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The moral dilemma facing Australia’s pro-life movement

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Following the parliamentary defeat of late-term abortion restrictions in South Australia, advocates confront hard questions on legislative strategy and core principles.

by Right to Life NSW

The history of the South Australian bill

South Australia’s parliament has rejected legislation that would have imposed certain new restrictions on abortions after 25 weeks of pregnancy. For many Australians this was simply another conscience vote. For those committed to the pro-life cause, it raises a profound moral and political question: What should lawmakers do when they cannot secure complete protection for unborn children?

Is it morally acceptable to support a law that saves some lives, even if it still permits other abortions? That question lies at the heart of the recent proposal to change South Australia’s abortion legislation. And it is one that pro-lifers need to address.

The legislation was introduced by Family First MLC Sarah Game. It sought to amend South Australia’s abortion laws by prohibiting abortions after 25 weeks except in certain defined circumstances. This was not the first such attempt.

In fact, it was the third effort in just two years to tighten South Australia’s abortion regime, which was liberalised in 2021. The bill passed the Legislative Council by the narrowest of margins – ten votes to nine – before proceeding to the House of Assembly, where it was defeated decisively, thirty-six votes to nine. Sarah Game has already indicated she may return with another proposal in the future.

Political alignments and Parliamentary voting

The supporters of the legislation came from a variety of political backgrounds. Sarah Game herself argued that late-term abortions involve viable unborn children and that society has a moral obligation to offer them greater protection. Members of One Nation supported the bill, consistent with the party’s increasingly outspoken pro-life stance.

National political figures associated with the movement, including Barnaby Joyce, have recently appeared at pro-life rallies calling for greater legal protection of unborn children and warning politicians against treating abortion as a settled issue. Some Liberal and Labor MPs also voted in favour, demonstrating that abortion remains one of the few issues in Australian politics that regularly crosses party lines. For supporters, the bill represented an incremental but meaningful step towards protecting unborn life.

Opposition to the bill was broad and ultimately overwhelming. The Greens opposed it outright. Most Labor MPs voted against it, as did many Liberals. Premier Peter Malinauskas, who voted in favour of the bill, later criticised the renewed focus on abortion legislation and argued parliament should direct its attention elsewhere.

The moral debate and future advocacy

But from a pro-life perspective, a deeper question arises that cannot be settled by a political vote. The intention of the South Australian bill, although aimed at restricting the upper limit of late term abortions to 25 weeks, did allow for abortion up until that point. It also allowed abortions after that date in the cases of foetal abnormalities and in case of the health of the mother. Although a better law than the one already in operation in South Australia, the new law would have still been an incredibly permissive abortion law. Even by world standards.

The question for pro-lifers is how does one navigate the moral evil of abortion, given that a law outlawing abortion in any Australian juristiction at this point would seem impossible to pass. The question with which most pro-lifers struggle is: what are the limits within which we can effectively operate to stop abortion without sacrificing our principles? Despite the intention of those in favour of the South Australian bill, this was still a law that allowed abortions up until 25 weeks. It was still a morally problematic amendment as it left in place a deeply morally flawed law.

Another way of asking the question at the heart of this debate is: how much harm can be permitted even when one is acting with the clear intention of trying to reduce harm? The argument is one that pro-lifers need to have in order to come to some settled understanding of how to prosecute our cause. From this perspective, many pro-life advocates would argue that it is morally permissible to support Sarah Game’s bill, despite its exceptions. Others argue that any law allowing abortion is morally wrong and is therefore unacceptable.

Despite the noble intentions of those arguing in support of the bill, laws have an effect that is far greater than the individual intentions of legislators. And this cannot be overlooked, even when there is much enthusiasm for a cause. Many in the pro-life cause worry that laws containing exceptions or laws that continue to permit moral evil, will ultimately reinforce the idea that certain unborn lives are less worthy of protection than others. If a law objectively says some children deserve legal protection but others do not, despite the subjective intentions of legislators, will that not ultimately entrench the very evil that the pro-life movement seeks to overthrow?

