Women’s Forum Australia (WFA) is a conservative Christian lobby group, although it would strongly resist this description. Its leadership is and always has been drawn largely from conservative Catholics like Katrina George and Louise Brosnan and conservative Baptists like Melinda Tankard Reist and Johanna Lynch.

WFA is vehemently opposed to women’s access to abortion and other technologies that enable women to control their reproductive lives, e.g. access to RU486 and therapeutic cloning. They also campaign actively against voluntary euthanasia. When the organisation was first launched it described itself as ‘pro-woman and pro-life’, though in recent times this slogan seems to have been abandoned.

In recent months, WFA has deviated from its central anti-choice message by undertaking ‘motherhood’ campaigns against the sexualisation of young girls. This anti-pornography message is consistent with the attitudes of the religious right and does not disguise WFA’s fundamental objective: to restrict women’s capacity to make choices about their reproductive lives, in line with the most conservative Christian religious doctrines.

This article explores the group’s objectives, policies and personalities.

Read the full article (PDF): Women’s Forum Australia - policies and people

Filed in: Abortion, Voluntary Euthanasia

Dying of some loathsome disease? Want to know a very effective and pain-free way of ending your own life? Well, don’t ask me, I’m just a simple, law-abiding weblogger and too scared of being thrown into jail if I tell you.

But what you might do is get hold of the fundamentalist Salt Shakers Journal of July 2004. Now turn to page 7. Look at the article headed ‘Suspended sentence for killing mother’. First paragraph, second sentence.

See? I can’t tell you. But Salt Shakers can. And Derek Humphry could hardly have done a better job.

Filed in: Voluntary Euthanasia

Right to Life Australia (RTLA) supporter Ted Watt doesn’t like the ‘Advanced Health Directives’ (AHDs) which may become available in WA soon. By making one of these directives, competent patients may refuse consent to specified treatments or to any treatment for specified illnesses, to take effect later if the patient should become incompetent. The bill before state parliament provides for ‘Enduring Guardians’ and ‘Persons Responsible’ to be appointed with power to make all health care decisions on behalf of an incompetent patient. (Dr Ted Watt, ‘WA to Debate Medical Treatment Bill’, RTLA News, Jul.-Aug. 2006, 4)

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Filed in: People, Voluntary Euthanasia

Back in 1968, Melbourne journalist Keith Dunstan published a wonderful book called Wowsers (i.e. obsessive puritans). Evangelicals claim that the word ‘wowser’ is merely an acronym for the slogan ‘We only want social evils remedied/removed’, but this is false - see Dunstan’s first chapter for a more accurate etymology.

In his book, Dunstan examined all the major concerns of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century wowsers. There were the old perennials like ‘the Demon Drink’, tobacco-smoking, prostitution, pornography and gambling, but there were a number of other ‘Evils’ against which puritan divines fulminated and waged war. Among these were ‘the Evil of the Desecration of the Sabbath’, ‘the Theatre Evil and the Evil of Dancing’, ‘the Evil of Bathing’ and ‘the Evil of Cremation’.

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Filed in: Abortion, Christian Right, Family Values, Stem Cell Research, Voluntary Euthanasia

In February 2005, Mrs Maria Korp, aged 50, was choked by her husband’s mistress and left for dead in the boot of a car parked near Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. She never regained consciousness, and on 26 July Victorian Public Advocate Julian Gardner, Mrs Korp’s legal guardian, authorised the cessation of her artificial nutrition. (Korp died on 5 August.)

Gardner made it clear that he had reached his decision after months of consultation with Mrs Korp’s family and two separate teams of doctors, including palliative care specialists. As Korp was a Catholic, he had also sought the advice of her priest and a Catholic expert in ethics. In his public announcement, Gardner repeatedly stated that Korp was ‘dying’ and that tubal nutrition had been ‘prolonging her dying instead of sustaining her life’.

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Filed in: Catholicism, Voluntary Euthanasia

Sincerity is one thing; stupidity is another.

Randall Terry of Operation Rescue and now spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s parents: ‘What in the name of God is going on when the entire US government prostrates itself at the feet of a tinpot judge?’ (Guardian, 29 Mar. 2005)

Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition: ‘Mahoney said that the fact that Schiavo has survived nearly 10 days since the removal of the tube that has supplied her with nutrition and water indicates that she wants to appear before the House Government Reform Committee.’ (CNN.com, 28 Mar. 2005) On the next day, Mahoney again cited Schiavo’s ‘endurance through 11 days without food or water as evidence that she wants to live … Mahoney shouted, “She is speaking from her hospice bed, saying, ‘I want to live. Will you help me?”‘ (Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2005)

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Filed in: Voluntary Euthanasia

Christianity is supposed to preach love, compassion and forgiveness, but have a look at the words and actions employed by some of the self-proclaimed ’supporters’ of brain-damage victim Terri Schiavo.

Randall Terry of the extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue says that if Schiavo dies ‘there will be hell to pay’. Terry charges that Governor Jeb Bush, a former hero of the Religious Right, has now ‘caved in to a runaway judiciary’. (LA Times, 25 Mar. 2005)

Rev. Jerry Falwell, former head of the failed Moral Majority: ‘Just because there is a judge somewhere in the world who would give an estranged husband like [Terri Schiavo's] the time of day, tells you how bad the court system is.’ (Detroit Free Press, 25 Mar. 2005)

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Filed in: Voluntary Euthanasia