The abolition of doctor and patients’ rights since 2008

Published on August 12, 2026August 15, 2026 by EF Team1 Comment

Dr. Mark Hobart revisits the erosion of conscience rights for doctors and their patients as it has unfolded across Australia in recent decades. This post is based on recent talks and articles from Dr. Hobart.

In this piece I wish to explain and describe the progression of government control over medical practitioners that has occurred over the last 20 years, starting with:

the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Act in 2008
the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act in 2010 (particularly with regards to the illegality of being able to discriminate according to gender identity and sex which is essential in the practice of medicine to avoid life-threatening disasters
the “no jab no pay/play” vaccination of children in 2016,
the legalisation of euthanasia in Victoria in 2017,
the Covid injection mandates in 2021,
and lastly the removal of conscientious objection to euthanasia by doctors in the amendments to the Victorian VAD law in December 2025.

I contend that these are all examples of conscription of medical services by the state governments and, because they must be paid for by Medicare which is an Australian government agency, are in contravention of section 51xxiii(A) of the Australian Constitution, which prohibits “any form” of conscription of medical services.

The term “services” in this context means the private contract between the doctor and the patient for a medical service to occur, for which you need both parties, and for the contract to be valid you need informed consent and no coercion of either party.

Abortion

In October 2008, Victoria passed the Abortion Law Reform Act¹ which stated that the doctors
must refer to a “non-objecting practitioner” when a patient presented to them requesting an
abortion if the doctor had a conscientious objection to the abortion. The doctor was not to
proceed with any further discussion or advice regarding the abortion. This law spread to all
the other states over the next few years.

In late November 2011 a woman presented to me who was 19 ½ weeks pregnant, accompanied by her husband. They requested an abortion because the baby was a girl and they did not want a girl because they already had one. I refused to refer her, explaining that it was dangerous for her health, and eventually I had to explain to her that it was also against my religious beliefs, when she replied that she was not concerned about the health risks.

On 17 May 2013, the medical board commenced an own motion investigation into my actions because I had failed to refer to a non-objecting practitioner and demonstrated a disregard for patient rights. On 30 January 2014, I was cautioned because I had stated in the media that I knowingly acted in contravention of section 8 of the abortion laws reform act, that is the section which prohibits conscientious objection.

Doctors unable to discriminate regarding gender or sex

According to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act 2010², attributes protected by law are:

age, race, and disability
gender identity, sex, and sexual orientation
marital, parental, or carer status
religion, political belief, and industrial activity

Of course it is necessary for doctors to discriminate on the basis of gender and sex and do so with every patient; not to do so would be very dangerous because men and women are anatomically and genetically different. However, this legislation has permitted hormonal and gross surgical mutilation, leading in many cases to misery and death.³

In July 2015, I was reported to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission by a patient whom I had not seen previously, because I did not prescribe female hormones as the patient requested. The patient appeared male, and they said they were undergoing treatment to transition into a woman, and they said they were “legally a woman”.

Their usual doctor was not available at the time. It was a new patient. The patient had located me using the internet. I refused to prescribe the medication and explained to the patient that in my opinion it is dangerous to prescribe for a genetic male female hormones.

The complaint was looked at by the Human Rights Commission and conciliation of this complaint was attempted which was unsuccessful. The commission decided to close the matter pursuant to section 115 of the act. They said that conciliation of this complaint had been attempted but was unsuccessful, and that they had decided to close the matter pursuant to section 115(2)(a) of the Equal Opportunity Act which directs to 116(e):

“having regard to all the circumstances, the Commission considers it is not appropriate to provide or to continue to provide dispute resolution.”

So I think I dodged a bullet there!

Other doctors have not been so lucky: for example, Dr Jillian Spencer, the psychiatrist who lost her job at the Brisbane Children’s Hospital for three years because she didn’t follow the policy directions of the hospital with regards to puberty blockers in children. Recently, she has won her case against the hospital, and hopefully she’ll be reinstated.

No jab, no pay/play

In 2016, the Victorian government brought in “no jab, no play” laws which meant parents were required to have their children vaccinated with the recommended childhood vaccines or they would be penalised by withholding of the tax rebate, which could amount to up to $800 per fortnight, so that they could not afford to put their children into childcare or kindergarten.

Wealthy parents could afford to do this, but families where both parents had to work to pay the mortgage and put food on their table could not. I think most reasonable people would define this as coercion.

There is no avenue for the parents to refuse these vaccinations for the children because they are worried about their safety or adverse effects on the health of their child or the fact that some of these vaccines are manufactured from aborted foetal tissue.

Any doctor who advises against these vaccinations is highly likely to be suspended from practice and factor home. Doctors who advised against the vaccinations are highly likely to be suspended from practice and face cancellation of their licence. Dr John Piesse was suspended in 2017 for this and is still suspended.

Euthanasia

In 2017, Victoria legalised euthanasia⁴, calling it “voluntary assisted dying.” In most cases, this involved a doctor giving the patient a bottle of a very strong sedative, phenobarbital, which could be drunk later at a time of the patients choosing and which would, in most cases cause the patient’s death.

It is not called voluntary assisted suicide, possibly because assisted suicide is still a crime in Victoria punishable by five years imprisonment. Although suicide is not illegal, assisting or encouraging another person to commit suicide remains a criminal offence in Victoria.

Section 6B(2) of the Crimes Act 1958⁵ makes it an indictable offence to:

incite another person to commit suicide if the other person does so or attempts to do so.
aid or abet another person to commit suicide if the other person does so or attempts to do so.
be a party to a suicide pact.

