CONGRATULATIONS on your highlighting of the stand by Senators Boswell and Joyce against a recent motion in the Senate to ratify a UN treaty on reproductive rights (“Abortion debate resurfaces”, CL 18/9/05).
If passed, it almost certainly would have amounted to approval of abortion on demand.
Recently I chanced upon a talkback radio segment in which the topic was the sorry plight of whales enmeshed in shark nets.
Like many callers, the presenter was rightly compassionate towards the gentle, giant mammals.
As I listened I recalled one of his earlier programs, involving the issue of women’s rights. Predictably, the question of abortion was widely canvassed.
In that instance our host supported the argument that every woman has a paramount right of “choice”.
I thought it most incongruous that he could feel great pity for an animal creature but none for a human one.
I suggest that he (and many others) simply do not realise the incontestable fact that a foetus constitutes human life from the moment of its conception.
And why would they? For ages nobody has told them the truth.
How long since abortion has been the subject of a homily in our parish churches? How long since older students in Catholic schools were unequivocally taught that abortion can never be an option?
How long since the bulk of the Christian press has emphasised the truth about this catastrophe, which ranks alongside or even above the Holocaust and other grievous sins against humanity?
It is not good enough to leave all the work to the relatively few dedicated members of Right to Life Australia.
Arguably, the Catholic Church may not have quite as much clout as it had 50 years ago, but it will remain an indefatigable adversary of evil and error as long as its members retain faith and will.
Politicians are still afraid of what it is capable of doing to them if it remains united and dedicated.
It behoves all of us to lobby our parliamentary representatives by telephone, post, e-mail or in person, against the horrendous sin of infanticide, for which abortion is a euphemism.
And if, in future, a persuasive someone is fervent about animal rights but dismissive of a human’s right to life itself, we need only recall Our Lord’s unambiguous confirmation of mankind’s pre-eminence in the pecking order among all of His creatures, as recorded in Matthew 6:26 and Luke 12:22.
RICHARD CONGRAM
Carindale, Qld
