Author: EF Team

abortion

Abortion pills easier to access than ever in Australia

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A study from the La Trobe University on the impact of deregulation of the abortion pills, MS-2 Step, revealed that the number of chemists stocking the drugs has almost doubled.

by Kathy Clubb

What is MS-2 Step?

MS-2 Step, also known as the abortion pill, is produced by Marie Stopes International and was formerly known as RU-486. The change of name reflects the two-stage protocol for inducing an abortion via chemicals. First the drug Mifepristone is consumed to stop progesterone production, effectively stopping a baby from accessing nutrition from its mother. Then thirty-six to forty-eight hours later, the drug Misoprostol is taken to expel the child. At that point, the baby is expected to have died, but that is not always the case. Many mothers have traumatically delivered live babies into their toilets at home, this is more likely when the mother takes the drugs later in her pregnancy.

MS-2 Step is available in Australia under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and is recommended for use until sixty-three days gestation.

Effects of deregulation

After the Therapeutic Goods Administration made changes in 2023, the number of pharmacies selling MS-2 Step increased from 2,228 to 4,107. This increase reflects the TGA’s decision to eliminate the need for pharmacists to be registered before they could dispense chemical abortion drugs.

The new figures, reported by La Trobe University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery, show that mothers have access to the abortion pill in almost half of the postcodes around Australia – this has long been a goal of abortion advocates, who frequently describe a “postcode lottery” when referring to what is, in their view, limited abortion access.

Along with that change for pharmacists, GP’s were no longer required to be registered or to have specialised training before prescribing the drugs. Additionally, midwives and nurse practitioners were given permission to prescribe them.

A new brand of abortion drug on the market

Until recently, MS-2 Step was the only abortion pill available in Australia, with that product being the sole focus of the La Trobe University study. However, a second chemical abortion drug was released this month, having been approved by the TGA in February.

The drug, Arzestra, comprising the same two medicines, is registered as a “generic drug”, making it a lower-cost alternative to MS-2 Step. There is little information available about Arzestra – it is not yet possible even to view the packaging. But there is little doubt that once it hits the shelves, there will be an even greater rise in the number of abortions using chemicals.

Rebellion at the heart of abortion

With abortion pills so readily available and increasingly becoming the preferred method for killing unborn babies worldwide, it is no wonder that we are witnessing the blatant promotion of their use by abortion activists.

Two examples of this spring readily to mind. In Poland, activists have just begun providing abortion pills via lockers placed strategically near the Warsaw Parliament building. The locker system is known by the chilling term “abortomat” in Polish. Mother can use a six-digit code to open one of the doors and access abortion pills in hostile opposition to the nation’s stringent anti-abortion laws.

In the US, the Satanic Temple recently released the horrifying music video about a woman consuming an abortion pill as part of an “abortion ritual.” The video was filmed inside the toilet of a Hobby Lobby store, to highlight that company’s opposition to abortion.

How is this healthcare?

According to this report, abortion advocates are, perhaps unsurprisingly, still not content with the availability of abortion around Australia. Dr Anna Noonan, an abortion researcher with the University of Technology Sydney, said that despite the increase in accessibility reported by La Trobe University, more expansion is necessary.

Dr. Noonan said her research showed that medical professionals are already facilitating that expansion. She claims:

Doctors and nurses are going to pharmacies in advance saying, ‘I’m going to be an abortion provider in this community, will you stock this medication?’

She also suggests that regulation “harms” patients, especially those on limited means:

“The more we encourage a deregulated environment, the easier access will be, particularly for people with less resources.”

“People with less resources” is code for those on the lower socio-economic rungs. It should come as no surprise to see a promoter of abortion trying to ensure that there are fewer children being born to poor families.

De-regulation is not progress

There needs to be a halt to the use of drugs for abortions, rather than an expansion. Their danger to babies is obvious, the harms to mothers are well-documented.

Experience overseas shows that apart from killing babies and potentially harming mothers, the ease with which the chemical abortion regimen can be obtained leads to serious abuses. It is becoming alarmingly common to hear of mothers being slipped abortion pills by their partners or family members, in order to surreptitiously kill their unborn babies. ( See here, here and here.)

There is no other form of “healthcare” that allows someone to so easily force death upon a child or an unsuspecting mother. Allowing for greater access to abortion pills is not a sign of progress, but of barbarism, of a society in decline.

assisted suicide

Number of assisted suicide deaths soars in Victoria

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Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board has released its 2025–26 annual report, revealing a sharp uptick in the number of assisted suicide deaths over the past year and a staggering 400% increase since the practice was legalised. Assisted suicide now accounts for 1.1% of all deaths in Victoria.

The entire report can be accessed below.

by Kathy Clubb

Overview

More people in Victoria are dying from voluntary assisted dying (VAD), and more are choosing to
have practitioners facilitate the procedure, according to the 2025–26 annual report of the state’s
Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board.

The overall number of deaths during this 12-month period was 512, which includes both patient-administrated deaths as well as those facilitated by physicians. This brings the total number of deaths since VAD was legalised in mid-2019 to 2,188. That figure is over 3,000 when one includes the number of patients with permits but who died before accessing VAD.

