“Saving Our Unborn” Pro-Life Conference
This past Saturday I attended a pro-life conference in Hobart. It was organized by the Human Life Protection Society of Tasmania. About 100 people gathered to hear a variety of speakers from across Australia drawing attention to the important issue of abortion. Let me just summarize some of the take-aways.
Several speakers drew attention to the scale of the problem here in Australia and globally. Here in Australia, at least 89,000 unborn children are murdered every year. Some of those are born alive and then left to die. Around the world, the numbers are staggering. Every year, millions of unborn children have their lives extinguished before they see the light of day. It is the greatest human rights atrocity in history.
Two women (Anne Sherston and Anouska Firth) shared their personal experiences with abortion. Anne’s story involved coercion. She did not have a choice. Anouska’s story involved fear and addiction. She had grown up in a pro-life family, knew abortion was wrong, but had two anyway. These stories tell us that we can’t assume everyone who has had an abortion has done so for the same reason or under the same circumstances.
A third takeaway has to do with the spiritual nature of the issue. When I was involved in a campus pro-life organization in my university days, the constitution of our organization prevented us from speaking about this in our activism. We had to argue for the pro-life cause on the basis of humanist arguments. At this conference, there was a consistent recognition from every speaker that, at base, we’re dealing something related to rebellion against God. Now, having said that, most of the speakers were Roman Catholic. If we dig deeper, I suspect my agreement with their analysis is only going to go so far. When it comes to the answers, we might use some of the same language, but we’ll fill that language with quite different meanings. Nonetheless, I was encouraged to hear so many pro-life advocates recognize that the heart of the issue is the human heart — and the need to bathe all our activism in prayer.
We were also reminded of the strong connection between sexual license and murder/death. Anouska Firth spoke of how the Old Testament Israelites practiced idol worship. This idol worship often involved sexual acts. Then the same idol worship (particularly with Molech) demanded child-sacrifice. The names today have changed, but the picture is much the same. Children must die so people can have unfettered sex lives.
Finally, one of the speakers was from Armadale, Western Australia. Mandy Bowen made special mention of the Worthy Hands Café, which is operated by the Free Reformed Eucalypt Association. Worthy Hands employs people with special needs from the Free Reformed church community. Mandy mentioned how she thought it was beautiful that the parents of those who work there saw their kids as a gift to be embraced, rather than a problem to be erased. So true!
This conference was a good reminder that abortion continues to be a massive evil blight on Australia and other nations. It encouraged me, in the words of Bruce Cockburn, to keep on “kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.” God’s justice demands we speak up for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. As Anouska Firth said, “Silence is complicity.” We must speak and do what we can to effect change.