It is difficult to gauge accurately within the pro-life movement, where the mainstream opinion is to be found on this issue. It seems that for many pro-lifers, any opportunity to reduce the number of abortions must be taken. For others, they argue that such opportunities are not as clear cut as we would like, as they represent their own kinds of harm that will ultimately do damage to the pro-life cause.

We at Right to Life welcome the debate and wish to contribute to making clear what are its parameters and what must be decided. We also welcome the work of those who have brought the abortion debate back into the mainstream. The South Australian bill has shown that abortion is no longer the taboo topic that our political class has made it out to be.

By making the problem of abortion mainstream- we immediately see who is aligned for a right to life and who opposes it. Across Australia, pro-life activists and politicians are becoming more organised and more willing to challenge laws that only a few years ago seemed politically settled. We are working towards making this debate the beginning of a new phase of pro-life advocacy in our country. We pray this may be the beginning of the end for abortion in Australia.

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.

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Jim Hughes

In memoriam: Jim Hughes, Canadian pro-life leader

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Jim Hughes (1943–2026) was a Canadian and international pro-life leader. Below are excerpts from five of the many tributes published in honour of his tireless work on behalf of the unborn.

LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac praises Hughes’ remarkable leadership skills. LifeSiteNews columnist Jonathon Van Maren chronicles the pro-life movement’s titanic battle against the Pierre Trudeau government’s Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which lacked explicit protections for the unborn. Its enactment in the early 1980s “would utterly transform and define Canada for the rest of her history”.

Images courtesy Campaign Life Coalition

Jim Hughes (1943–2026)

Campaign Life Coalition (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), May 19, 2026.

Excerpt

It is with deep sorrow that we share the passing of Jim Hughes, president emeritus of Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition, who passed away yesterday surrounded by his family.

At home, Jim was a devoted husband, father and grandfather. In the office, he was a mentor and a fatherly presence to so many. Wherever he went, he brought a down-to-earth spirit and a sense of humour that could brighten any room.

Jim’s leadership in the Canadian pro-life movement spanned nearly five decades. His tireless work helped shape, strengthen and mobilize the movement across the country, saving countless lives and inspiring generations of pro-life Canadians. Yet Jim’s impact extended far beyond public leadership. If someone needed help, he would help, often quietly, without recognition, and without ever seeking praise.

Jim Hughes: indefatigable champion

by Quinton Admundson, associate editor
The Catholic Register (Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada), May 20, 2026.

Excerpt

Do not tell Jim Hughes he must be a compromiser who tempers his pro-life beliefs. The national president of Campaign Life Coalition, the political arm of the Canadian pro-life movement, from 1984 to 2018, does not answer to you, lobbyists, corporations or any government. The octogenarian Catholic abides by the law of God, who unambiguously told Moses on Mount Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”

“He didn’t say after 14 weeks or talk about any strategy,” said Hughes. “He said ‘do not kill an innocent life.’ ”

Jim Hughes saw Canada’s abortion future in the fight over the Charter

by Jonathon Van Maren
LifeSiteNews (Canada/USA), May 20, 2026.

Excerpt

From a historical perspective, the most consequential fight Hughes was involved in was his very first.
Campaign Life was founded in May 1978; the following month, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced the Constitutional Amendment Bill, which included a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Key pro-life leaders — including Jim Hughes — recognised that a charter which did not include explicit protections for the unborn would inevitably be used to justify a regime of abortion on demand.

We will never know if the efforts of Campaign Life and the pro-life movement to defeat the charter would have succeeded; history tells us that when Cardinal Emmett Carter, with explicit assurances from Justice Minister Jean Chrétien [later to be prime minister of Canada, from 1993 to 2003], published a statement of neutrality on the issue in the Catholic Register, Liberal MPs rejoiced that they could now vote for it in good conscience.

