October 2009
Weekend retreats are offered throughout the year — please contact us for dates, cost and venues. We are expanding over the State; if you’re interested in hosting a retreat please contact Lisa on
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or (07) 3376 7078 (Leave a message if it goes to voicemail)
Further retreat details are on the website www.rachelsvineyard.org.au
ANNUAL CHERISH LIFE $100 FUNDRAISING DINNER — Friday 6 NOVEMBER 2009
Guest speaker — Fiona Simpson MP
Indooroopilly Golf Club, Meiers Rd, Indooroopilly
Dinner ticket invitation included with this newsletter. Please fill in and return ASAP Acceptance closes 30 October 2009. Tables of 8 receive a 10% discount.
Sanctity of Life Sunday 8th November
Please contact the office ASAP on Ph 3871 2445 or email
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to request resources eg brochures, bookmarks, “Precious Feet” pins for your local church.
Priceless Life Centre DINNER - 11 NOVEMBER 2009
Greek Club, West End. Guest speaker John Anderson.
Phone (07) 3856 3007 www.pricelesslifecentre.org.au
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