1,156 patients applied for VAD, representing an increase of almost 40% from the previous year with 908 permits being issued – an increase of over 40%. This is the biggest increase in a single year since assisted suicide was legalised.

401 applications were withdrawn, most commonly because the patient died before they could access VAD. According to the report, 39% of patients passed away within two weeks of making their first VAD request. Proponents of VAD see this as a negative, and have secured amendments (see below) to make it even easier and quicker for patients to take their own lives in the future.

assisted suicide

Suicide drugs were dispensed to 702 people; 161 of those were medical practitioners. The number of deaths directly caused by medical professionals increased from just under to just over one quarter of the total.

The most sobering figure is the increase in deaths from the beginning of the VAD regime: there were 129 deaths in the first complete year, 2019–2020, meaning that there has been a 400% increase over the past six years.

assisted suicide

Soothing language

Since the report is compiled by avid proponents of assisted suicide, the language is naturally very favourable towards the practice.

For example, increases in the number of patients committing suicide is disconcertingly described as “reassuring”. The report’s authors also believe it is “reassuring” that there is growing community awareness of VAD, although they express regret that more patients from non-English speaking backgrounds are not choosing to kill themselves.

Similarly, is deemed “reassuring” that those living in regional areas have good access to assisted suicide, since 40% of applications are coming from outside the Melbourne metro area, despite the lower relative population.

Expansion of assisted suicide planned from 2027

Amendments to the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act were made last year and will come into effect next year. They are breathtaking in their scope and for the increased access patients will have to legally taking their own lives. From the report:

  • removal of the “gag clause”. In the Act, health practitioners were legally prohibited from initiating discussions about VAD with patients. The patient had to raise the topic first. The Amendment Act allows health practitioners, including medical practitioners, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, psychologists, and Aboriginal health practitioners, to begin discussions as part of their end-of-life care.
  • extending medical prognosis timeframe. The Act required a prognosis of less than 6 months to live, or 12 months for a neurodegenerative condition. The Amendment Act extends the prognosis timeframe to 12 months for all eligible conditions.
  • reduced minimum waiting period. The minimum period of 9 days from an applicant’s first request to final request has been reduced to 5 days.
  • providing choice of administration of VAD substance. The Act required applicants to self-administer the VAD substance unless they were unable to do so. The Amendment Act empowers applicants to choose either self-administration or practitioner administration, and to change method of administration more easily.
  • removal of the need for a third assessment. There will no longer be a requirement for a third prognosis assessment for applications with a neurodegenerative condition.
  • stronger conscientious objection obligations. The Amendment Act clarifies that health practitioners who conscientiously object to providing VAD services must still inform the applicant that another practitioner can assist them and provide referral information.
  • changes to practitioner eligibility. At least one of the medical practitioners assessing a person’s eligibility to access VAD must have practised for at least one year following specialist or vocational registration (instead of 5 years post-fellowship as currently required). A new role of administering practitioner will be created, extending the authority to administer VAD substances to registered nurses (with at least 5 years registration) and nurse practitioners.
  • more flexible residency eligibility. While the requirement for an applicant to have been resident in Victoria for 12 months remains, the Amendment Act creates an exemption application process to the Secretary of the Department of Health. [page 7]

When things go wrong

While the report focused on the bureaucratic side of VAD – applications, permits and compliance – no mention was made of complications that arose during patient deaths. Nevertheless, some idea of potential complications can be gleaned from studies and reports in other jurisdictions where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal.

For example, this study of 649 cases from the Netherlands shows that:

  • Complications occurred in 7 percent of cases of assisted suicide
  • Problems with completion occurred in 16 percent of the cases. These included:
    • a longer-than-expected time to death
    • failure to induce coma
    • induction of coma followed by awakening of the patient
  • In cases of euthanasia, complications and problems with completion occurred in 3 percent and 6 percent respectively.
  • The physician intervened in 18% of cases to administer a lethal medication, meaning that these became euthanasia cases. Reasons included:
    • problems with completion
    • inability of the patient to take all the medications.

Another study reveals that “Patients may become unconscious relatively quickly but the dying process can take up to 30 hours or more. There are also reports of people re-emerging from a coma and sitting up during the dying process.” It also mentions that the drugs used for killing patients have been used to kill prisoners saying: ” … use of medicines during executions has been described as ‘inhumane’ with reports of people feeling ‘burning’ sensations throughout their bodies prior to death.“

Other recorded complications include difficulty in ingesting drugs, regurgitation, seizures. There can also be an impact on family members, with reports of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after loved ones takes their own lives through VAD.

What ‘non-compliance’ really means

One section of the report is dedicated to the topic of “non-compliance”, an innocent-sounding term which in reality can be a matter of life and death. The report summarizes the issue by saying that “the rate of non-compliance remains low – at about 2% of applications – and typically involves administrative errors that do not present material risks to applicants.”

However, buried later in the report is a case which had nothing whatsoever to do with “administrative errors”: someone used their partner’s legally-dispensed suicide drugs to take their own life.

