NOT THE FREEDOM RAILROAD

The prosecution of two WA abortionists appears to have caused all the feminist warhorses to resurface with their aged, scientifically discredited arguments. Ramona Koval's pseudo-dramatic opening "Night, winter ..... pouring with rain" to her pro-abortion article "Abortion zealots summon sad past" (Weekend Australian 21/2/98) would be laughable if it. were not about such a sad topic. Doesn't Ramona know that the cliched opening to silly romance novels often begins with "It was a dark and stormy night…."?

Koval's attempt to present the Abortion Law Reformers as bravely running some kind of freedom railroad for slaves escaping from oppression by providing addresses of safe houses (abortion clinics) just won't stand up to the scrutiny of ultra sound monitors or mini cameras which can show us real-time pictures of life in the womb. Rather than a freedom railroad, one is reminded of the pictures from TITANIC where the powerful and wealthy elbowed the weak and defenceless out of the lifeboats. For that is what an abortion is - a woman with the aid of a wealthy abortionist, pushing her defenceless infant out of the womb which is its temporary lifeboat.

We acknowledge the mortal fear felt by the cowards who comandeered the Titanic's lifeboats - they no doubt felt they had no other option as there were no rescue vessels in sight. But the women Ramona Koval et al send on the abortion clinic railroad do have other options - there are a myriad of pregnancy support services, there are thousands of adoptive parents longing for the opportunity to love a child. All the infant in utero asks for is a little temporary hospitality for a brief nine months. After that, if its mother wishes to pursue her career or other pastimes such as having affairs with men whom she "may not really know" (a scenario mentioned by Ramona Koval) she can be free to do so.

Indeed, the mother need not even wait nine months - hundreds of girls and women have continued their education and their careers through pregnancy. Indeed, feminists would do better to give women the self-esteem and confidence that they can succeed instead of convincing them they are helpless victims of a shipwreck and that their only chance of survival is to push their children out of the lifeboats.

Koval emphasizes that women must have a choice. To make an intelligent choice women must have access to honest information, but from the beginning of the abortion debate in the late sixties the issue has been obfuscated in a welter of misinformation, censorship and outright lies. ("lt's not a baby, it's just a clump of cells").

Koval mentions the year 1973, but she does not mention the abortion law reformers who have switched sides. Consider Norma McCorvey, plaintiff in the cause celebre 1973 US Supreme Court case Roe v.Wade which gave America abortion on demand up to the ninth month of pregnancy. Actually up to the time of delivery, hence the ingenious "partial-birth" abortion technique where the baby is turned around in utero so that it is delivered feet first, the head still in the birth canal is punctured with sharp scissors and the brains suctioned out so that the skull collapses and a dead baby - oops - a dead clump of cells can be delivered.

Back to plaintiff Norma McCorvey. She told the Supreme Court - or rather her feminist lawyers told the Court that she had been gang-raped but was denied an abortion in her home state. However, Norma, now 50 and a grandmother, says she deeply regrets her role in unleashing "the holocaust of abortion on to the nation". She said she would spend the rest of her life to trying to undo the law that bears her name. "I would like nothing more than to have this law overturned, either by an Act of Congress or a reversal in the Supreme Court" she said.

Norma's progress towards the truth has been gradual. In the 1980s she admitted she had not been gang-raped. She had lied to the Court at the suggestion of her feminist lawyers to win sympathy for abortion. Some time later, while working in an abortion clinic, Norma began to be haunted by the sight of empty swings in a children's playground nearby. "They were swinging back and forth, but they were empty. I thought,'Oh my God, the playgrounds are empty because there's no children. Because they've all been aborted"', she said.

About this time Norma became friendly with an Operation Rescue volunteer in the building next to the abortion clinic where she worked. No doubt the volunteer showed her medically explicit pictures of aborted babies fetuses, clumps of cells, call them whatever you like, but they look like babies, and that's why the abortion industry and its feminist cohorts are so desperate to keep these pictures out of sight of pregnant women. The media are complicit in this censorship - if just one TV station or newspaper would regularly show pictures of what an abortion does to that clump of cells, there would be a dramatic decline in the industry. The excuse that the pictures are too gory won't wash - after ER and Chicago Hope, we have become innured to the sight of a little blood.