Years later, Jim Hughes said, Carter would tell him that he’d been lied to. That day, a sad scene unfolded at the Campaign Life offices. Pro-life leaders felt that they were close to beating the charter. The effort, right across Canada, had been herculean, but there was a sense that victory was possible. When they heard the news, darkness seemed to descend. “I saw pro-life leaders, many of them, extremely shocked, devastated, grown men and women in tears, crying,” Steve Jalsevac recalled. “That’s what I saw. It’s like someone put a knife in their back. It was that close.”

Although few Canadians understood it at the time, the battle over the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was the most consequential political fight of the 20th century. It would utterly transform and define Canada for the rest of her history. The story of the pro-life movement’s resistance to the charter has been largely ignored by historians, even though the warnings of prominent pro-life groups were prophetic.

The Jim Hughes I remember

by John-Henry Westen, co-founder and CEO of LifeSiteNews.com
LifeSiteNews (Canada/USA), May 19, 2026.

Excerpt

For more than four decades, Jim Hughes stood as the unwavering heart of Canada’s pro-life movement until his death on Monday. I was privileged to have known and worked with him for three of those decades.

From his first involvement with Campaign Life Coalition in October 1978 until long after he stepped down as national president in September 2018, Jim gave his life so that others might live. A successful Toronto businessman at 35, he saw the gruesome reality of abortion at a right-to-life presentation at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1978. That moment changed him forever. He accepted his wife Ginny’s challenge to give “just two years” to the cause. He left his lucrative career and worked full time without a salary in the beginning while the couple lived on Ginny’s income as a registered nurse.

In 1984, he became national president of Campaign Life Coalition, a position he held for 34 years. Under his leadership, CLC became the powerhouse of Canadian pro-life activism. He founded The Interim newspaper in 1983. He served on the founding board of LifeSiteNews when it launched in 1997. He built the annual National March for Life in Ottawa into a major national event and helped bring the Life Chain and 40 Days for Life to Canada.

He played key roles in establishing or advancing Aid to Women, REAL [Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life] Women of Canada, Catholic Insight magazine, the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, Show the Truth campaigns, and the early Family Coalition Party. He also worked closely with Priests for Life Canada, Silent No More Canada [founded by Endeavour Forum’s Canadian associate, Denise Mountenay], and the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition [founded by Alex Schadenberg].

As everyone in the movement knows, Jim often joked that you only retire from this calling being carried out “feet first”. And that’s exactly how he lived — never truly retiring, always in the fight until the Lord called him home.

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‘Well done, good and faithful servant’

Steve Jalsevac on Jim Hughes, Canada’s pro-life patriarch
by Steve Jalsevac, co-founder of LifeSiteNews.com
LifeSiteNews (Canada/USA), May 20, 2026.

Excerpt

Jim Hughes was a truly humble, surprisingly shy, and very caring man. Few people knew that he was uncomfortable being in the limelight and tended to give all the glory for whatever Campaign Life Coalition managed to accomplish to others, above all to God.

Jim was a leader unlike many others I have met over the past 46 years. He had an incredible memory, was a gifted organiser and strategist and a commanding speaker. He managed to build strong, long-term loyalty among CLC volunteers and staff who valued his consensus-based leadership style and personal concern for them and their needs. CLC was never a top-down type of organisation.

Jim was a delegator who much preferred to pass on important and high-visibility tasks to others and help them to grow into a larger pool of competent pro-life leaders.

We were a close-knit team of “ordinary people doing great things for God”, as Mother Teresa of Calcutta told Jim when she was with him in our humble Ottawa lobby office. She also told him that we were “doing the most important work in the world”.

Under Jim, CLC was a precious second family for everyone in CLC. I spent 46 years working closely with this man. He dramatically changed my life when he brought me into the pro-life movement and patiently guided me and many others to be more understanding and patient with those considered our enemies. In many cases, they were instead sinners whom no one took the time to talk to, find out why they did what they did, or reach out with a prayerful, helping hand. I am forever grateful for that guidance.