SYDNEY, March 27, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – While votes are still being counted, the number of political candidates who are members of the pro-abortion organization Emily’s List in the Queensland parliament appears to have been reduced from as many as 13 to as few as one.
Before the election, the Emily’s List Australia website allowed the public to donate as much as 2,500 individually to a list of nine candidates, each of whom had signed a ‘pro-choice pledge.’
All of those candidates, bar one, have been swept from parliament. Anna Bligh – the premier of Queensland and an Emily’s List member – resigned the day after the election, after her party suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government in Queensland history.
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A further three Emily’s List members had previously announced that they would retire at the time of the 2012 state election. They are now listed as “Former State/Territory Members of Parliament” on the Emily’s List Website.
Yet another three MPs had been previously listed as Emily’s List members but were not listed online prior to the election. One of these MPs, Jo-Ann Miller, retained her seat.
In Australia Emily’s List, known in the United States for supporting pro-abortion Democratic candidates, only funds candidates of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) who adhere to its principles. While votes are still being counted for the March 24 Queensland election, the ALP is predicted to retain just eight seats, after holding 51 after the last election in 2009.
Luke McCormack, spokesperson for the Queensland Branch of the Australian Family Association, partly attributed Labor’s losses to the presence of Emily’s List members in parliament.
“One of the reasons Labor is on the nose is because the party no longer honours traditional labour values,” he said. “And one of the reasons for this is the successful infiltration of the feminist network EMILY’s list, which promotes radical feminist policies that financially manipulate families, and also promotes abortion law reform that allows terminations for any or no reason right up until full-term.”
Although votes are still being counted, it appears that only one of the 26 candidates who told the organization Pro-Choice Queensland that they would support a bill to decriminalize abortion has been elected.
Queensland pro-life groups had been expecting a push to decriminalize abortion after the 2009 election, when Emily’s List Member Anna Bligh was re-elected as state premier.
Graham Preston, the Queensland Co-ordinator of Right to Life Australia, said he now expects the status-quo to be maintained by the new Liberal National Party government. “I don’t know how much people voted out Emily’s Listers because they were pro-abortion or how much it was just a general swing against Labor, and to be honest it was probably more the latter,” he said. “We would like to think there would be good things under the new government, but to be honest we don’t think they’ll make any moves to make abortion more difficult in Queensland, but we don’t think they’ll make any moves to make it easier either.”
Teresa Martin, the state president of Cherish Life Queensland, urged Queenslanders not to be complacent. “We urge you to make contact with your new Member on a regular basis and keep the pressure on them to be held accountable in pro-life matters,” she said.
Australian Prime-Minister Julia Gillard, who wrote the constitution for Emily’s List in Australia, told reporters on Monday she was surprised by the scale of the ALP’s loss in the Queensland election.