Norma did not reject Roe v Wade straight away. Initially she said merely that it had "gone too far". But now in 1998, she has publicly repented her role and is striving to make amends. As has Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, who aborted two of his own babies and was responsible for 60,000 other abortions. He also, as he later admitted, concocted the figures for the numbers of women allegedly dying from backyard abortions,, inflating the numbers to tens of thousands of deaths.

This ploy of inflating the figures of backyard abortions is already being used in Western Australia to counter the current prosecution of abortionists. The figures are never balanced by the numbers of women who fall victim to depression, broken relationships, drug abuse and suicide as a consequence of their abortions.

Dr. Nathanson's road to Damascus began with his work in fetology and the gradual realisation that he was killing babies. This is why the abortion industry recommends that when abortionists are using ultra sound to determine the size and age of the fetus, they turn the screen away from the pregnant mother so that she doesn't see her infant - the "clump of cells" - on the monitor. (What the poor dear doesn't know won't hurt her - the excuse used by tyrant censors through the ages to keep the populace in ignorance). This recommendation actually appeared in a government-funded report on abortion in Australia.

Then there's the censorship on the increased breast cancer risk for women who have an abortion before their first full-term birth. One otherwise reputable medical journal published an article stating that the increased risk was not absolutely proven, and that women considering abortion should be given the benefit of the doubt. Benefit? To whom and for what? For the mother who might have a higher risk of developing a lethal, mutilating disease which is the major killer of women before old - age? To the fetus which is about to be terminated? Or to the abortionist who is going to collect a tidy fee?

There are also the "mistakes". On 17 February a Sydney daily publsihed news that a report on abortion prepared for the National Health and Medical Research Council by a panel (which included the ubiquitous family planning, abortion service providers and women's studies representatives - no doubt all card-carrying members of Koval's "freedom railroad") had been withdrawn because it includes errors. NHMRC Chairman, Professor Stephen Leeder, said the report had a chequered history and the mistakes were an "embarrassment".

The mistakes were identified by Canberra writer, John Coochey, who wrote to Health Minister, Dr. Wooldridge, pointing out several errors which "appeared to have been made to back up claims that the abortion rate had not increased..... It's been incredibly sloppily put together". One of the report's co-authors misquotes 1937 figures on the numbers of abortions and miscarriages, and also misquotes 1961 figures. The co-author insists the errors were genuine mistakes. If it had not been for the vigilance and persistence of John Coochey, the abortion politburo would have gotten away with it. Now that they have been caught out, can we, the taxpayers, get our money back?

The ultimate lie by the abortion industry is that they operate out of concern for women. Pro-lifers will believe this when abortionists offer their services for free without requiring their clients to pay and without forcing taxpayers to subsidize their blood sport through Medicare payments. Pregnancy support services are free, and the volunteeers who work there often dip into their own pockets to help pregnant women. Who should women trust?

The feminist cry of "choice" would ring more true if they were not so insistent on concealing information from pregnant women. In every country feminists have opposed legislation requiring women considering abortion to view films on fetal development. In the US they have fought advertisements in public transport systems warning of the increased risk of breast cancer. Abortion service providers want ultra sound screens turned away from their pregnant patients. What are they afraid of? There is an old saying that if it looks like a duck, moves like a duck and quacks likes a duck, it probably is a duck. What ultra sound and real-time in-utero photos from as early as 6-8 weeks gestation show looks like a baby, it moves its arms and legs like a baby, swallows fluid like a baby and sucks its thumb like a baby. It is a baby.

Koval boasts that she and her "pro-choice colleagues assured the women who came to them for abortion referrals that they did not have to explain their reasons. It was their right to decide, and Koval et al provided the names of willing doctors. In other words, there was no counselling, the doctor collected his fee and the aborted women were left with whatever serious problems they had which had made them consider abortion in the first place.

Although we recongise their fear, we still feel contempt for the powerful who pushed the weak out of the Titanic's lifeboats. How much greater our contempt for those who deliberately conceal from victims the information that there is enough space in the lifeboats, that rescue - free professional and personal help - is at hand I and that there is no need to push their own babies overboard?

Babette Francis

National & Overseas Co-ordinator