The maximum penalty for these offences is five years’ imprisonment. As stated previously, the Victorian government amended the euthanasia law in December 2025, making conscientious objection to euthanasia illegal and stating that the doctor “must” give the patient information regarding euthanasia if the patient presents enquiring about euthanasia:

Conscientious objection of registered health practitioners.

(1) In section 7 (a) of the Principal Act, for “to” substitute “subject to subsection (2), to”.
(2) At the end of section 7 of the Principal Act insert—
”If a registered health practitioner who has a conscientious objection to voluntary assisted dying refuses to provide information about voluntary assisted dying to a person requesting information about or access to voluntary assisted dying, the practitioner must—
(a) advise the person that another registered health practitioner or a health service provider may be able to assist the person in relation to information about or access to voluntary assisted dying; and
(b) give the person the information approved by the Secretary.”⁶

Now we have Voluntary Assisted Dying, which should be called voluntary assisted suicide, but because assisted suicide is a crime listed in the crime act with a penalty of five years in jail it can’t be called that. It really can’t be called voluntary assisted death either because it’s up to the patient to take the medication which is supposed to kill them (usually phenobarbital which sometimes fails to kill the patient) at their own discretion so the the doctor doesn’t need to wait and make sure that the patient is dead.

Also, the doctor writing the death certificate must not write that the patient has died from the ingestion of the lethal dose of medication but write the terminal condition leading to the patient feeling that life is not worth living any more: for example, cancer, heart failure, multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease (which Neil Daniher, a prominent Ausgralian footballer, had been suffering from for many years).

It is impossible to give an accurate estimation of how long these people will be expected to survive with any of these conditions. The legislation at present states that death is to be expected within 12 months.

According to this legislation, if a patient comes to you as a doctor requesting “assisted dying” and wants information as to how to do it, (i.e. they want to know how to kill themselves) instead of asking them why, and whether you feel it is a genuine possibility they would do this, and instead of calling the CAT team or the police surgeon to stop them, or certifying them yourself (as you could formerly do), you must give the advice on how to kill themselves including information approved by the government secretary.

I hope she’s a good secretary.

Imagine a patient coming to see a doctor requesting advice regarding euthanasia, and instead of the doctor asking them why they want to die and arranging urgent psychiatric evaluation, he or she must give them advice on how to do it. It really is beyond belief but here we are.

It is needless to say that if doctors criticise this legislation, they are putting themselves at risk of suspension in the same way as I was cautioned when I criticised the abortion legislation in 2013. Indeed, this happened to me.

On 26 February 2020 I was reported to the Health Complaints Commissioner by Dr Cameron McLaren, an oncologist at Peter McCallum hospital who promoted euthanasia and facilitated euthanasia for his patients and was featured prominently in “The Age” and “The Australian” newspapers on December 26 2019 and February 21 2020 respectively.

He also wrote an article in the “Australian Doctor” magazine on February 26 2020 on which doctors were invited to comment. He was asked “What are the reasons behind the patients coming to you?” He replied,

“for the vast majority, it is not due to the physical suffering they face. Dealing with pain, with physical suffering, is something that palliative care does manage exceptionally well… They might be very comfortable, even peaceful, but through voluntary assisted dying we can provide closure in ways that assist the grieving process for the patient and the family. It’s an existential problem – not just about pain management.”

I made a comment simply stating that Adolf Hitler suspended his euthanasia program on August 18, 1941 after public protests, which I quoted from the “History Channel.” The complaint was forwarded to AHPRA but no further action was taken.

COVID mandates

From the AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) position statement on COVID-19 vaccination:

“Any promotion of anti-vaccination statements or health advice which contradicts the best available scientific evidence or seeks to actively undermine the national immunisation campaign (including via social media) is not supported by National Boards and may be in breach of the codes of conduct and subject to investigation and possible regulatory action.” ⁷

In November 2021, I was suspended from medical practice by the medical board, being charged with professional misconduct. The main reason was that I had issued temporary COVID injection exemptions to my patients because I could not comply with the position statement.

By that time, it was widely known that the COVID injections caused death from myocarditis and pericarditis, and this was reported in the mainstream medical literature. It was also widely known that the vaccines did not prevent transmission of the virus, and that they caused myocarditis. Indeed, Dr Nick Coatsworth, Commonwealth deputy chief medical officer at the time of COVID, in an interview on “A Current Affair” in March 2025 has since admitted this and said that the covid mandates were “unethical”. (see 7.20 – 8.10)

This was also published in a poster by the NSW ambulance authority in August 2021. (see below).

In November 2021 I was suspended by AHPRA because I gave temporary medical certificates usually of three months duration to my patients who were being forced to have the COVID injection otherwise they would lose their jobs and or have an injection which was dangerous to their health and or also conflict with their religious beliefs because the injections were made from aborted human foetal parts.

When I had the opportunity to ask, about 50% of them had suicidal ideation about this, so I had no hesitation in giving them a certificate saying that they should not have the injection. I am still suspended now almost five years later waiting for the decision of my last trial which finished on the 16 June. The medical board is attempting to prove that I am guilty of professional misconduct and a danger to the Australian public.

I am one of four doctors who have been suspended for this in Victoria because we all stood up for this violation of one of the most basic of human rights the right to be fully informed of your medical treatment and the right to refuse this treatment if you don’t want it.

