A Grief Observed

I watched “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” the other night – now out on video and well worth watching. Set in wartime it is about a German boy who talks and then befriends a Jewish boy inside a concentration camp.

The reality is gripping. This is not a movie for children.

Yes, there is grief. Grief for the Jewish race who suffered such atrocity; grief for the German people who at first didn’t understand, who then wouldn’t understand, and then it was all too late – and those who objected were eliminated.

But there is also grief for now – for us here in Australia. For we have deliberately set ourselves on the same pathway – or at least our politicians have, and we have not understood.

Out of Nazi Germany came Nuremberg – and the movie by that name is one that should not be missed. Out of the agony of the Nuremberg trials of 1945/6 came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 by the United Nations with the object of preventing such horrors from ever happening again.

On the 60^th anniversary of this declaration the Secretary-General of the UN Ban Ki-moon said:

The campaign reminds us that in a world still reeling from the horrors of the Second World War, the Declaration was the first global statement of what we now take for granted – the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings.

So what have we done now that should also give us grief?

Victoria and the ACT have adopted their own Bills of Rights but have deliberately excluded the unborn child and the issue of abortion. Surely it would have been less of a rebellion to just adopt the Universal Declaration and ignore the rights of the unborn or have some judge declare that it didn’t apply. But to actually exclude the unborn shows the mindset of those who drafted the bills to suit our own culture of death – for that is what it is.

For those who had any doubt that the UDHR did in fact include the unborn – and remember that abortion and eugenics were part of Nazi Germany – we only need to look at the recognition of this by the UN General Assembly on November 20, 1959 as the excerpts below show (emphasis mine):

Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth,

Whereas the need for such special safeguards has been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924, and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the statutes of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children…

To deliberately set out to undermine the great Universal Declaration, thereby repudiating the lessons of history and relegating them to the rubbish bin within the space of just six decades, is an incredible tragedy and an abuse of that most fundamental right of all human beings, the right to life itself.

Yes, an occasion for grief and an appropriate degree of horror at the path we have set.

No, I don’t live my whole life in grief – and yet that is almost appropriate. Every day is a new day, given by God, a gift, another day to enjoy His creation and His created people. Every person has within them some measure of the visible image of God, a measure to be discovered and nurtured and enjoyed. And I revel in this – but I also have an unshakeable resolve to do what I can and encourage others to turn this country around.

Lachlan Dunjey. September 2009.

References:

http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/UN-declaration/

http://untreaty.un.org/English/TreatyEvent2001/pdf/03e.pdf

For more detail re the ACT and Victoria see Submission to Human Rights Commission by Medicine With Morality http://www.medicinewithoutmorality.info/HumanRightsSubmission.pdf

and Coercion of Doctors: What is happening to Modern Medicine (talk delivered Melbourne July 2009) http://www.medicinewithoutmorality.info/TheCoercionofDoctorsMelbourne.pdf

The Cove is now showing at The Paradiso in Perth and other Australian theatres. This is a movie about dolphins www.thecovemovie.com

Dolphins appeal to everyone with their gracefulness, intelligence, ability to communicate, and apparent sense of family and community. It also seems that they have a natural desire to please, an instinctive trust and, it would seem from the stories that are told, a desire to protect.

Thus it is, in return, that we trust, and want to protect. This is good. There seems to be a natural affinity for our mammalian aquatic creatures.

How tragic it is then when that trust is betrayed.

The Cove tells the story of the slaughter of dolphins at Taiji in Japan.

Gary Adshead wrote of this in his article The Killing Cove (West Weekend Magazine 6 December 2008). Between September and April each year and as part of a 400yr old tradition, 2300 dolphins are herded into a bay and a barrier is raised across the entrance. The word pictures are enough to convey the gruesome detail: From our eyrie, we could clearly hear the dolphin’s piercing screams. The green sea turned crimson red… the thrashing tails quietened as the mammals lost their fight for life.

The Japanese go to great lengths to hide the slaughter from prying eyes as this article and the movie shows. But it may be that once again, despite deceit and opposition, the truth will win out with visual images as it did with the napalm girl.

