CANBERRA, Australia, June 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews)—A Vietnam War veteran and retired brigadier has been fined $750 a second time by police but has nonetheless returned twice more to a downtown abortuary to pray for an end to abortion.
“I could well end up thrown in the klink though I am hoping it won’t come to that,” Kelly Mellor told LifeSiteNews. “But I have no intention of paying the fine.”
Mellor said the time has come for action. “This had got to be done. The way things are going in the world, the time has come to stand up and say ‘no further.’”
Mellor, 75, was the first person charged under the Australia Capital Territory’s new Health (Patient Privacy) Care Amendment Act. It prohibits any attempt to photograph or film anyone entering an abortion clinic, or to “obstruct” their entry, or finally to “protest by any means…against the provision of abortions.”
Mellor was first charged in the Spring for praying the Rosary across a Canberra intersection from the Marie Stopes International abortion clinic, but refused to pay the $750 fine. He even applied to the Crown to have the charge withdrawn on the grounds no protesting had taken place.
“We are not engaged in prohibited action,” Mellor told LifeSiteNews. “We are praying publicly. Public prayer is not a protest. We are praying for the ladies who’ve believed the lies about what abortion is.”
Mellor is a part of a group that has prayed outside the downtown Marie Stopes International clinic for 20 years every Friday form 8 am to 9 am, carrying a crucifix and an image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe. Once the buffer zone law was passed, however, they worked out a strategy to challenge the law and at the same time continue, in Mellor’s words “to weave a net of rosaries” around the clinic and its clients.
This meant they would no longer carry overt religious symbols, and everyone but Mellor himself, upwards of a dozen people, would pray silently, holding their rosaries in their pockets. On the first Friday after the law came into force, the group stood across an intersection from the clinic in front of a pub, having been told by one police officer they would be safely outside the buffer zone, though well within sight of the clinic.
As agreed, the others dispersed when the police told them they were breaking the law, but Mellor refused to leave and was assessed the fine. When he challenged it the police were soon forced to withdraw the charge, admitting “ambiguity” around the “boundaries of what comprises a ‘protected’ area.”
But the ACT government promptly expanded the zone to include the pub and push protests out of sight of the clinic. The next Friday, Mellor and his companions returned, this time walking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the clinic. Again, only Mellor took out his rosary, made the sign of the cross and was promptly confronted by the police in force: six officers in three vehicles.
Bev Cairns of the ACT Right to Life group told LifeSiteNews her group lacked the resources to back Mellor in court, while supporting him in spirit. “But he said he could take care of himself,” she said. Indeed, Mellor served in the Vietnam War in an artillery regiment, at least some of the time in the perilous role of a forward observer. Now he is vice president of the Defence Force Welfare Association.
Mellor believes that the “ridiculous law” will collapse in court, if the Crown prosecutors let the charge against him get that far. He complains that because it outlaws protest “by any means, ” it can be taken to mean any activity at all, however harmless or beneficial, such as praying the Rosary.
“We are guided by two shining principles,” he told LifeSiteNews. “We believe in the power of prayer and we believe in the importance of place.” Mellor explained that, while private prayer at home was also an effective tool against abortion, by “publicly witnessing in this place, we are reminding all the people what is going on here. It is outrageous that a whole class of human beings is being denied the protection of the law. And most people here are indifferent to it.”
Cairns said there were several cases of pro-lifers charged under similar buffer zone laws in the states of Victoria and Tasmania which are well advanced and which are focused on political rights, while Mellor is standing up for the religious right to pray in public. In Tasmania the judgement in the case of prominent pro-life activist Graeme Preston is expected in July.
Meanwhile the ACT Right to Life has learned through a freedom-of-information request that the abortion facility in question pays nominal –$1/year—rent to the government while receiving $459,000 in public funding last year.