Dr Luke McLindon, Catholic, a specialist obstetrician and gynaecologist specialising in fertility treatment at the Catholic Mater Hospital in Brisbane, in an affidavit to the Supreme court QLD found that 73% of his patients that were vaccinated within 6 weeks of conception against COVID had miscarriages compared with 13% of the patients that had not been vaccinated immediately prior to or just after conception. He was sacked by the hospital in June 2022 and has been unable to work in medicine since. He told me that the Mater hospital was the only public Catholic hospital in Australia, offering tubal surgery restore fertility; these are no longer offered and patients are now told “there’s only IVF”, as cost is a significant barrier.

Several other doctors throughout Australia have been suspended for comments they made about COVID in social media or in the mainstream media, or they were sacked from their jobs because they refused to have the COVID injections.

Implications for Catholic doctors

These laws are contrary to fundamental Catholic teaching regarding the right to life, and to live according to the truths of the Catholic faith. Even if you are not Catholic, these laws are against the natural law. The Hippocratic oath from 500 BC contained fundamentals precepts: first do not harm, do not prescribe or administer a poison, do not procure an abortion and there must be confidentiality between the physician and patient; the term “patient” derives from the Latin patientem: “suffering”.

Catholic doctors and doctors who follow the natural law cannot assist patients to kill themselves. We should not stand by and not give a good counter argument to a woman who wants to abort their child and certainly not be complicit in abortion. We should not comply with giving a medical treatment the patient is forced into accepting because they believe it is dangerous or against their beliefs, or that we think may be dangerous for them and but recommended it to the patient because the government says it is so. On the other hand if we do not do these doctors are not able to practice medicine in our society.

What can be done?

As I said at the outset I contend these are all examples of conscription of medical services by the state governments and, because they must be paid for by Medicare, which is an Australian government agency, is in contravention to section 51xxiii(A) of the Australian continent Constitution, which prohibits “any form” of conscription of medical services.

This amendment to the Constitution was brought in by the Robert Menzies in 1946, in the context of the then recent Nuremberg medical trials which punished doctors who performed forced experimental medical treatment.

Although it may be sometime before we can use the Constitution to rectify the situation logically, it should be possible if there is sufficient public opinion to push things towards this end.

The main purpose of my talk is to raise public awareness of the current state of affairs so that people can form an understanding of how we got to the situation, which is completely untenable and unacceptable, and then take steps to change it.

Dr Mark Hobart, MBBS.
30 July 2026

Dr. Mark Hobart is an Australian GP in the state of Victoria, who was unjustly targeted for his stance against government overreach during the COVID pandemic. When it became known that he was writing exemptions from the mandatory, experimental mRNA vaccines, Dr. Hobart’s clinic, located in the Melbourne western suburb of Sunshine, was raided by the authorities and he subsequently was suspended from practising medicine.

ENDNOTES

GenderSpeak: weaponizing gender against sex

Published on July 29, 2026August 1, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

When and why did the word “gender” displace the word “sex?” “Gender” refers to a person’s socially constructed identity of being male, female, or some other category, while “sex” refers to physical characteristics of male or female, such as chromosomes. Gender is a matter of a person’s self-perception; sex is a circumstance of birth.

by Wendy McElroy at the Brownstone Institute

When did sex get pushed to the curb by gender? In his book The Man Who Invented Gender, Terry Goldie claims that the sexologist John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical Center (Baltimore) first used the word “gender” in its modern meaning in 1955. Money pioneered the word to describe his famous John/Joan experiment that was conducted on a young boy named Bruce who’d lost his penis in an accident. To ‘prove’ Money’s theory that sexual identity was learned and not biological, Bruce’s parents raised him as a girl, complete with a surgically constructed vagina. The experiment failed. Bruce ultimately insisted on living as male, but he did not recover from the ordeal Money imposed on him, which he called torture. Bruce committed suicide in his 30s.

By then, however, Money had declared for decades that John/Joan was a complete success; discussions of “gender identity” abounded in ‘60s medical journals and academia. By the ‘70s and ‘80s, feminists brought the term to the streets, with “gender” describing a person’s self-defined sociocultural identity and “sex” meaning biology. Then, the word wedged its way into government. In 1993, for instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) replaced “sex” with “gender” in its literature. In 2011, “sex” returned to the FDA to mean biology while “gender” meant “a person’s self-representation.” The term went global. Also in 1993, the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW) vaguely defined this aggression as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women.”

Genderspeak became the language of elites, social justice activists, and the government, while average people still spoke of “sex”. But more than elitism lies behind the difference in words. By swapping in their own terms, elitists—especially professional feminists—grabbed the narrative on sexuality and politicized it to dismiss anyone who disagrees. Since the average male generally still uses biology to define his sexuality, he is an opponent; the average male is a living, breathing disagreement.

The ideology of gender faces an obstacle, however. If people can argue effectively against gender, then the narrative is difficult to manage. Those who dissent must be intimidated into silence or otherwise marginalized. The main strategy is to condemn dissenters as hate-filled. If some people cannot be silenced, then their words or opinions can become hate crimes punishable by law. George Orwell’s novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four is about a dystopian society of social control, which is maintained largely through restricting language. Since words are the foundation of thought, this means people cannot form thoughts, let alone articulate them. The villain of Nineteen-Eighty-Four proclaims, “The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.” He concludes, “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”

Men’s health researcher James L. Nuzzo highlights an attempt to perfect the language. “In recent years, use of the phrase “gender-based violence” (or “gendered violence”) in the titles and abstracts of papers indexed in PubMed has increased noticeably. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase “gender-based violence” (or “gendered violence”) appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,784 articles indexed in PubMed.” [Chart available here.]