Yes, there are risks in the getting of the story and pictures and sometimes risks of retribution. There are also risks of misplaced censorship – not just in the country that is trying to protect its traditional industry and its autonomy – but also in the country that does not want to offend its neighbour or trading partner, and sometimes news censorship because the facts and pictures are considered too gruesome.

So the drama is played out: broken trust; intrigue; deceit; anything but the truth; danger and condemnation for its revealing; opposition from industry; the risk of being misunderstood and dividing friends and family and community. At least here we survived the whaling ban. It seems like a bad memory now. It is true that one generation’s original thought or change in attitude becomes the next generation’s truism. Even attitudes to smoking have changed. Education. Let’s tell the truth.

Except for abortion that is.

How can it be that telling the truth about abortion is considered by many to be a greater felony than the actual killing? Killing by powerful suction or dismemberment or in-utero murder by lethal injection of potassium or puncturing the skull and sucking out the brain. No anaesthetic is provided even in late pregnancy. We can go into greater detail but we take the risk of alienating our friends and dividing the community as in Taiji. But this detail is nothing compared with some of the actual photos of dismemberment.

How can it be that we defend this in the name of autonomy and choice? Not just 2,300 times annually but 80-100,000 times? How can it be that Emily’s List gloated after the Abortion bill was passed in Victoria last year that women in all areas of Victoria will be able to access safe, legal terminations free from persecution; and medical practitioners provide vital reproductive health services to women free from harassment?

How can it be that we betray the most helpless of humans? Our animal activist friends get really upset when they see a dolphin or whale foetus cut from its mother and rightly so. Yet these are frequently intact and have not been shredded or pulled apart. How can it be that our society is so schizophrenic that we get upset about dolphin slaughter yet rabidly defend our right to kill our unborn babies? How can this be?

It may be that this battle too may be won with word pictures and visual images and a new generation will thank us and wonder why the truth was withheld for so long.

Lachlan Dunjey. August 2009.

We are urged to use fair-minded speech in the abortion debate. Fair enough, but is telling the truth not fair-minded? How would we have got by without telling the truth on any abuse or social evil over the ages? Would reforms have come? Think of the power of a photograph in telling the truth – there are many thousands of them that have awakened the world conscience and instigated change. (But on at least one US University campus a simple photo of an unborn baby was banned.)

Look at this quote re Barack Obama’s Notre Dame speech by Dr Thaddeus J. Kozinski, Assistant Professor of Humanities at Wyoming Catholic College

I think the point is made: if being rhetorically civil were the extent of the required “alignment” for the 19th century America citizen, we would still have legalized slavery, not to mention the genocide of tens of thousands of African-Americans. Needless to say, there would be no President Obama. Suppose the situation were a President proposing a mass genocide of “less-than-human” Jews. “Okay,” assures the President to the doctor, “I’ll be fair-minded and say that they are quite human while we kill them.” One gets the point.

See http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/saruman_at_notre_dame/

And just because one deranged person kills an abortionist does that mean we should no longer tell the truth? For comment on the killing of Dr Tiller see http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_killing_of_george_tiller/

Lachlan Dunjey 5 June 2009.

In light of these attacks on conscience and integrity and the specific threats to Christian belief and practice what is our response?

Do we deny the reality of the problems? As many of the German people did “no, no, we are German – this could not possibly happen”.

Do we just accept the fact that these limitations of our liberties are going to happen regardless of what we do, regardless of how passionate we are, regardless of how logical and rational our arguments, and therefore do nothing?

What can we do?

1. Stay awake and informed ourselves. If you don’t already get email newsletters from ACL, Saltshakers, Bill Muehlenberg, Family Voice, Life Ministries then you should (there are others too) although I will try to keep you informed.
2. Inform others so they can share your concern. Pastors (IMHO) should keep their people informed in the context of spiritual warfare, intercessory prayer and preparing for persecution. This is above politics. This is about survival.
3. Obviously then prayer for government, your local MPs, and organizations like the above.
4. Supporting these by adding your name to the petitions and submissions they arrange. Add your name now to Make a Stand re possible bill of rights.
5. Make submissions yourself (see the ACL site for info).
6. Support MPs who stand with us on these issues. You would have heard some of them if you were at WA Parliament House last week for the Rally for Life on the 11^th anniversary of the abortion legislation here
7. Help elect Christians to parliament and support a Christian party. CDP is very active in these ethical and moral areas. Remember we need numbers to counteract the influence of specific interest groups who won’t listen to rational argument.