The contact person was the partner of a VAD applicant who had a cancer diagnosis and a prognosis of less than six months. The applicant made their first request for VAD in December 2025, and a self-administration permit was issued in February 2026.

In April 2026, the VAD applicant died in hospital, without having taken the substance. The contact person, the applicant’s partner, is assumed to have consumed the VAD substance at some point over the subsequent two days.

Three days after the applicant’s death the Board and the Department of Health were notified of both the applicant’s death through usual reporting processes, and, at the same time, the death of the contact person. [page 49]

The report ends by saying that “What this experience has brought into focus is the importance of grief and bereavement support for the partners, family members, and support people of those who access VAD, as with any end-of-life care option.”

This conclusion, while giving the appearance of compassion, overlooks the stark reality: assisted suicide and euthanasia teach society that killing oneself is the answer to any of life’s problems, from terminal illness or mental illness to loneliness and grief.

Advocates for assisted suicide including the authors of the new Victorian report should not be surprised if those left behind also see suicide as a way out of their suffering. Sadly, these proponents of radical individualism fail to acknowledge how incoherent – and dangerous – their position really is.

About the author
Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother who has home-educated her children for the best part of 30 years. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018. Her articles have appeared at Family Life International, The Remnant Newspaper, LifeSiteNews, the Daily Declaration, Caldron Pool and Fidelity magazine.

Victoria’s 2025/26 assisted suicide report

voluntary-assisted-dying-review-board-annual-report-july-2025-june-2026Download
boys

Stories about real heroes can help make heroic boys

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We hear much today about the “boy crisis”, the “trouble with boys”, and a “war against boys”.
These problems are real. The lack of father figures and male mentors, the overwhelming predominance of female teachers in the early school grades, an obsession in many cases with video games, the prejudice of both the classroom and our society at large in favour of girls as opposed to boys — all these are reasons boys are floundering while their female counterparts ride the success wave.

by Jeff Minick
[Reprinted, with permission, from Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota, U.S.)]

But there’s one more explanation for this phenomenon of broken boyhood: a lack of real heroes. In times past, teachers and parents introduced adolescent males to heroic men, whether fictionalised characters like Ulysses, Sir Galahad, and D’Artagnan and his Musketeers, or historical figures like Richard the Lionheart, Winston Churchill, and for that matter, Moses and Jesus Christ.

I was introduced to figures like these through Classics Illustrated, a comics series I found in Weatherwax’s Pharmacy of Boonville, North Carolina, at the age of seven. That series influenced my imagination and developing code of morality and manhood. Add the Childhood of Famous Americans series, the Hardy Boys, some of the Landmark books, and many other assorted juvenile works of history and literature, and by sixth grade the foundation of my notions of the heroic were well-established.

William Jones Jr., author of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, had a similar experience with these comics based on historical events and great literature. It was 1956, and the five-year-old William was with his father picking up a prescription at Hall Drug Store. There he spotted a comic book in a spinner rack with a picture of Davy Crockett on the front. His father bought him that comic, and from that moment on William became enamoured with Classics Illustrated, writing, “Nothing else I read as a child had as significant an impact on my developing imagination….”

Unfortunately, we live in a time when heroes are toppled, sometimes literally, from their pedestals, or else are blighted, judged by their flaws rather than their virtues and courage. Men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, and others from the South are, for example, considered first and foremost as drivers of slaves rather than of the nation. Teachers and the so-called “progressives” of our culture point to the evils of colonialism wrought by Columbus, the flaws in Abraham Lincoln’s sometimes ambiguous stances on slavery, and so on.

This debunking of heroes has left boys with two categories of figures for emulation: superheroes and celebrities. Both categories contain their own flaws in serving as examples of heroism. Superheroes, for example, aren’t real. Spiderman may embody virtue, but his power comes from the bite of an arachnid, not from human travail. He’s not even as real a fictional hero as Dickens’ Sydney Carton. As for sports figures and movie stars, they dominate the public square not by their good character, but by their talent.

They frequently make poor exemplars for young boys.

C.S. Lewis was spot-on regarding today’s culture when he wrote, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.”

So, what is a hero? The best definition I know comes not from a dictionary, but from the famous 1910 “Man in the Arena” speech by Theodore Roosevelt, who served as U.S. president from 1901 to 1909.

Here is the two-sentence gold nugget that dispenses with today’s cynics and delineates a hero:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or
where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;
or who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the
great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the
triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat.”

That man in the arena may be a politician sticking up for the truth, a soldier bleeding on a forlorn battlefield, an entrepreneur fighting for all he’s worth to keep his business afloat, a husband and father who gives his all for his wife and children. It might also be that teenager who breaks up a fight rather than filming it on his phone, who refuses to join others in his class in cheating on a test, who defends the good and the true at the risk of mockery.

Instil this “man in the arena” heroism in our sons by way of example and by stories, and they’ll become better students, better workers, better husbands, and better fathers.

In short, they’ll become better men.