A typical definition of gender-related violence or gendered violence is “any form of physical or non-physical violence or abuse against a person or group of people because of biased or harmful beliefs about gender. It can include things that happen online and that use digital technology.” This definition is typical because it includes non-physical violence (discrimination) and abuse (words) that are motivated by non-specific ”biased or harmful beliefs about gender.” Nineteen-Eighty-Four would refer to such non-physical violence as “crimethink,” with thought itself being an assault.

Just as “sex” is displaced by “gender,” well-researched and comparatively clear terms such as “domestic violence” are displaced by less-defined ones such as “gender-related violence.” This achieves several goals. For one thing, the confusing definition becomes elastic. Almost any word or act can be stretched to qualify as “gender-related violence,” especially since virtually everything in the politicized feminist universe is gender-related.

But the most important purpose of swapping in the word “gender” is to introduce a subtle but powerful bias that controls the narrative; it creates Genderspeak.

The concept of gender comes directly from the twin ideologies of Social Constructionism and Gender Feminism. Social Constructionism tells us that male and female are learned forms of behavior (gender) rather than biology (sex).

To this, Gender Feminism adds an ideological layer. Male and female are patriarchal learned behaviors; they are social concepts derived from white male capitalistic culture. Thus, approaching violence in a correctly gendered way means rejecting white male capitalism—the economic system that is said to vest power and wealth in the hands of white men at the expense of everyone else. To embrace gender is to reject white male culture and capitalism, with ‘the free market’ usually viewed as a synonym.

Genderspeak is similar to Orwell’s Newspeak. Both are ambiguous speech that embeds ideology into the language so that every word perpetuates correcthink—officially approved thought. In Orwell’s dystopian world, Newspeak serves the ideological goals of Ingsoc – an abbreviation for English Socialism. It gradually replaces Oldspeak and becomes pivotal in defining politics and culture. Genderspeak has the same ideological goal. If you embed gender ideology into words, then you control how people think and how culture develops.

The process goes something like this:

Embed new ideologically-driven language when possible. For example, substitute the term “gendered violence” for the more research-driven term “domestic violence.”

Eliminate “wrong” words. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, salvageable literature was rewritten in Newspeak so that authors either disappeared or were reinterpreted to serve Ingsoc. Today, school texts are commonly reviewed to eliminate wrong words. ‘Improper’ ones like “Founding Fathers” are changed to proper ones like “Framers.”

Change the meaning of words. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the word “free” is used only in the simple form of ‘my sweater is free of lint.’ The concept of freedom does not exist. The current usage of “diversity” in Genderspeak is similar. It is a diversity that tolerates no deviation. Its conclusions are or can be mandated by law.

Introduce doublethink. Doublethink is when someone accepts two contradictory ideas as being true. A modern example is students who attend “sensitivity training,” which includes publicly ridiculing and humiliating whites and males because of their race and sex. This is sensitivity?

Last of all, decry anyone who objects as a hater and oppressor; punish them.

Precise wording provides the incredible benefit of letting people know what they are talking about. It is time to reclaim the richness of precise English…verb by verb, adjective by adjective. Words should not be propaganda that blocks thought; disagreement is no crime. And sex is reality, while gender is not. The concept and the word “gender” should be abandoned by people who respect either accuracy or truth.

Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist feminist and voluntaryist writer. McElroy is the editor of the website ifeminists.net. This article first appeared at Brownstone Institute and is reproduced here under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The Mater must not become the next Calvary

Calvary Hospital first, is the Mater Brisbane next?

Published on August 20, 2025August 22, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Religious freedom in healthcare must be preserved so that Catholic hospitals like the Mater in Queensland do not follow the same fate as Calvary in Canberra: forced government takeover.

Today’s ABC article criticising Brisbane’s Mater Hospital for refusing to perform abortions is a deeply troubling example of the growing hostility toward faith-based institutions in Australia.¹ It paints a tragic personal story, but leverages it to undermine the very foundation of religious freedom in our healthcare system.

While we acknowledge the heartbreak and grief experienced by families facing complex prenatal diagnosis, the answer is not to force an institution to participate in abortions against their conscience. True compassion and freedom allows space for faith-based care.

Let’s be clear, the Mater has every right to uphold its Catholic values, values which are transparently communicated and long-standing. These values affirm the dignity of every human life, even in the most difficult of circumstances.² This is not a failure of care, but a demonstration of ethical values. To demand that a Catholic hospital abandon its convictions to appease public pressure is nothing short of an assault on religious freedom.

A plural system means choice for everyone

The suggestion that the Mater is failing Queenslanders because it doesn’t provide abortion services is misleading and unjust. Abortion is already accessible across Queensland, especially in the metro areas like Brisbane, with numerous clinics like Children by Choice and Marie Stopes International offering it on request up to 20 or 22 weeks.³ There is no lack of access. What is at stake here is not availability, but ideological conformity.

We don’t expect every hospital or organisation to offer every service. For example, we certainly don’t expect Islamic schools or organisations to violate their values to align with mainstream opinion. The Islamic School of Brisbane for instance, is rightly respected for operating in accordance with its religious convictions. Despite maintaining religious beliefs, an Islamic school does not receive the same level of backlash that a Christian one does. So why are Catholic or Christian institutions increasingly singled out for attack? We saw this when the Anti-Discrimination Bill was being discussed.⁴ Christians and Islam organisations both stood against the bill, yet they did not receive the same level of criticism.