Remember Martin Luther:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.

Lachlan Dunjey 28 May 2009

How bad does a government have to get before individual MPs wake up and say this is enough? How bad does it have to get before God’s people mobilise and waken the rest of the community to throw such a government out?

Surely the overthrowing of liberty of conscience in the abortion legislation was enough. If we crush conscience and integrity in our society we are risking the collapse of society whether this be financial institutions (look where that has got the whole world) or medicine or business or local government or wherever.

But it’s worse. Prior to the abortion legislation was the introduction of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. Now one would think that this would be a good thing and in line with international rights, but no, in sharp contrast with the Declaration of the Rights of the Child 1959 affirming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (see appendix below) the Victorian bill specifically ruled out any consideration of abortion!

9. Right to life

Every person has the right to life and has the right

not to be arbitrarily deprived of life.

48. Savings provision

Nothing in this Charter affects any law applicable

to abortion or child destruction, whether before or

after the commencement of Part 2.

And now the Victorian Parliament has asked the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) to examine the Equal Opportunity Act to see if the ’exceptions’ allowed to certain groups of people under the Act should be altered or removed in light of Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities (excerpted from Saltshakers).

Think of the consequences for Churches and Christian schools.

UK seems to be leading the way. See http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/05/21/is-this-the-end-of-christianity-in-england/ Excerpt from this article:

Consider the latest indication of this, as detailed in the Telegraph: “Churches will be banned from turning down gay job applicants on the grounds of their sexuality under new anti-discrimination laws, a Government minister said. Religious groups are to be forced to accept homosexual youth workers,

Christianity is under attack in our Western world as never before. Yes we want and must demand a safe place for our children.

Appendix:

In the Preamble to the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) there are three consecutive paragraphs that relate to the child before as well as after birth:

Whereas the United Nations has, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status,

Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth,

Whereas the need for such special safeguards has been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924, and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the statutes of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children

(emphasis mine)

Lachlan Dunjey 23 May 2009

Many of you will be aware of the battle for liberty of conscience in medicine both here and overseas – the latter particularly in USA where President Obama is threatening to overturn Liberty of Conscience legislation protecting health workers.

Here of course it has been most evident in Victoria with the legislation last year forcing doctors to refer for abortion against their conscience. This is currently being fought.

Abortion law under challenge Jill Stark The Age March 8, 2009

THE federal Attorney-General is under increasing pressure from within his own party to use his powers to overturn Victoria’s new abortion laws, which leading lawyers and Catholic hospitals say are in breach of international law.

Queen’s Counsel Neil Young, a former Federal Court judge, and barrister Peter Willis, a former adviser to the attorney-general’s office, who examined the legislation on behalf of Catholic Health Australia, say that Australia will fail to meet its international obligations unless the clause is removed.

Catholic Health chief executive Martin Laverty told The Sunday Age that the group had been advised the contentious clause breached the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty ratified by Australia and overseen by the United Nations.

Under the Australian constitution, the Commonwealth has the power to invalidate state law if it breaches international treaties to which Australia is a party.

There will also be a conference in Melbourne in July on Liberty of Conscience at which yours truly will be a speaker (please pray for me as it will be very confrontational).

At another level as part of a move to bring some uniformity to Medical Boards across Australia the Australian Medical Council produced a draft Code of Professional Conduct (Aug 08) in which there was no protection for liberty of conscience. This has been rectified to an extent in the second draft (Apr 09) but we (Medicine With Morality) have still had to make (more) submissions to improve it – will keep you posted!

I want you to understand how serious this battle is for the future of medicine and for medical care in our society and for conscience and integrity in our world. The risk for medicine is that patient “rights” and government demands will overrule conscience and integrity in medicine. But medical care must never be subject to degradation by governments in this age or any age to come. The risk for our world is that individual and minority “rights” will overrule conscience and integrity in community including faith-based organizations.