About the author
Jeff Minick is an American author, who also teaches Latin, history and literature to home-schoolers. He is a convert to Catholicism and hosts his own website at www.JeffMinick.com. He is a widower of 10 years with four grown children, three of them married, and 12 living grandchildren. He lives in Front Royal, Virginia, the northern gateway to the scenic 150-mile-long Shenandoah Valley. The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), September 30, 2026, and is reproduced by permission.

foetal body

New report on trafficking foetal body parts from CMP

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David Daleiden, of the Centre for Medical Progress, has released an update on his ongoing investigation into the trafficking of foetal body parts in the US. Daleiden’s examination of the case of “Clementine”, a baby who was born alive so that her organs could be harvested while still viable, has uncovered evidence of foetal organ procurement by the University of California.

In this article:

Press release from the Centre for Medical Progress

Abortion business sold foetal body parts for $765 each to taxpayer-funded labs, new records show. Cercle Allocation Services, Inc. charged University of California $765 per body part harvested from late-term abortion clinics

Contact: David Daleiden, media@centerformedicalprogress.org, 949.734.0859

IRVINE, Sept. 30—New documents released under a California Public Records Act request show a new abortion side business, Cercle Allocation Services, Inc., selling foetal body parts for $765 each to taxpayer-funded laboratories at the University of California.

Cercle Allocation Services is the foetal organ harvesting company that took possession of an infant believed to have been born alive at a late-term abortion clinic in New Jersey two years ago, based on expert analysis of medical records in the recent investigative documentary “What Happened To Clementine?” by The Center for Medical Progress, who made the public records request.

The new documents include purchase orders from a UCLA laboratory to Cercle in August and September of 2023, for a total of $16,065 for 21 foetal body parts—14 livers and 7 thymus glands. The purchase orders show each individual organ being billed at a separate $765 price.

The purchase orders were apparently revised multiple times by UCLA at Cercle’s demand, to remove sales tax from the orders so it would look like only “services”, rather than “items”, were being sold. In a September 2023 email, Cercle’s Account Manager told UCLA, “The overriding issue is the use of terminology that we must not use due to their improper implication that we are selling taxable items,” and, “Due to the nature of our business we must be very careful and clear that we invoice fees for our procurement services (untaxable).” The Account Manager wrote that “notations of ‘Total Tax’ and ‘Total Price Includes Sales Tax’ would imply that we are selling the items received (which are illegal to sell). Therefore, it is quite important that Purchase Orders are created to authorize payment for our Services, which can be tied to the sample dates and numbers”. The purchase orders show that Cercle billed UCLA for as many as five $765-per-body-part charges in a single day.

42 U.S. Code 289g-2 makes it a federal felony to “transfer” “any human foetal tissue” for “valuable consideration”.

Recently published studies note that Cercle was previously doing business as Advanced Bioscience Resources, a foetal organ harvesting company that maintained extensive government contracts. ABR, along with its longtime business partners at Planned Parenthood, was the subject of Congressional criminal referrals in 2016 after investigations prompted by CMP’s undercover video reporting. Planned Parenthood has supplied aborted fetuses to ABR/Cercle since the 1990s.

CMP previously released undercover video interviews with ABR admitting that sometimes aborted fetuses “just fell out” of patients in the operating room. ABR’s procurement manager Perrin Larton—now with Cercle—testified under oath in 2019 that intact fetuses were harvested “every couple months”, and that sometimes she saw foetal hearts beating after being cut out. ABR has sold FDA-regulated “current Good Tissue Practice” (cGTP) foetal organs for up to $7,000 each to taxpayer-funded laboratories.

The new public records documents from UCLA also show that in March 2025, Cercle had to cancel an order for foetal brain because it was unable to procure it. The medical records reviewed in CMP’s documentary “What Happened To Clementine?” show Cercle’s research procurement site in New Jersey, the Cherry Hill Women’s Center, using large doses of the labor-inducing drug Misoprostol on abortion patients. According to expert analysis, the time intervals and procedure steps recorded after that point leave barely one minute for the 5-month-gestation infant, named Clementine by her parents, to be taken out of her mother in the operating room.

“These new records from Cercle’s abortion side business harvesting baby body parts show the extreme financial incentives that exist for ‘research’ abortions to deliver whole, preemie-size babies alive—as appears to have been done to baby Clementine and her mother, and potentially thousands of others,” notes David Daleiden, founder and president of CMP.

Elise Ketch, associate reporter with CMP, states, “Mass organ harvesting for foetal research is the beating heart of the abortion industry. Behind all the fiercest defenders of abortion you can find a tie to profits from this black market. You just have to look.”

Thomas Kearns, the father of baby Clementine from the documentary and founder of the Clementine’s Voice advocacy group, says, “Looking at the prices on this page reminds me of what they claim my daughter Clementine’s life was worth. I’m reminded that these body parts came from children just like my daughter Clementine—children who were more than just a liver or a thymus. The value that Clementine and these children had to offer the world was not a price tag from a business exchange. They are not just their body parts or organs. They had souls, they had families, they had their own lives if they were not interrupted by the abortion and organ harvesting industry. This is the same agency that took my daughter two years ago. Were the babies in these purchase orders harvested with the same partial-birth abortion methods as my daughter?”

