Extraordinary Ordinary People

What does a grassroots movement look like?

We have recently returned from a meeting at Port Pirie on Sunday 27 September to raise awareness of, and opposition to, the Liberal Attorney-General’s abortion-to-birth bill, which will be soon tabled in State Parliament. You can find the details of your local Lower House MP by clicking here.

The meetings have all been the brainchild of an extraordinary, ordinary man and his extraordinary, ordinary wife, my friends Bob and Julie. Bob first learned of the abortion-to-birth proposal at the Walk for Life earlier this year. Since then God has burdened his heart with this issue and he resolved to do something about it. A few weeks ago, he organized a meeting in Wallaroo. He was instrumental in helping set up the successful meeting at Minlaton on the Yorke Peninsula on 13 September, which I wrote about in my last SA blog.

The meeting in Port Pirie was attended by about 80 people. It was promoted by Pirie locals Wendy Joyce and her daughter in law, Bianca. Geoff Brock, the local lower house member was there. His vote will be crucial in this battle. You can watch my speech here.

You can watch Amanda’s speech here.

But Bob is not resting. He has arranged our next meeting at Clare, on Sunday 11 October 2020 at the Clare Town Hall at 2pm. If you are in the area, please come and join us.

You can email me at [email protected]

Bob and Julie spent Monday travelling the mid-North towns arranging for leaflets to be delivered to over 4,000 letterboxes in the area, all at their own cost.

After Clare, Bob is working on meetings in the Riverland, Port Augusta and Murray Bridge.

He exemplifies the zeal and energy that is needed to defeat the Attorney-General’s abortion-to-birth proposal. Please follow his example in your local context.

The bill is now out for comment by stakeholders. I have made a submission on behalf of ACL. It is likely it will be tabled in the late October or November sittings of Parliament. It is likely to be a Government bill.

Before the last election ACL surveyed all candidates. Among many others, we asked this question of the members and candidates:

“Given that the advances in medical science mean that children are now capable of being born alive at 24 weeks of a woman’s pregnancy, would you support a review of section 82A(8) of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 which says that “evidence that a woman had at any material time been pregnant for a period of twenty-eight weeks or more shall be prima facie proof that she was at that time pregnant of a child capable of being born alive” with a view to bringing it into line with current medical science and so changing the period to 24 weeks?

The Attorney-General Vickie Chapman answered in this way:

“A Marshall Liberal Government will not be introducing legislation on this issue.”

Yet the Attorney now proposes this bill which removes this protection for women and their unborn children altogether.

It would be very helpful for each of you to contact your local MP (see link above) and ask them to communicate to the Government that it should not be introducing this bill, when it was not foreshadowed before the last election. If it is correct, you could say that had you known the Government would introduce such a bill, it would have affected your vote.

Please take time to do this. Your action is part of the ACL grassroots movement which will “Love them Both”; women and their children, and so defeat this abortion-to-birth bill. Like Bob and Julie, you will be another of the extraordinary, ordinary people who will uphold the most vulnerable: the unborn and their mums.

In doing so, you will be one who will “love the truth”