It is for this reason that Medicine With Morality will also be making a submission to the Human Rights Commission re any bills of rights (due 15 June). Below is an excerpt from a possible submission (yet to be confirmed by members).

Doctor’s liberty of conscience

Our concern with this relates to the demands by consumer groups for “patient rights” with a focus on “medical services” rather than traditional patient care. It seems that sometimes “rights” can extinguish liberties and in this case our concern is that liberty of conscience in practice will suffer. Having such rights entrenched in legislation poses a great risk to the future of medical practice.

The exercise of conscience in medicine is everything. It underlies every aspect of good medical practice, to make good patient care our first concern and to practice medicine safely and effectively. It is the foundation of trust, integrity, truthfulness, dependability, compassion and confidentiality. The exercise of conscience encourages self-awareness and self-reflection.

It is conscience that must compel doctors to refuse to participate in treatments they believe to be un-ethical or that they consider not to be in the best interests of patients. To do otherwise would undermine the very foundation of good medicine.

The liberty to not be involved or complicit in matters considered to be unethical or inadvisable – to have liberty of conscience in medicine – is critical for individual doctors and for the integrity and independence of the medical profession as a whole.

Liberty of conscience is also consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 18:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom… to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

It is noteworthy that 95% of “faith-based” doctors in USA have now said they will leave medicine if forced to violate their conscience.

Imagine a society where integrity and conscience are slowly destroyed. The end results are terrifying.

Lachlan Dunjey. 22 May 2009.

“At the heart of this (fire) tragedy” writes George Megalogenis in The Weekend Australian Feb14-15 2009 “is a clear failure of public policy, and official imagination.”

Sound familiar? The US inquiry into September 11^th 2001 found that there was a failure to realise the threat, a failure to be organised and watchful, a failure to share information, and a failure of imagination.

Sometimes consequences are obvious in their impact but the human mind tends to insulate against the possibility of really horrendous consequences. But possibility thinking demands that we look at “what ifs…” otherwise thought unimaginable.

CSLewis talks about the “baptized imagination” – an imagination facilitated by the renewing of our minds by the Holy Spirit, an imagination able to at least begin to conceptualise spiritual truth. In surrendering our imagination to the Holy Spirit and exercising logical thinking we are in a better position to see what is ahead and to prepare responsibly.

Lewis wrote about future consequences in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. The former was a series of three memorial lectures at the University of Durham in 1943 (warning Dr Smith: heavy), and the latter a novel.

The devaluation of life manifest in the community’s tolerance of abortion has led to predictable consequences and also some unimaginable: 80-100,000 abortions annually in Australia as an extension of contraception; abortion for even mild imperfections, de-selection to reduce the number of multiple births – even de-selection of a twin; the creation of life for the express purpose of destructive research; cloning; mixing of animal and human genes; designer babies…

Where do we stop? There is no stopping. We have crossed the Rubicon. This is no longer an adventure into the unknown but a known descent into the relative ethics of one human life against another and whether a life “is worthy to be lived.” Physician assisted suicide is on our doorstep – even for disenchanted teenagers. Euthanasia for others whose lives are considered useless or futile – whatever definition we attach to that. Sex selection, skin colour, intelligence, athleticism – all up for grabs in the near future.

It has been said that passing a Bill of Rights will – through judicial activism – result in overriding democratic government and making our votes worthless.

Extreme? The people of Germany protested “no, no, that could never happen here – we are German!” Let us here not repeat the failure of 9/11, a failure to realise the threat, a failure to be organised and watchful, a failure to share information, and a failure of imagination.

Lachlan Dunjey. February 2009.

This article appeared in a briefer form in The Advocate April edition p7 http://www.theadvocate.tv/

Conflict in Medicine – Reflections on the Abortion Bill

That such a bill could be approved by MPs in Australia really stretches credibility e.g. a doctor must perform an emergency abortion when the mother’s life is in danger.  As has been said by others, this situation is a “clinical fiction” but why not just induce labour?  Why does the baby have to be killed first?

Well-presented arguments were made by doctors in Victoria and across Australia, yet the medical voice was ignored.