We saw this pattern recently in the vilification of Citipointe Christian College, which was targeted for simply upholding its faith-based enrolment policy.⁵ We also have seen this happen with Calvary Public Hospital in Canberra which was forcibly acquired by the ACT Government in 2023, effectively stripping the Catholic Church of its hospital due to its refusal to offer abortion and euthanasia.⁶ That takeover was a shock to the nation and sent a clear message that Catholic and Christian based organisations need to conform or face being removed.

Public funding does not equal ideological control

Critics argue that Mater’s receipt of public funding should force it to provide abortion service. One anonymous obstetrician quoted in the article went so far as to say:

“I can’t for the life of me understand how the church runs the major women’s health service on the south side of Brisbane, under their rules, paid for by the taxpayer.” ⁷

This line of logic is fundamentally flawed, and what this doctor fails to acknowledge is that this goes both ways.

The taxpayer also pays for abortion providers. Children by Choice, a vocal abortion group and provider, received over $8 million in taxpayer funding last year alone (to be allocated across 4 years).⁸ MSI Australia, one of the largest abortion providers in the country, has also received substantial government funding.⁹

Many Australians, particularly those of faith or with pro-life convictions, strongly disagree with the ethos and practices of these organisations – yet our tax dollars fund them. That is the nature of a pluralistic society: funding does not equal ideological endorsement.

To demand that the Mater change its deeply held Catholic beliefs because it receives government support is hypocritical and discriminatory. Living in a diverse democratic country means that organisations have the right to uphold values, even with public funding, as we see across every type of service.

A dangerous precedent for religious freedom

If faith-based institutions like the Mater are forced to abandon their convictions in order to keep operating, we will have crossed a very dangerous threshold. The erosion of religious liberty in healthcare is not just a threat to the Church, it’s a threat to every Australian who values freedom of conscience, belief, and association.

There is an undeniable pattern forming: attacks on Christian and Catholic institutions are increasing, while other religious organisations are left undisturbed. Citipointe Christian College was subjected to a national smear campaign for upholding its faith-based standards.¹⁰ Calvary hospital in Canberra was forcibly taken over.¹¹ But imagine the outrage if the same tactics were used against any other religious organisation. As a society we have decided that we respect the right of, for example, Islamic institutions to operate in line with their religious beliefs, as we should. So why isn’t that same respect being afforded to Christian and Catholic institutions?

We call on the Queensland Government and the public to recognise what is really happening here – this is not about access to healthcare. It’s about coercion. It’s about forcing faith-based providers to violate their conscience or be shamed into silence.

Cherish Life will always stand for the rights of any faith-based institution to provide their care and service without being coerced into compromising their values. We are blessed to live in a country that affords us freedom of religion, however, the danger is that this freedom is always vulnerable to ideologies that oppose it.

By Hannah Newton. Republished from Cherish Life with permission. Cherish Life Queensland was founded in 1970 (as Right to Life Queensland), to advocate for the right to life from conception until natural death and remains one of the largest pro-life organisations in Australia.

Footnotes

ABC News, Emma Pollard, “Mater Hospital’s religious abortion ban left couple feeling ‘abandoned’” Accessed 23 July 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-23/mater-hospital-religious-abortion-ban-couple-feeling-abandoned/105532550 ↩︎
Mater Hospital, ‘Mission, Vision and Values’. Accessed 23 July 2025 https://www.mater.org.au/about-us/who-we-are/mission-vision-values ↩︎
Children by Choice, ‘Abortion & Contraception Services’. Accessed 23 July 2025. https://findaservice.childrenbychoice.org.au/#5,-17.581194026506008,146.16210937500003; MSI Australia, ‘Abortion Services’. Accessed 23 July 2025. https://www.msiaustralia.org.au/abortion-services/ ↩︎
ABC News, Kenji Sato. ‘Islamic College of Brisbane and Queensland Churches Together oppose Anti-Discrimination Bill 2024’. Accessed 23 July 2025.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-08/christians-and-muslims-object-to-anti-discrimination-bill ↩︎
The Guardian, Ben Smee. ‘Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College withdraws anti-gay contract but defends ‘statement of faith’. Accessed 23 July 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/03/brisbanes-citipointe-christian-college-withdraws-anti-gay-contract-but-defends-statement-of-faith ↩︎
ABC, Joanna Howe, ‘The ACT’s takeover of Calvary Hospital overrides conscientious objection and threatens religious freedom’. Accessed 23 July 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/act-takeover-of-calvary-hospital-overrides-freedom-of-conscience/102356586 ↩︎
ABC News, Emma Pollard, “Mater Hospital’s religious abortion ban left couple feeling ‘abandoned’” Accessed 23 July 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-23/mater-hospital-religious-abortion-ban-couple-feeling-abandoned/105532550 ↩︎
Children by Choice. ‘Funding Boost for Children by Choice’s Crucial Termination of Pregnancy Support Services’. Accessed 23 July 2025. https://www.childrenbychoice.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Media-Release-Funding-Boost.pdf ↩︎
MSI Annual Report 2023. Accessed 23 July 2025. https://msichoices.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Annual-Report-2023_Web-Version_02.pdf ↩︎
The Guardian, Ben Smee. ‘Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College withdraws anti-gay contract but defends ‘statement of faith’. Accessed 23 July 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/03/brisbanes-citipointe-christian-college-withdraws-anti-gay-contract-but-defends-statement-of-faith ↩︎
ABC, Joanna Howe, ‘The ACT’s takeover of Calvary Hospital overrides conscientious objection and threatens religious freedom’. Accessed 23 July 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/act-takeover-of-calvary-hospital-overrides-freedom-of-conscience/102356586 ↩︎

The Hispanic Catholic vote matters

Published on July 4, 2025July 4, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

A close look at voting patterns among religious groups reveals that capturing the Hispanic Catholic vote is crucial for any party wanting to gain power in the United States.

