It’s my fault killing babies is legal in Australia.
I am responsible for the fact abortion on demand has been legally available for so long in Australia, and I’m sorry.
The first Australian liberal abortion legislation was passed in the South Australian Parliament in 1969. Attorney General Robin Millhouse was the architect of the radical abortion laws. Forty-five years later he admitted great regret for laws which were [predictably destined to be] interpreted too widely resulting in abortion on demand. That legislation received the assent of the Governor and came into effect on January 8, 1970.
However, the first legalisation of abortion anywhere in Australia was in 1969, 26 May, when Justice Menhennitt ruled in a case in the Supreme Court of Victoria that abortion might be considered lawfully justified if “necessary to protect the physical or mental health” of the mother. The Law Library of Victoria calls the Menhennitt ruling “one of the best-known cases of ‘Judge made law’“. “Mental health” became a loophole which meant nothing more than an unwanted baby.
That was a long time before I was born. My whole life, tens of thousands of innocent living humans have been killed in the sterile removal of each state’s abortion clinics every year. But I never said anything. I never asked any questions. I didn’t search for knowledge, even though I obviously knew abortions happen. I lived my life in blissful ignorance of the state-sanctioned and funded genocide of unwanted Australians.
When I proudly started voting at age 18, I was honoured to have my voice counted in determining the future justice and wisdom of Australian governments. I dutifully sought insights into the best choices available, trusting the news on TV and in major papers to present each side’s positions on the most important issues. It never occurred to me there might be something they weren’t telling me, but hiding from me, hoping I wouldn’t ask, or wouldn’t change my vote for if I did.
I tell myself regularly that if I’d been in 1940s Germany I would have voted for anyone but Hitler. When he was elected and seized further power, I’m certain I would have spoken out against him though it cost me friends, reputation, career or even my liberty and life. Would I though?
Would I have objected to the slave trade of the 1700s? It too was invisible, secret, overseas. British businessmen kept so many Africans torn from their motherland and put to work in plantations overseas that the British economy was significantly reliant on their free labour. There just weren’t very many black slaves seen around London. It was easy to look away, to not ask about the evil injustice seething out of sight beneath the veneer of polite society.
I tell myself that like the holocaust of Jews considered less than human by governments and scientists, and the barbaric dehumanisation of African slaves for the benefit of lifestyles and finances, I would have known better; done better. I would have linked arms with the early 1800s Christians and raised a chorus of objection for the first-ever grassroots human rights campaign until decades later the culture finally changed and soon after, the laws.
I tell myself that when the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled that the African slave Mr Dred Scott was not a person but the property of his white master, I would have recoiled in horror and even participated in the bloody civil war to set them free. What price my soul? What price should I shrink from paying for the life of my brother and sister fearfully and equally made in the Image of our Creator?
But when such magnitudes of injustice were right in front of and all around me; when my mettle was tested with such oppression as to break the heart of God, I shattered in silent assent to the industrial-scale slaughter of unwanted babies. I knew more than enough of science and biology in year 7 to observe the empirical facts of the humanity and life of that zygote, fetus, baby or whatever name the abortion trade prefers we call it. Its nature hasn’t changed. It’s still a living human.
For too long I took my lead from politicians, celebrities, school teachers, pastors and peers. We voted on income taxes, the economy and penalty rates; saving trees, koalas and whales. Health and education were significant issues too, but never the kids killed in the name of healthcare and denied the chance to ever see a school. I never demanded pro-life politicians and the ones who did stick their hand up never got my public support. I never joined a political party, never volunteered on election day to end the oppression of innocent lives.
We should have ended this holocaust a long time ago. It is completely unacceptable – the shame of my generation – that we didn’t ask more questions or search out the answers for ourselves. There’s been no such thing as a pro-slavery candidate for a very long time, and it’s my fault there’s still such a thing as a pro-abortion candidate trading in human suffering for the chance at power. I know now that God is amazed and appalled when no one intervenes in injustice and leaves it all to Him.
I repent. I have these past few years turned around and changed direction. I will never again vote for or support in any way a pro-abortion candidate of any party while ever there’s a pro-life candidate of any party to support with donations, volunteered time and my vote. No other issue is so obviously and immediately a life and death issue. No other issue is so urgently important in which to achieve a 180-degree turnaround in our culture.
I acknowledge that life is a sacred gift from God. I mourn the millions of lives lost to abortion. I commit myself to defending life. This injustice may not be defeated in this or the next election cycle. The dehumanising trade treating preborn children as disposable property may not even end in the next decade. But while there yet remains breath in my body I will fight with every resource at my disposal to ensure: my generation will end abortion.