The single-mindedness and power of the pro-abortion lobby and the role of Emily’s List is now more apparent “women in all areas of Victoria will be able to access safe, legal terminations free from persecution; and medical practitioners provide vital reproductive health services to women free from harassment”.

Hippocrates has been dug up, drawn and quartered and the remains burnt but the echoes remain:

I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.

Until it is reversed, the refusal of doctor’s right of conscience has paved the way for compulsory participation in other processes e.g. euthanasia.

The belief statement of Medicine With Morality includes:

We assert our right and obligation to practice medicine according to our conscience.  We will not engage in or facilitate procedures or practices that we believe are inconsistent with the above manifesto.

This is now head-to-head conflict.  It is only a matter of time before doctors are charged under this law.  Will Medical Boards forced to uphold the law exclude them from practice?  Will they be denied medical insurance because of the risk to funds? The future of medicine is at stake as was highlighted in the letter sent from Medicine With Morality to MPs in Victoria.

Lachlan Dunjey. October 2008.

Also see:

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/forcing_compliance/ by Michael Cook

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/respect_for_conscience_must_be_a_social_value/

by Margaret Somerville

UPDATE Monday 29 Sept.

A new website is up and partially running doctorsconscience.org

Non-Victorian doctors can still sign in to the letter below or to Medicine With Morality.

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 An Urgent Call to Action re Abortion Law Reform Bill 2008.

Dear Doctor,

This bill was passed by the Victorian Legislative Assembly 49 votes to 32 at the third reading.  It was passed intact with none of the numerous amendments being passed.

These amendments included reducing to 20 weeks, counselling, the exclusion of partial birth abortions, parental permission for under-17s, but highly significant for the medical profession and Christian doctors, the amendment concerning the removal of the conscientious objection clause which reads:
  8. Obligations of registered health practitioner who has conscientious objection
 (1) If a woman requests a registered health practitioner to advise on a proposed abortion, or to perform, direct, authorise or supervise an abortion for that woman, and the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion, the practitioner must—
 (a) inform the woman that the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion; and
 (b) refer the woman to another registered health practitioner in the same regulated health profession who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection to abortion.

If passed intact by the Legislative Council then doctors in Victoria will be required by law to take part in the referral process for abortion, even if they object strongly on ethical and medical grounds.

The numbers will be closer in Legislative Council where it is more likely that some of these amendments will be passed but there is no guarantee.

This is not a time for denial and “this cannot happen here”.  Fundamental to the practice of medicine is the right to liberty of conscience and the right not to engage in procedures that we consider unethical.

But there are other reasons why such a bill should concern us.

Firstly, it is not necessary.  It simply gives legal approval for what is current practice in Victoria.  It will however simplify the late abortion process that is currently found difficult by those few doctors that are involved in late-term abortions.  This is not something that should be facilitated.

Secondly, it will entrench the eugenic practices that have already crept in, including the elimination of readily correctable abnormalities such as cleft lip and give state “approval” for the elimination of anything considered less than perfect.

Thirdly, it will signal state approval for abortion at any stage of pregnancy for any reason considered “appropriate”.  No counselling or “cooling-off” period would be needed.  There would be no moral reason sanctioned by law to help a pregnant female to resist pressure from significant others to “just go and have it done – it’s legal and it’s OK”.

It would be a mistake to only concentrate our opposition to the conscientious objection clause as it is quite likely for that to be used as a bargaining chip, concede that doctors must have this right, and then pass the rest of the bill.  That is, I suspect, why the bill has gone through to Upper House unchanged so that concessions can be granted there.

Some of you will have already agreed to the letter Doctors in Conscience Against Abortion Bill being presented to MPs to be signed ONLY by doctors in Victoria. The letter will already have been presented by the time you read this.  However if you are Victorian you may still be able to have your name added for an updated presentation in which case contact Dr Eamonn Mathieson direct eamonn.1@bigpond.net.au and include title, name, qualifications, and whatever address you choose. 

Medicine With Morality will be sending a companion letter (below) from doctors across Australia which is short and looks mainly at the ramifications of such a bill.  On its own it could be dismissed as being “dramatic” but not in conjunction with the very logical and dispassionate letter from Victorian doctors.