“What Happened to Clementine?” – investigation into sale of foetal body parts

“What Happened To Clementine?” is a new, feature-length documentary by The Center for Medical Progress that covers victim family interviews and expert analysis of medical records to investigate the case of a young couple’s unexpected pregnancy and subsequently coerced 5-month abortion at the Cherry Hill Women’s Center in New Jersey—and the clinic’s supply of their preemie-age daughter Clementine to biotech wholesaler Cercle Allocation Services, Inc. in March 2024.

The evidence reveals that the Cherry Hill-Cercle organ harvesting program uses large doses of labor inducing drugs on pregnant women, and baby Clementine appears to have been born alive before being provided to the organ harvesting company.

“What happened to Clementine?” UPDATE

Geneva Consensus Declaration

Endeavour Forum joins the Geneva Consensus Declaration!

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Endeavour Forum has joined 43 nations and dozens of pro-life organisations in signing the Geneva Consensus Declaration – a pro-life, pro-family manifesto which affirms the dignity of human beings and rejects the so-called “right” to abortion. Click here to find out more and see the other signatories.

by Denise Mountenay

Endeavour Forum Inc., in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC, is honoured to join the Civil Society Coalition for the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), standing alongside 43 countries and organisations committed to defending life, family, and national sovereignty.

We signed onto the Geneva Consensus Declaration because:

  • We affirm that there is no international right to abortion. No UN treaty or binding instrument creates such a right, and attempts to claim one distort international law and undermine the protection of unborn life.
  • We believe every nation has the sovereign right to protect life. Laws concerning abortion must be determined by each country’s people, constitution, and moral convictions—not imposed by UN agencies or external pressure.
  • We uphold the family as the fundamental unit of society. Strong families are essential for the well‑being of women, children, and communities. Policies that devalue life ultimately weaken families and nations.
  • We support women’s health without promoting abortion. True care for women includes healthcare, support, protection from violence, and economic opportunity—none of which require abortion as a solution.

In recent years, several UN agencies and aligned NGOs have advanced an agenda to frame abortion as a global human right. Agencies such as UNFPA, WHO, and OHCHR, along with NGOs like International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and MSI Reproductive Choices, have worked to normalize abortion as “essential healthcare” and pressure countries to liberalize their laws.

By joining the Geneva Consensus Declaration, Endeavour Forum Inc. stands with a growing coalition that:

  • Defends the dignity of every human life, born and unborn.
  • Affirms the central role of the family.
  • Protects national sovereignty over life and family policy.
  • Offers a clear, principled alternative to the UN abortion agenda.

We are grateful for this opportunity to add our voice to a global witness for truth and life, and we remain committed to advocating for policies and media that honor both women and their children.

In defense of life and family, 

Endeavour Forum Inc.

assisted suicide

Assisted suicide Bill defeated in House of Commons

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MPs have voted to reject Lauren Edwards’ assisted suicide Bill by 286 votes to 270. It was the second time in less than two years that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill had been considered by MPs after it was first brought forward by Kim Leadbeater in 2024.

by The Christian Institute

That Bill was narrowly approved by the House of Commons but failed to progress from the House of Lords due to an unprecedented number of amendments tabled in response to its many flaws. Edwards’ legislation was almost an exact copy of the earlier Bill, and MPs this time voted not to let the dangerous law proceed.

Under the proposals, patients deemed to be terminally ill and with less than six months to live would have been allowed help to kill themselves.

Protecting the vulnerable

The Christian Institute’s Director Ciaran Kelly gave thanks to God for the result.

He explained: “It was a decisive shift in view from the Kim Leadbeater Bill through to this Lauren Edwards Bill. And we can be thankful that MPs have been persuaded by the arguments that have been put forward as to why this Bill should not be brought into law.”

Naïve idealism

Many MPs stood up to speak powerfully against the Bill, noting it was a vote, not in principle, but on the detail, as the Bill’s sponsor Lauren Edwards said she would not accept any amendments to the Bill.

Conservative MP Mims Davies called the Bill “a mixture of naïvety, idealism and wishful thinking”.

She added: “We are being asked to send this Bill back to the other place and perhaps use the Parliament Acts to force it through regardless of fitness for purpose with all knowledge of its flaws and its lack of workability to just get it done. But that means we are not listening in to the doctors who have spoken in this place today. I cannot subscribe to this type of lawmaking”.

Independent MP Rosie Duffield urged her colleagues across the chamber not to simply pass the Bill and “hope for the best”. She expressed her concerns that safeguards were lacking, noting that “not a single disabled rights organisation or professional body supports this legislation”.

Change of heart

Labour MP Janet Daby previously voted in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill, but said in today’s debate: “Following my vote in favour of assisted dying, for the following two nights, I had nightmares about dying and death.

“I had to wrestle with myself, knowing I was not entirely comfortable with the decision I had made, and my conscience was not at peace, and I could not again in good conscience vote for the Bill.”