Donald Trump’s political comeback in winning the 2024 election was historic. Catholic voters,
especially whites and Hispanic men, were critical to winning President Trump’s reelection to the White
House as the first president since Grover Cleveland to win a second non-consecutive term.

President Trump achieved a decisive victory over his Democratic Party opponent, winning 3 million more votes in 2024 than in 2020, for a total of about 77 million in 2024. More than 156 million Americans voted, resulting in the second highest turnout in modern American history. (The 2020 election had the highest turnout.)

A closer look at the Catholic vote allows for greater understanding of Trump’s 2024 victory, prospects for the Trump agenda, and future elections.

President Trump’s election signalled the possibility of a party realignment. A clear majority of Catholic voters, as well as young men and non-negligible percentages of Muslim, Asian and black voters, decided that Trump was a better choice than his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.¹ Importantly, Trump’s reported 45 percent share
of the Hispanic vote was unprecedented for a Republican and made a difference in swing states.

The Trump campaign targeted men without a college education, who were concerned about the economy and the border. His outreach strategy included appearances on male-driven podcasts and at blue-collar venues. Trump’s campaign suggested in various ways that Catholic values mattered to him. He selected the Catholic convert and recently elected Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. Trump’s campaign focused on Harris’s poor record on religious freedom and her support of a right of convicted criminals in prison who identified as transgender to have taxpayer-funded sex-change surgery.

The Trump campaign pounced on Harris’s endorsement of transsexual surgery for prisoners. The campaign flooded the airwaves and social media with a brilliantly effective ad that left the Harris campaign reeling. In September, late in the race, the Trump campaign spent $2.3 million to run a 30-second television spot in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. In October, as Election Day approached, the campaign spent another $61 million on advertising, a third of it going to attack Harris’s stance on transgender rights. The spot appeared more than 600,000 times on social media aimed at the younger male audience. There were several variations.

Shrewd Campaign Advertising

Trump’s television spot had an impact reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson’s famous “daisy ad” against his 1964 presidential opponent Barry Goldwater, which featured a young girl counting daisy petals right before a nuclear explosion.

One version of Trump’s ad begins with Harris explaining, in a 2019 interview with the director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, that she supported taxpayer-funded gender surgery for prisoners. The ad then turns to an edited version of Harris standing next to former Energy Department official Sam Brinton, who is wearing a bright red dress and lipstick. (Brinton was fired from his government position for stealing women’s luggage and their contents from airport baggage conveyors.) Next come photos of Harris side by side with the transgender Admiral Rachel Levine, head of the U.S. Public Health Service, and Harris with drag performer Pattie Gonia.

The spot ends with a photo of Trump with a group of me wearing hard hats. The voice-over declares, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The spot shifted attention away from the issue of “reproductive rights,” which Harris had made a central part of her campaign. Surveys showed that Catholics were divided on the abortion issue, but were more decided on the transgender issue, especially on taxpayer funds for surgeries.

Harris did not help herself with Catholic voters when she refused to consider religious exemptions for medical personnel asked to perform abortions. Then, she declined to personally attend the Al Smith Dinner hosted by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Instead, she sent a message to the dinner via video. This was followed by her unwillingness to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which has a huge and heavily male audience.

Trump’s campaign strategy paid off. Exit polls showed that he comfortably carried the Catholic vote, which had been almost evenly split with Biden in 2020. Catholic voters went for Trump in large majorities in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida. Trump’s surprising 45 percent share of the Hispanic vote, up some 9 points from 2020, surely included many Catholics. About 43 percent of U.S. Hispanics identify as Catholic.

Historic Shifts in Voting

The shifts of Catholic and Hispanic votes proved crucial to Trump’s 2024 victory. In 2020, Biden was probably helped because he proclaimed his Catholic identity, even while rejecting the religious duty of Catholic politicians to oppose abortion and purported sex changes.

After seeing the 2024 election results, Chris Kofinis, speaking for the lobby group Catholic Vote, observed that “Catholic voters played a decisive role in the historic victory of Donald Trump and JD Vance.” He added, “These numbers are shocking and could prove to be the largest margin among Catholics in a presidential race in decades. Catholics proved again to be a critical voting bloc that cannot be ignored.”

The shift among Catholic voters overall toward Trump may have been overstated in exit polls cited in earlier
coverage of the 2024 election, including the January 2025 Mindszenty Report. The Public Religion Research
Institute’s more recent survey data for Catholics overall—with 53 percent saying they voted for Trump—
is only 3 points higher than 2020 and 1 point higher than 2016. (Additional “verified voter” data available in the
spring is believed to be more accurate than exit polls.) Still, there is a clear trend of white Catholics strongly favouring Republican presidential candidates over the last three presidential elections. The Hispanic Catholic shift in 2024 was especially pronounced (roughly 12 points).

Trump gains among Hispanic Catholics came in border states, especially in counties on the southern border. Many of these counties are made up of working-class Hispanics who were won over by Trump’s populist message. For example, in Maverick County, Texas, voters turned Republican for the first time in 50 years. The county is 95 percent Hispanic and predominantly Catholic. The county is home to Eagle Pass, right across the Rio Grande, a major crossing point for migrants illegally entering the United States.

