PERTH, WA: August 2, 1990
Registered by Australia Post Publication No. WAR 0202
"My role as a Church leader is to point out the moral issues as I see them, even if it embroils the Church in a distasteful political debate," Bishop Hickey told the Right To Life Association. "The abortion debate is not for the faint-hearted. In a plural society concerned groups have every right to lobby for the protection of unborn life and challenge the abortion mentality. The issue is divisive and emotional because there is little middle ground between the pro-life and the prochoice lobbies."
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The big cover up
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HICKEY:
ABORTION DEBATE FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS
The environmental movement has produced a bizarre distortion in the anti-population lobby which claim that human beings are the worst form of pollution and that nature would be better off without them, Bishop Hickey told the Right To Life Association last Sunday. He said: "They advocate population control by any means, even abortion, to reduce human numbers, even in our empty Australian continent. "They forget that, when one takes out immigration figures, Australia's population is declining. "The same environmental movement has
reaffirmed the value of animal life, and rightly so. But it does not voice the least protest against the destruction of human life in the womb." Bishop Hickey said the abortion debate is full of double standards and contradictions. "We have only to think," he said, "of the enormous efforts made to save the life of a premature baby, and the readiness to kill a viable child in the womb. "Just when people with disabilities are beginning to achieve some dignity and respect as persons, we discover how to track them down in the womb and destroy them.
"Is it any wonder that they get angry when society, in effect, that they have no right to be born?" Speaking of the degree to which abortion had been accepted in society he described it as "a human tragedy of huge proportions, as difficult to understand as to change". He asked: "How can people of goodwill ignore the extinction of human life that abortion brings about? How can they live with that knowledge? "This is the mentality we must try to understand if we are ever to touch hearts and change attitudes."
Tull story not being told'
Bishop Hickey said that the pro-life movement needed to understand the profound conviction of women to have control over their own fertility. "The argument then becomes one of means," he said. "Because abortion involves a life other than that of the mother it ought not be used as a fertility control measure. "Nevertheless" he said, "we must support women's right to pro-
tection from rape and sexual abuse and affirm their rights to equality in marriage. Only when we define the issues precisely can we enter into useful dialogue. "It is unfortunately true that the full story about abortion is not being told in the media," Bishop Hickey claimed. "Very rarely does the research into the damaging psychological post-abortion effects get to air nr into print.
Is there a censorship operating, or is it that pro-life groups do not make that material a vailable?" he asked. "We ourselves need also to beware of inconsistencies and c ontradictions," he said. "Our pro-life ethic must carry across a whole range of life issues. "We must be as concerned for the mother as for the unborn child. "We must be as prolife on capital punish-
ment and war as we are on euthanasia and e mb r yon i c experimentation. "We must recognise that grinding poverty diminishes and destroys life, and we must campaign strongly for an end to poverty in our midst. Poverty is very much a pro-life issue. "I was shocked to the core to learn that many single mothers in my region felt let down by the Church. "They had done the right thing by having
Somebody up there loves me, says man from blazing fields of Iran
the baby, they said, but now that they were pregnant again, where was the Church to help them? This time they would have an abortion, I was told. "I had felt that our Church agencies and other pro-life bodies were doing all they could to help. But not so. "It is obvious that we must be far more involved in the lives of people at risk, to be ready to help when the need arises. It is obviously not enough
wait to approached."
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On the legislation Bishop Hickey said that there was a case for reducing or removing penalties on women who had had abortions because they were often frightened and under great stress, but no reason to be lenient on those who performed abortions. "The law cannot be neutral on this matter. Defenceless human lives deserve protec-
tion in a humane society." Nevertheless, he said, more important than the law in changing attitudes was the appeal to minds and hearts. People were basically good and decent. There was always hope that they would see abortion for what it was and reject it. "We must work to remove all pressures for abortion and affirm the wonder of human life," he said.
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