An open Letter to NZ Christian leaders from a victim of Australian 'safe zones' legislation
Dear leaders of New Zealand’s churches,
I have been asked to write to you, to express my concerns about the proposed “Safe Areas” amendment and to urge you to consider making a submission before April 28th to the Health Select Committee, the body tasked with evaluating public opinion on the issue.
Firstly, I will give you a little of my background, to show that I have first-hand experience of the destructive nature of these so-called “Safe Areas.” I am a mother and grandmother and a resident of Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria.
As a member of the pro-life group Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, I formerly prayed and gave witness to life outside a suburban Melbourne abortion facility. That group, which has been actively helping women outside abortion facilities for almost two decades, is responsible for seeing several hundred babies saved from abortion in Melbourne alone. The help offered by this and similar groups is not limited to enabling the child’s safe birth but includes short and longer term financial and material assistance, medical assistance, baby sitting and moral support.
The ability of groups like The Helpers to intervene outside abortion facilities stems from the fact that many women are ambivalent about their abortion and, far from feeling “empowered” by their decision, are desperately looking for help. Women we have met over the years have often asked, “Why was no one there to help me when I went for my abortion?”
This kind of testimony has been presented to parliamentarians during debates on abortion law reform but strangely, is not highly regarded by those members of parliament who are ideologically driven to make abortion more accessible.Testimony of this nature from post-abortive women flies in the face of comments coming from the abortion industry and the media that accuse the pro-life community of harassment, intimidation or stalking. However, there is little to no evidence of these activities and in any case, such activity is usually captured by existing laws.
In 2016, abortion “exclusion zones”, also known as “Safe Access Zones” were enacted in my state.
In October 2016 I was arrested
In October of that year, I was arrested for approaching a couple who were about to enter an abortion facility and was charged with “communicating about abortion in a manner that is likely to cause distress.” My brief interaction with the couple led to a three-and-a-half year legal battle, which went all the way to the High Court of Australia. The case challenged the law at the constitutional level; we were ultimately unsuccessful and I was given a $5000 fine.
While the magistrate who heard my initial case admitted that my actions did not actually cause any distress, she had still been prepared to enforce the maximum penalty - twelve months in prison - but then spared me from that as I had children to care for.
Contrast this result with the outcome of an Australian High Court challenge to the exclusion zones which were created around forestry sites, designed to stop environmentalists from hindering loggers from going about their legitimate work. Those zones were deemed by the High Court judges to be unconstitutional, whereas the zones designed to stop law abiding pro-life citizens from either praying, voicing their opposition to abortion or helping women were found to be constitutional.
Thus we now have the situation where it is illegal to offer a woman alternatives to killing her baby but it is deemed acceptable by some people to send a toddler into the path of a bulldozer inside a logging coupe.
The failures of our legal challenge means that the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants now have far less exposure to abortion-minded women; God alone knows the cost of these exclusion-zones in terms of tiny lives lost.
Some may argue that because “Safe Area” laws apply to a very small group of people, they pose no great threat to the majority. However, this kind of law in fact leads to a chilling effect among the community, as individuals become more and more reluctant to voice their opinion on controversial issues.
Once an extremely limiting law, such as an exclusion-zone law is imposed on a jurisdiction, the trajectory is clear: laws made around the area of emotional harm tend to penalise those holding deeply-held religious and philosophical beliefs. Similarly, prohibiting prayer in one small area leads to prohibition on prayer in the wider community, the ramifications of which are devastating.
Another argument that may prevent Christians from opposing exclusion-zones is that fact that abortion is already legal, thus the pro-life community and the Christian churches may feel there is no need to continue to voice opposition to this immoral act. But St. Paul offers us the admonition, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead expose them.” This represents our mandate to publicly and consistently denounce the evil of abortion and includes an obligation to offer God’s forgiveness to post-abortive women.
The so-called “Safe Areas” greatly limit the ability of Christians to witness to the truth about abortion and to offer help or forgiveness to women in need and therefore must be resisted.
The time taken to research and write a submission may seem burdensome and ultimately a waste of your valuable resources. However, we must always remember that no child was planned by God to be deliberately aborted. God has told us that the shedding of innocent blood is a sin that cries to heaven and it is to Him that we will one day render an account of our actions. We must make our efforts, even those that may seem quite fruitless in human terms, in the name of witnessing for the truth - for God’s truth.
The wholesale, deliberate destruction of babies in the womb is the greatest injustice in human history. If you truly believe this, then you will do whatever is necessary to stop “Safe Areas” - which are anything but safe for innocent babies - and which represent such a great threat to our freedoms.
In Christ,
Kathy Clubb