These migrants created an economic crisis for already financially strapped border towns. As Dylan Corbett, executive director of HOPE Border Institute, a Catholic group serving immigrants, commented, “We cannot underestimate the economy as a factor in shaping the outcome of the election.”5

The final election returns stunned the Harris campaign, which had expected a close vote. In fact, Harris reportedly went to bed confident she was going to win the election, although the early returns suggested that she might be in trouble.

To say she was in trouble is an understatement. She failed to gauge where most voters stood and struggled to respond effectively to the key issues Trump ran on—the economy and immigration. Trump made her a punching bag on border security, reminding voters time and again in rallies that Biden had appointed her “border czar.”
Not only was she weak on the issues; she appeared oblivious to the importance of the Catholic vote, which constitutes a fifth of the U.S. electorate.

How Religion Matters in Voting

Voters wear many hats: They are men and women, urban, suburban and rural, and vary in incomes, ages, education and marital status. Pollsters like to break these voters down by categories. “Religious” voters were divided along party lines in 2024.

For example, 6 in 10 Mormons supported Trump. Only a third supported Harris. The Mormon vote is especially important in Utah, but also matters in states such as Idaho, Nevada and Arizona, which have heavily Mormon populations.

Evangelical Christians, as expected, stuck with Trump (85 percent) as they did in 2016 and 2020. Harris won the Jewish and the non-religious votes overwhelmingly.

To put these numbers into perspective, the U.S. is still a significant majority Christian population (about 65 percent), with approximately 40 percent Protestant and 19 percent Roman Catholic. About 7 percent are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.²

The Muslim vote fell off precipitously for Harris. Biden secured nearly 70 percent of this vote in 2020, but in 2024 only 20 percent voted for Harris. Amazingly, Green Party candidate Jill Stein beat both Harris and Trump by winning 53 percent of the Muslim vote.7 Obviously this Muslim vote for Stein represented a protest vote against both major parties.

Challenges for Both Parties

Jewish voters remained strongly Democratic in 2024 (66-79 percent according to various exit polls). There was a very slight uptick in Jews voting Republican. For many Republicans, Jewish loyalty to the Democratic Party remains perplexing.

Likewise, most black voters remain loyal Democrats. Harris overwhelmingly carried the black vote, as was expected, but even in this population, she showed a decline. In 2020, Biden won 89 percent of the black vote. In 2024, black support for Harris dropped to 85 percent, with men accounting for most of the change.

The Catholic vote mattered in 2024 and will matter in future elections. Although Catholics have not voted as a bloc since 1960 (when they solidly backed the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy), younger Catholic men, especially those who attend Mass regularly, have become more Republican. Many Mass-attending Catholics see their country in decline as a result of Democratic leadership, with its support of unrestricted abortion and transgenderism and its attacks on Catholic organisations including the Knights of Columbus.

The Democrats’ failure to win the Catholic vote arguably cost them the White House in 2024. It is hard to see how Democrats are going to turn this around. It might help if they run a Catholic for president in 2028. At present, no one has emerged—Catholic or otherwise—to head the Democratic ticket in 2028. Over a quarter of the members of the U.S. Congress are Catholic, mostly Democrats. Maybe a Catholic Democrat in Congress will emerge as a presidential candidate.

Such a candidate will need to carefully thread the needle, much as Jimmy Carter did in 1976. A born-again Christian, Carter appealed to evangelical Protestants while winning the majority of Catholic voters. In 1980, Reagan swamped Carter with the Catholic vote—
outdistancing him by nearly 11 points.

Candidates matter, but so do issues. By making abortion, transgender rights, open borders, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), feminism and anti-family values the core of the party, the Democratic Party lost ground with many of its traditional constituencies in 2024.

Catholics are well represented in the leadership of the GOP—think JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis. Trump’s handling of the economy will probably decide the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election. But for now the GOP has a clear advantage with Catholic voters, swelled by an influx of Hispanic voters in 2024.

How to Solidify Hispanic Support

The recent Hispanic shift to voting Republican is precarious. Many young Hispanics who voted Republican in 2024 did so as independents. Furthermore, many Hispanic voters are what pollsters call “low-propensity voters,” who don’t pay close attention to politics. These voters are not fully aligned with the Republican Party and can turn Democrat with the right message and the right candidate. Democrats know this.

Yet the 2024 election showed the possibility for Republicans to expand their Hispanic vote. The key is winning the Hispanic Catholic vote, especially young male Hispanics. As Heidi Schlumpf noted in the National Catholic Reporter, “The shift among Hispanic Catholics was larger than that of white Catholics or Hispanics.” Harris still won the Hispanic Catholic vote, but her double-digit decline in this demographic group from Biden’s performance in 2020 caught many pundits by surprise.

So while white Catholics are slowly becoming a base for the Republican Party, Hispanic Catholics also show potential for growth with the GOP. The 2024 shift of the Hispanic vote to Republican was especially significant in border counties, which suggests that Trump’s call for border control appealed to these voters. The political science professor Ryan Burge believes that immigration played a larger role in growing the Hispanic Catholic vote than did abortion.

Other observers see the economy as critical in the Hispanic Catholic shift. Pollster Drew Deckman, for example, maintains, “The economy is the most important issue for most Americans, but disproportionately for Hispanics.”

Republican gains in this bloc were clearly evident, but a realignment has not occurred. The Hispanic vote is up for grabs.

Old Democratic strategies won’t work. Ruben Gallego, who won election to the U.S. Senate in 2024, presents a model for a successful Democratic campaign. Although his voting record in Congress, and previously in the Arizona legislature, was decidedly left-wing, Gallego presented himself as moderate, a family man, and strong on border control. He won handily in his campaign for the Senate.