She added: “I decided, that if the opportunity should arise again, I’d be voting against assisted dying.”

‘Consider our privilege’

Fellow Labour MP Sarah Smith said: “We must consider the privilege that we hold in this place, the confidence to challenge a doctor’s assessment, to turn down the suggestion of assisted death, the belief that we might be able to afford the care that we need when we are older, and make a true choice about how we might die.

“But we must remember that this is not the experience of most people, and certainly not the experience of those with lower levels of education, from ethnic minority backgrounds, those with disabilities or struggling to make ends meet.

“For them, the suggestion made by a doctor may easily sound like a decision for what is best for them. For them, the likelihood of having their mental capacity accurately assessed is far less than it would be for many of us.

“For them, and indeed for most of us, the assessment around how long they have left to live is often hugely inaccurate.”

Moral opposition

Northern Irish MP Carla Lockhart explained her opposition to assisted suicide was “not only practical, but moral”, adding: “Life is precious and it deserves protection from its beginning to its natural end. That is what my Christian faith teaches me.”

She said: “This house was founded on Christian principles, this legislation is so far removed from those Christian principles. The true measure of a compassionate society is not how easily it facilitates death, but how faithfully it cares for those who are suffering.”

And Martin Vickers, a Conservative MP, also pointed to his belief that “life is God-given”, and stated: “if assisted dying is legalised we will be poorer as a society. We will have crossed a line.”

Republished from The Christian Institute. The Christian Institute exists for “the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom and elsewhere” and “the advancement of education”. It is a nondenominational Christian charity with more than 60,000 supporters throughout the UK, including more than 5,000 churches. The Christian Institute is committed to upholding the truths of the Bible which we believe is inerrant and the supreme authority for all of life, and is committed to upholding the sanctity of life from conception.

LGBTQ+

Principal bullied out of job over LGBTQ+ awareness day concerns

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An Australian public-school principal is taking a stand against LGBTQ+ bullies who’ve forced her out of a 34-year teaching career. Ironically, Janelle Rowe faced disciplinary action for “underperformance” after she proposed replacing LGBTQ+ “Wear It Purple Day” with “Bullying No Way Week.”

by Rod Lampard at The Daily Declaration

Although the punitive measures are being sold as unrelated, Human Rights Law Alliance’s John Steenhof is arguing that the evidence proves otherwise.

Principal the ‘best leader I have ever worked with’

Internal employment documents uncovered through Freedom of Information (FOI) showed Mrs Rowe had been described as “outstanding” and “highly capable.”

The FOI also quoted at least one teacher stating that Rowe is “the best leader I have ever worked with in my 40-year career.”

Furthering the connection, the ACT school’s disciplinary process included Rowe “being placed under supervision and instructed to celebrate” and lead the LGBTQ+ safetyism day on 28 August, while forcing her to wear purple.

So, “this was never about underperformance,” Steenhof exclaimed.

Rowe’s reasons for trying to replace “Wear It Purple Day” were due to “concerns about sexualised content being taught to children as young as four.”

“Wear It Purple Day is not simply a ‘wear purple’ dress-up day,” she said in HRLA’s 7 September press release.

“Its focus is to indoctrinate children with LGBTQ+ ideology from a young age and normalise it every year through this national awareness day.”

“Under the school system’s own codes of conduct, it is inappropriate to expose children to content of a sexual nature.”

“My primary concern was about child protection and our duty of care as educators,” Rowe explained.

This is what drove the haters her way.

Bullying and disregard for child safeguards

After speaking out, complaints were made to the ACT Education Directorate. HRLA argued that this resulted in the disciplinary action.

Rowe “also received threats that the union would be brought in to pressure her to keep Wear It Purple Day.”

She “was then subjected to allegations that Rowe was being motivated by her Christian faith.”

Bullied, Rowe was forced to resign.

In HRLA’s statement regarding the case, Rowe said, “I chose not to go to Fair Work because I wanted to be able to speak freely and help parents understand what was really going on in schools and enable them to protect their children.”

“Talking with primary school-aged children about sexualised content goes against the National Child Safe Standards,” she added.

It also goes against “related procedures, policies, and codes of conduct we are trained on and expected to uphold as educators.”

“Scenarios where sexualised content is shared with children,” Rowe asserted, “are considered Reportable Conduct, Inappropriate Conduct, or Misconduct.”

She called the “entire process procedurally unfair and religiously discriminatory,” adding that it has caused her “significant psychological harm.”

“Wear It Purple Day” concerns

“Wear It Purple Day” began in 2010, and its reach goes far beyond the education system.

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) warned about it in 2021, saying, “Promoted as a day in which to ‘celebrate diversity and young people from the LGBTQIA+ community’, a darker, very alarming, side has emerged.”

“Wear It Purple is a member organisation of ILGA World (the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association).”

“Under a cloak of ‘gender equality’ speak,” ACL explained, “this influential global federation is currently lobbying for governments to erase child protection policies and to lower the age of consent for minors.”

That lobbying involves the “Feminist Declaration,” which in part demands that governments abolish limitations on age and disability consent to sex laws.

