Sydney, Australia, August 13, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-abortion counter-protest will begin in Melbourne this week against a 400-foot banner representing the thousands of unborn who have lost their lives to abortion in Victoria.
As LifeSiteNews.com reported in March, local pro-lifers have been standing outside the car park of Victoria’s Parliament on each sitting day this year, beside a green banner marked with one white cross for each child lost to abortion since January 2012.
In 2008, 72 of the 128 parliamentarians in Victoria voted to enact the most liberal abortion laws in the world outside of China, the consequences of which included a 600% increase in late-term abortions at the Royal Women’s Hospital Victoria by 2010.
Before Parliament’s winter recess, the banner was 90-metres-long. Next week it will be 130-metres-long. At least 17,000 abortions are performed in Victoria each year, according to current Medicare rebate statistics*.
The Campaign for Women’s Reproductive Rights (CWRR) counter-protest is planned for Tuesday. Although the pro-life vigilers have been present on each of the 27 sitting days of parliament so far this year, next Tuesday they have already made plans to be in Canberra for the National Marriage Day Rally.
The CWRR plans to be on the other side of Macarthur Street with “HONK IF UR PRO-CHOICE” signs.
“With our presence and with each honk of a car horn, we will remind MPs that the vast majority of Victorians believe in a woman’s right to choose,” their blog stated.
David Forster, the creator of the pro-life banner, said: “No worries. They will get no more than six volunteers. They have much more trouble motivating their people than we do with ours. The politicians have seen us there 27 times so far, with another 24 to go this year. They are yet to be there once.”
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The CWRR blog also quotes the final report of the Victorian Law Reform Commission which paved the way for the 2008 laws. According to this report, the majority of Australian’s support “a woman’s right to choose”.
“Unfortunately I believe they are right: most Victorians would say they support a woman’s right to choose,” David Forster responded. “But they don’t know the facts about abortion – they are kept in the dark about its destructive consequences. That is why we are displaying this banner. Everyone shows amazement to see just how many abortions are taking place and if they were told the truth about the after-effects of abortion I am sure they would be less cavalier about saying it is merely ‘a woman’s right to choose’.”
The CWRR gathers outside the East Melbourne Fertility Control Clinic once a month in opposition to the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, or as they put it, “to prevent a rabid mob of anti-woman bigots from laying siege to the medical facility and terrorising the staff and clients.”
Previously in Green Left Weekly, CWRR organizer Debbie Brennan called pro-lifers “misogynist thugs”, “anti-abortion zealots”, “women-hating creeps” and “anti-choice bigots.”
In 2011, the CWRR organized a small rally before the annual March for the Babies in Melbourne, and plans to do so again this year.
The CWRR did not respond to a request for comment from LifeSiteNews.
More than 100 volunteers will be needed to support the full length of the banner by the year’s end. Anybody who wishes to assist should contact Therese at [email protected].
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*In 2010-2011, there were 16,280 claims in Victoria/Tasmania for medicare item number 35643: “Evacuation of the contents of the gravid [i.e. pregnant] uterus by curettage or suction curettage”.
The same year there were 299 claims for medicare item 16525: “Management of second trimester labour, with or without induction, for intrauterine foetal death, gross foetal abnormality or life threatening maternal disease.”
Some of either of these claims may be as a result of miscarriage rather than a procured abortion.
These medicare statistics do not include abortions after 24-weeks, abortions for which no rebate is claimed, or abortions performed on public patients. For further discussion about the intricacies of abortion statistics in Australia, see Pratt, Biggs and Buckmaster, February 2005. Australian Parliamentary Research Brief no. 9 2004–05. How many abortions are there in Australia? A discussion of abortion statistics, their limitations, and options for improved statistical collection.