You can simply be an add-on name to this letter (please include title, name, qualifications, and whatever address you choose) or alternatively, sign in to www.medicinewithmorality.org.au where you will join with the other 150+ doctors and associates across Australia and become an automatic signatory (but get to approve letters first).  The vision statement of Medicine With Morality reads:
To preserve, in an age of rapid scientific and technological change, traditional medical ethics consistent with absolute values and to preserve the liberty of medical professionals holding these values to practise medicine according to their conscience.

If you are not yet persuaded of the gravity of all this then please familiarise yourself with the USA problem at moment and CMDA views of Sept 24

Lachlan Dunjey 0407 937 513 lachlan@dunjey.name  www.medicinewithmorality.org.au

_____________________________________________

Dear MP,

Re Abortion Law Reform Bill 2008.

We write in support of the letter Doctors in Conscience Against Abortion Bill from medical practitioners in Victoria . That letter identifies problems with the bill and we urge reading before casting a conscience vote.

The purpose of this letter is to highlight some of the consequences to individuals, the medical profession, and the future of medicine in Australia if the bill is passed.

Firstly, it would give state “approval” for abortion to people who would otherwise not consider this as an option.  There would be no moral reason sanctioned by law to help a pregnant female to resist pressure from significant others to “just go and have it done – it’s legal and it’s OK”.  No “cooling off” period is required.  It would effectively result in viewing abortion as simply another contraceptive option as many have pushed for.  The effect of state approval should not be underestimated.  Most agree that we should be looking at ways of reducing abortion rather than facilitating it.

Secondly, it will effectively result in abortion at any stage of pregnancy with no more justification than that it is considered “appropriate” by a pregnant woman and two doctors.  

There will then be no limit to the existing – almost unrecognised publicly – practice of eugenic selection, already being performed for such readily correctable abnormalities as cleft lip.  It is almost now an expectation that mothers will abort Down Syndrome babies and the term “genetic outlaws” has been applied to those mothers that resist this expectation.  While there is disagreement within the profession and the public on such matters, we need to recognise that this bill will result in unrestricted abortion for any perceived “defect” only limited by the imagination and including wrong sex.

It has been said that “infanticide discriminates against the unborn”, the logic being that sometimes mistakes are made with antenatal diagnosis of abnormality and the baby is aborted unnecessarily, whereas if infanticide were legal this would allow accurate diagnosis and no lives would be wasted.  This argument would lend further weight to Peter Singer’s view that it is OK to euthanase a baby up to some weeks after birth before it develops self-awareness.

No consideration in this bill is given to the subject of foetal pain.  There is good reason to at least consider that foetal pain can be felt from 20 weeks, yet this bill considers abortion through to term.  Future generations will condemn this generation for gross cruelty inconsistent with our care of the helpless elsewhere in the animal kingdom.  Properly considered, the technique of the D&X procedure, also known as partial birth abortion, should be enough to galvanise us into condemnation now.

Finally, if passed intact by the Legislative Council then doctors in Victoria will be required by law to take part in the referral process for abortion, even if they object strongly on ethical and medical grounds.  Fundamental to the practice of medicine is the right to liberty of conscience, the right not to engage in procedures that we consider unethical. 

The implications are clear. If conscientious objection is over-ridden with abortion, forcing us to cooperate with the killing of the unborn child at any stage of pregnancy, then this may in the future extend to doctor assisted suicide or euthanasia.  The push by the pro-abortion lobby for individual autonomy and “choice”, as exemplified in this legislation leads to the exclusion of autonomy and freedom of choice by doctors.  There are obvious implications for membership of medical defence organisations and – if charged under this law – medical registration.  There are also obvious long-term implications for the actual entry of doctors into obstetrics and gynaecology with fewer doctors who regard all human life to be of value entering this specialty.  Ultimately this will also lead to a reduction in numbers of doctors with these values entering the specialty of anaesthesia, this discipline also being involved.

Please do not dismiss these concerns as being alarmist.  They are the logical outcome of this legislation.
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signed by 150+ doctors and associates