Section 14, for instance, blatantly calls for the removal of age of consent laws that “protect children and young people from sexual exploitation and abuse.”

As ACL’s Wendy Francis noted, “What possible reason is there for us to remove these provisions?”

Referring to Janelle Rowe’s case, The Daily Telegraph described the clash with education bureaucrats as a “bitter dispute”.

Offered column space, DT said the ACT Education Directorate declined to comment, citing “privacy considerations.”

Canavan and Shelton protest

Two high-profile names who did weigh in, though, were Nationals Senator Matt Canavan and Family First’s Lyle Shelton.

Horrified, Canavan protested on X, asking, “What is going on in our schools? A principal with 34 years of teaching experience has left because she was being forced to teach about alternative ‘lifestyles’ to 4-year-olds… 4-year-olds!”

National/State secretary for the Teachers Professional Association of Australia (TPAA), Edward Schuller replied, “It gets so much worse. There is a network of government-funded organisations providing graphic sexual education to students.”

He linked his August interview with Karl Stefanovic and a petition, adding, “These groups have received over $230m in funding in just the last 5 years. Parents and teachers are fighting back — join them.”

You can read more here, although reader discretion is advised.

Lyle Shelton was just as concerned.

He posted a statement online declaring that Rowe “should be LAUDED, not driven from her profession.”

“Australian schools,” Shelton stated, “are no place for promoting radical LGBTQ+ sexual and gender-fluid ideology to children.”

“Janelle Rowe should be regarded as a hero for having the courage to say what countless Australian parents are thinking: four-year-olds do not need LGBTQA+ sexual and gender” training.

Schools should be teaching zero tolerance for bullying, he added, “But that does not require schools to promote harmful ideas about sexuality and gender identity to infants and primary-school children.”

“Wear It Purple Day should be banned from Australian schools, not the brave teachers who call it out.”

By Rod Lampard. Republished with permission from The Daily Declaration. The Daily Declaration is Australia’s largest Christian news site. It is dedicated to providing a voice for Christian values in the public square. Its vision is to see the revitalisation of our Christian values for the common good. 

human rights

Dangerous language enters Human Rights Council

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A novel category – “reproductive violence” – was accepted in a recent Human Rights Council resolution, threatening to serve as a Trojan horse for the pro-abortion agenda if it gains further acceptance.

by Rebecca Oas, Ph. D. at C-Fam

The resolution, which dealt with the rights of women and girls in humanitarian situations, listed violations “such as forced or denial of contraception, forced pregnancy, forced abortion and forced sterilization” as examples of “reproductive violence.”

The denial of abortion was not explicitly mentioned in this non-exhaustive list, but that does not mean it was not included by implication.  Abortion advocates like the International Planned Parenthood Federation applauded the new language. An article in Ms. Magazine embraces this term as a way to pressure the United States for state-level abortion restrictions, noting that while the resolution was focused on humanitarian situations, this language will have broader implications.

For delegates from countries with pro-life laws, opposing the new term is difficult given the topic of the resolution, which focuses on vulnerable women and girls facing violence, including sexual assault, in the midst of conflict and natural disasters.  However, the architects of “reproductive violence” terminology make clear that they intend to use it to enable one form of violence while condemning others.  Specifically, they want to equate the denial of abortion with forced abortion as types of violence.

“Reproductive violence” has already entered UN discourse through reports of agencies like the United Nations Population Fund. Earlier this year, they coauthored a report promoting the term with the abortion provider MSI Reproductive Choices. Their proposed definition includes “laws, policies, institutional practices and social and gender norms that restrict choice, deny consent or impose reproductive outcomes” – clearly taking aim at pro-life measures.

Not everyone who favors the new category does so for pro-abortion reasons. Some proponents of surrogacy bans have argued that the practice is a form of “reproductive violence,” including the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.  However, for pro-life advocates, the potential harms of this tactic outweigh the benefits.  Surrogacy, as well as forced abortion and other harmful acts, can be condemned individually without creating a new category.

Human rights or wrongs?

This is particularly true when the novel category has already been purpose-built by the international abortion lobby to describe those who would restrict abortion as “violent.”  Additionally, the new term further distorts the definition of violence beyond acts perpetrated by individuals against other individuals and including things like pro-life laws, policies, and even social norms.

Proponents of “reproductive violence” terminology are already well on their way to inserting it into a forthcoming treaty on crimes against humanity, still under negotiation.  They also seek to broaden the definition of “forced pregnancy” beyond the narrow one that was agreed to in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which explicitly exempted it from including pro-life laws.  This was a loss for the abortion lobby, which proposed a definition of “enforced pregnancy” that targeted abortion restrictions.

In the near future, the governments in support of this new language, chiefly Western European, will undoubtedly try to build on their success in Geneva and bring this terminology to the UN General Assembly in New York this fall.  It remains to be seen if their efforts can be stopped.

by Rebecca Oas, Ph. D. at C-Fam. The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

pro-lifers

Counter-protestors try to attack pro-lifers in Germany

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About 200 counter-protesters in Germany tried to attack 20 young Christian pro-lifers as they were leaving a peaceful prayer gathering against abortion on Aug. 15, a rights group reported.