If Republicans want to continue to make inroads into the Hispanic Catholic vote in the future, they need to stick with their message that GOP candidates represent their values and are committed to economic advancement of Hispanic communities. Melvin Soto, a Republican media strategist, made exactly this point when he told the press, “They [Hispanics] backed the candidate who supported our families. . . . More importantly they back the candidate who was fearful of God and did not tell them they were not welcome because of their faith.”

Such messaging won the majority of the Catholic vote in 2024. Such messaging, along with a prosperous economy, should enable further Republican gains in Hispanic Catholic vote in the future.

This article is published by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The original article is available from the foundation’s website: www.mindszenty.org. The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and readers are invited to forward copies to their local bishops, priests and pastors.

See Byron York’s Daily Memo, “How Trump led the GOP from 2012 despair to
2024 triumph,” Washington Examiner, June 2, 2025, drawing on a detailed new
analysis by Catalist, a progressive voting data analytics firm. ↩︎
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/party-identification-amongreligious-groups-and-religiously-unaffiliated-voters/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1411981/us-religious-identity-of-republicans-anddemocrats-2023/ ↩︎

Solzhenitsyn, Lysenkoism and the lies of the revolution

Published on November 5, 2024May 22, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) was the most important Soviet dissident, but his message was accessible to all. On the day before he was sent into exile in 1974, he published a short essay entitled “Live Not By Lies”. It only takes him a few pages to lay out the most effective strategy for resisting totalitarianism.

As Solzhenitsyn well knew, ordinary people often feel that they are too weak to make any difference in a corrupt world. When all the powers of government are arrayed in the service of oppression, the lone citizen truly seems powerless. If they speak up, they might miss out on a job, an education or social acceptance. So they remain silent — after all, what difference does a single voice make?

More than you might think, said Solzhenitsyn. For though the regime is powerful, its power does not rest on military might. Instead, it comes from lies.

Solzhenitsyn saw that though a revolution might rely on physical force, violence is not enough to maintain its power. As he put it:

“Violence ages swiftly, a few years pass — and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally — Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit — and this suffices as our fealty.”

The Revolution can only be continued if everyone lies. In the Soviet Union, lies often came in the form of Marxist slogans: Workers of the World, Unite! Even though common people had no interest in uniting with the workers of Algeria, the United States or Brazil, they shouted the slogans in order to stay safe. And when everyone moved in lockstep, the system seemed impenetrable. So much so that the Soviet authorities were able to force compliance with truly bizarre doctrines like Lysenkoism.

Lysenkoism was the political/scientific project of Trofim Lysenko, who probably killed more people than any scientist in human history. He did so by rejecting any scientific theories that conflicted with Marxist doctrine.

Lysenko was a biologist who denied the existence Trofim Lysenko probably killed more people than any scientist in human history. of genes. He did so because genes encode stable characteristics that are passed down from one generation of living things to the next. In his view, this contradicted the Marxist ideal of Revolution.

Marx believed that when capitalism died, socialism would produce a “new man”, ushering in a new age. Lysenko translated this idea into the field of biology, arguing that organisms are only shaped by their environment. For example, he thought that by manipulating the environmental conditions that seeds are exposed to, you could even grow orange trees in Siberia.

His ideas were so popular that Stalin empowered him to lead the “modernisation” of agriculture in the Ukraine, where forced collectivisation had already murdered millions of people. On Lysenko’s decree, farmers were ordered to plant seeds very close together. As he saw it, seeds from the same species wouldn’t compete against one another. Much like the proletariat, they were destined for cooperation. He also prohibited fertiliser and pesticides.

The results were predictable: mass starvation. Even after the Soviets grew farm acreage 163 times, food production hadn’t reached pre-collectivisation levels.

Yet that wasn’t the end of Lysenko’s career. Because his ideas aligned with party orthodoxy, they weren’t criticised. In fact, hundreds of scientists were sent to prisons, asylums and firing squads for defending genetics. The country’s genetics researchers were once among the world’s finest, but no matter: The Revolution required a full commitment.

By the 1950s, communist China adopted Lysenkoism as its official agricultural doctrine. Thirty million people starved to death as a result. But that wasn’t enough to stop Soviet satellites like Poland, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic from having to accept Lysenkoism as the “new biology”.

Soviet lies like Lysenkoism give Solzhenitsyn’s program of resistance its special edge. If the regime rules through falsehood, then there is no end to the damage it can do. Yet by the same token, totalitarian dictatorships cannot survive if people stop lying. As Solzhenitsyn said: “When people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.”

Of course, it’s impossible to read about the Soviets’ sacrificing biology to political ideology without thinking of the experts who claim to follow the science but can’t tell us what a woman is. People who undergo gender transition surgery are 12 times as likely to attempt suicide as those who do not (see Cureus, Vol. 16, No. 4, April 2, 2024), but this fact is inconvenient for the Revolution.

Much as in Solzhenitsyn’s day, powerful institutions — both nominally public and nominally private — are arrayed against the truth. We face the challenge he posed in 1974: “Let each man choose: Will he remain a witting servant of the lies (needless to say, not due to natural predisposition, but in order to provide a living for the family, to rear the children in the spirit of lies!), or has the time come for him to stand straight as an honest man, worthy of the respect of his children and contemporaries?”

Adam De Gree is an American classical educator and freelance writer. The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), November 5, 2024, and is reproduced by permission.