Two excellent letters have appeared in The Australian exposing what the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (A.R.H.A.) really stands for. Here they are, reproduced in full:
I WAS present at the tragicomical Senate committee hearing last week into Medicare funding of late abortion, when we learned that senator Clare Moore’s submission on behalf of the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development was identical to the submission from the lobby group Australian Reproductive Health Alliance.
Angela Shanahan rightly described this duplication under two different letterheads as open to allegations of collusion (Opinion 1/11).
But it is the content that is disturbing. No fair-minded person can read the ARHA/Moore submission without understanding it as an argument for late-term abortion of handicapped babies to save society the cost of caring for them.
Exposing this collusion was great comedy, but the chilling reality is that Senator Moore’s discreetly eugenic tract was tabled, in the name of 41 MPs and senators, in the same week as a German doctor was denied Australian residency because of the costs to society of caring for his boy with Down syndrome.
For tragic historical reasons, if such a document were ever tabled in the German parliament, there would be no hint of comedy.
Dr David van GendMackenzie House Medical CentreToowoomba, Qld
HEATHER Macdonald’s attempt (Letters, 4/11) to defend the propriety of the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance’s influence on the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development is weak in the extreme.
If, as she claims, the provision of the secretariat to this Parliamentary Group is a “professional relationship”, why doesn’t the ARHA representative leave her agendas at the door when operating as its secretary? Why have members of the group suddenly found that a submission that was supposed to represent their views is word for word the same as the submission of the ARHA?
It is also a rather lame claim to say that the ARHA doesn’t promote abortion. It has on its website as its only two current domestic issues supporting organisations and activists in the campaign to decriminalise abortion in Victoria and its involvement in the RU486 campaign. It touts as its “partners” some of the biggest abortion providers in the country.
As we are tightening up on lobbyists, the Government might do well to include training for organisations like this on what a professional relationship is, before they provide secretariats to parliamentary groups we all think are giving their own considered opinion.
Angela Shanahan is spot on—thanks for the revelation.
Dr Jane TaylorCanberra, ACT
Furthermore, there is a comment at the on-line edition from a pro-abortion person who reveals more of the horror of the pro-abortion movement:
Note the aversion to ‘dependence’, which is quite telling. We Christians know that we are completely dependent on God, Who not only created us but keeps us in existence from moment to moment. But the secularist philosophy is one of radical detachment, autonomy and independence, so naturally any reliance on others is viewed with varying degrees of horror. Hence, also, the secularist support for euthanasia as a way of ‘freeing’ the infirm from being a ‘burden on society’. But of course, as this letter also reveals, it is not primarily for the relief of the dependent party from their ‘burden’, but for the release of society from the burden—hence the commenter speaks firstly of the ‘suffering’ of the parents, with the suffering of the child an “also”, a secondary consideration. Msgr. Anthony Fisher summarised the pro-death position quite well when he said ‘it’s not about putting Granny out of her misery, but about putting Granny out of our misery’. Comments like the one from Ms Ashton are useful for reminding us of what we are up against.Iris Ashton Thu 06 Nov 08 (08:46am)
The abortion is not to save the cost of their care, but to save the anguish and heartache of the parents when after many hard years of caring for a deformed or disabled child they find they can no longer give the adult child their care and have to depend on a nursing home or the child’s siblings. It is also to save the child itself the anguish of a life of pain utterly dependent on others. Also to save the siblings of that child the efforts to help the disabled child and to save them from having to care for said child in later life.Everyone is entitled to have a normal healthy life and if any family can be save the anguish of a life time of caring for a disabled child, who in many cases will not even know them, then that is what this law will provide.
(my emphasis)
Reginaldvs Cantvar
6.XI.2008 A.D.