From Christian Daily

In Göttingen, Germany, 12 police officers were injured when the counter-protestors tried to break through a police line to attack volunteers from the “SOS Life” campaign and “Sacred Heart Apostolate” who had finished their “Public Rosary Prayer Against Abortion,” according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe).

“Police prevented the violent protesters, reportedly from the far-left, from reaching the participants, but 12 officers were injured during the intervention,” OIDAC Europe reported, adding that the officers suffered injuries from irritant spray and that ambulances responded to the scene.

Officers later escorted the pro-lifers from the area for their safety.

The Christians held a peaceful gathering with speeches and drum beating until 200 pro-abortion counter protesters formed a crowd, and tensions escalated after the prayer gathering ended, according to police.

“Counter-protesters attempted to violently break through a police line separating the groups, prompting police to intervene by securing entrances, exits, and stairwells so the gathering Christians could retreat,” OIDAC Europe said.

The Christian Forum described the counter-protesters as “left-wing extremists.” According to OIDAC Europe, their disruption left participants “shaken by the irrational hatred,” forcing them to rely on police protection to leave the area.

Republished from Christian Daily under a Creative Commons license. Christian Daily International provides biblical, factual and personal news, stories and perspectives from every region, focusing on religious freedom, integrated gospel and other issues that are relevant to the global Church today.

assisted dying

Safeguards in proposed Northern Territory Assisted Dying bill being gutted

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As Darwin debates a new assisted dying law – the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill – the very protections written into it are already targeted by the people who campaigned for the law.

by RIGHT TO LIFE and Haylea Kennedy

The bill being debated

Right now, in Darwin, the Northern Territory Parliament is debating a bill that would make the Northern Territory the last jurisdiction in Australia to legalise assisted dying. It’s expected to pass this week on a conscience vote.

But here’s what should worry you: the “safeguards” being built into this bill are already being targeted for removal, before it’s even law.

Strip away the acronyms and here’s what the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill actually does:

  • It legalises assisted dying in the NT for the first time since it was overturned by Canberra in 1997.
  • It limits eligibility to people with a prognosis of 12 months or less to live.
  • The patient can ask their doctor about assisted dying as an option at any time; a doctor cannot be the one to raise it first.

That third point is the one being fought over hardest this week. In the media, it’s almost always called a “gag clause.” As usual, language is being used to imply something quite different from what’s actually happening — and how often are we seeing that play out in Australia lately?

What a “gag clause” really is

“Gag” implies censorship — someone being silenced against his will. That’s not what this provision does. The patient can ask his doctor about assisted dying as an option at any time, and the doctor can answer honestly. What the clause does is keep the doctor from being the one to introduce death as a treatment option to a patient who hasn’t asked for it.

We need to call it what it is: a safeguard against a serious power imbalance.

A dying patient is frightened, exhausted, often in pain, and trained to trust his doctor’s judgement above almost anyone else’s.

If a doctor can raise assisted suicide unprompted, that judgement carries enormous weight — even when it isn’t meant as pressure, a patient can hear “have you thought about ending things” from their doctor as something close to a recommendation. The clause exists to make sure the idea comes from the patient, not from the person holding authority over his care.

Calling it a “gag” reframes a protection for patients as a restriction on doctors. That’s the language fight to watch, and it’s exactly the provision now being targeted for removal.

Push to widen assisted dying already underway

Andrew Denton, founder of the advocacy group Go Gentle Australia, has publicly welcomed this bill. But in the same breath, he and others — including the NT branch of the Australian Medical Association and the Labor opposition — are already pushing to strip out the very safeguards it contains: both the 12-month prognosis limit and the rule stopping doctors from raising assisted dying unprompted.

Think about what that means. The bill hasn’t even been passed yet, and the people who campaigned for this law are already campaigning to widen it. That’s not a slippery slope hypothetical, it’s happening in the same parliamentary sitting.

If the prognosis limit goes, who is “terminal” becomes far less clear. If doctors can raise assisted suicide unprompted, a sick, frightened, or depressed patient could hear it offered to him before they’ve asked, from the person he trusts most for medical guidance.

If you live in the Northern Territory and disagree with this bill, or you’re worried about how quickly its safeguards are being targeted, contact your local MLA this week, before the vote. (See details below)

This article first appeared at Right to Life and is reproduced here by permission. Right to Life is an action group dedicated to defending the inalienable human right to life from conception to natural death. Its work seeks to influence both culture and law in Australia, helping build a society where every human life is protected and valued.

Sources:

Contact your MLA (NT residents only):

  1. Find your electorate and MLA at the NT Legislative Assembly website (nt.gov.au / parliament.nt.gov.au).
  2. Email them directly — a short, personal message matters more than a form letter.
  3. Ask them to vote against the bill, or at minimum to reject amendments that remove the 12-month prognosis rule and the doctor gag clause.

📩 Download the letter template

📋 Find your MLA