G'day, I'm Martin Iles and it's an honour for me to address the annual, March For The Babies from
here in North Queensland and the circumstances of the event this year mean that that is possible.
I want to speak today about the pro-life movement, what it is and why it's worth doing.
many of you will be aware of the very famous quote by Congressman Henry Hyde from the U.S he said,
"when the time comes as it surely will when we face that awesome moment the final judgment I've
often thought as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness you have no
advocates but you were there alone standing before God and a terror will rip through your soul like
nothing you can imagine but I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone
I think that there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world
but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world and they will plead for everyone who
has been in this movement they will say to God, spare him because he loved us."
You know by participating in the pro-life movement, you
participate in an act of love for women, for children, for families and indeed society.
To love is to act. It is to act at cost to oneself, it is to act at cost to oneself
to serve others. And the pro-life movement is about firstly action. We speak,
we rally, we're politically activated, we respond to opportunities to do things, we pray,
we vote, we appeal to our neighbours, we volunteer for charities that help
women and children and families and we practice what we preach in all of life.
And we do all of those things at cost as the definition of love goes, it is action at cost.
The Good Samaritan was Christ's example of loving our neighbour. He was a man who cared to notice
the problem. He took the time to attend to it, he took a risk, he gave of his own resources,
including his money. And costly involvement in the pro-life movement includes all of those things.
It starts with noticing the problem and caring enough to do something, even if it means it costs
a reputation, even if it means our lives are not as quiet and comfortable as they could have been
or if it means our time our energies even if it means our wealth but of course involvement of
the pro-life movement involves those things but it involves them with the ultimate purpose and
objective of serving others and that's what an act of love is. It is an action at cost to oneself to
serve others. In this modern world we're told that the best thing we can do is serve ourselves and
that is what is at the core of the pro-abortion movement. It is that one word that we all know,
autonomy, choice. This we're told, this is what's best that a woman or indeed her partner as is
often the case as we know too often should have the autonomy to choose to end a life. They make
that claim because of course they have nowhere else to go, autonomy is the last thing that
they can rely on. Once upon a time they may have argued science, but we know that now that a child
an unborn child is a unique living human being. There's no doubt that it's human for human beings
couldn't produce any other kind of offspring. We know that it has it's own unique DNA, we know
that it has its own blood type distinct from its mother, we know that its heart beats at four weeks
abortion stops a beating heart, we know that these smallest and most vulnerable human beings
with beating hearts stretch and make facial expressions by the dawn of the second trimester
feel pain at 16 weeks are viable at 22 weeks. They can't argue science anymore,
once they might have argued medicine, healthcare but since we know scientifically that this is
a human life, we know medically that it must be protected and nurtured. The hippocratic oath says
first do no harm. Killing is not ought not ever to be healthcare. Renowned Surgeon Dr Ben Carson,
has said this he said, "I've had the privilege of being able to operate on little babies that
were 25, 26, 27, 28 weeks gestation and I can guarantee you that they can feel, they can react,
you have to give them anesthesia, if you're going to cut them believe me. But they can also respond
to comfort and to warmth and for somebody to say that's a meaningless bunch of cells honestly
that's just totally ignorant. Alternatively might once have argued compassion but they have
no compassion for these lives and their so-called compassion for women is false. It must be false
for it's based on a lie. We will hear shortly the post abortion testimony so i'm not going to
dwell on this but here are a couple of snippets from other women's stories which i've picked up.
Laurie wrote this she said, "I'll wake in the middle of the night thinking I hear a baby crying,
I simply miss my baby, I constantly wake up wanting to nurse my child wanting to hold my child
and that's something the doctor never told me I would experience."
Or hear Ashley, "Every night my sweet boy prays to God for his sibling and every time I hear those
precious prayers, my heart aches over what I did". Or Millie "If he'd mentioned abortion
she says it wouldn't have registered I was profoundly disconnected from myself
but I began to feel weighted down by something it wouldn't go away,
finally a dream of huge significance graphically involving a doctor, a jumbo bin,
a dead body of a young teenage man convinced me that I needed to do some work on my abortion."
Make no mistake compassion is not on their side and so they fall back to so-called autonomy, but
we're not serving ourselves today, we strive to serve others and we do so by exposing this fact,
whatever you call it, whatever justification you give it abortion is the killing of a human life
and it's killing our culture. It's doing unthinkable harm to women and to our society,
it is unscientific it is not health care, it is deeply inhumane to everyone involved and helping
people understand that truth will continue to take enormous amounts of effort and activity,
it will continue to be costly to those who take it upon themselves and it will continue to serve
the highest and best interests of all, it will continue to be an act of love and of course
that is precisely what we say, love them both. When you participate in the pro-life movement,
you participate in an act of love, you stand against evil and every stand against evil is
a stand against darkness, pain and destruction, you stand for truth and every stand for truth is
a stand for life, for light, for happiness and for freedom and here's the thing and this is the point
I really want to make, it is worth it. Never lose heart, it's worth it on three levels. Firstly,
it's worth it on a personal level, the very existence of a pro-life voice in any community
means that individual women and men will encounter the truth. A rally, a youtube video,
a result in a google search, a reading of a newspaper article, the encountering of a website,
the availability of support services, these things reach hearts and minds and they save lives
and they change hearts, and you know in my experience in political lobbying,
I find it easy to lose sight of this kind of change because the change which comes through,
it's this, the change which comes through the personal touch and I call it the quiet change
the stuff that happens at the grassroots in the community, because so often we never even know
that it's happening, so often we couldn't even recite the names we wouldn't know who
in this life would encounter these sorts of messages, but believe me, oh it happens
and it happens far more often than we realise. Your voice and your action may touch your life,
that's a personal act of love and it's worth it but it's also worth it at a political
and a cultural level. You may think that politics is largely a closed book when it
comes to the pro-life movement and yet if this movement didn't exist we'd be far worse off.
Let me give you just two examples one pro-life and one from my own recent work.
In September 2019, Sydney held two enormous pro-life rallies in Martin Place in Hyde Park.
The abortion law ultimately passed but the chorus of voices, the activism we saw in those days
politicians saw that and they had no idea it was even there before those days. It was a fact
that those efforts directly impacted on political discussions in the weeks and months that followed
and contributed to moving law reforms like Euthanasia off the table. Earlier that year in
June my friend, Israel Folau was sacked from Rugby Australia for posting a bible verse on instagram,
again people spoke by raising 2.2 million dollars in 48 hours to protest his treatment,
that event directly impacted corporate culture and professional sports in this country, in a seismic
way and we even got to preach the gospel in the process. We may think that this is difficult
politically, but God uses every faithful public word indeed. None of it is wasted. It's worth it.
But you know even if none of these things happened, it's worth it eternally. I used to
think that, that quote by Henry Hyde was largely poetic, but now I see that it has a great deal of
truth in it, Jesus spoke in Luke's gospel about using our earthly resources and possessions and
wealth too and I quote "make friends who will receive you into eternal dwellings"
and I think that that's what we do in the pro-life movement, their voices will not hurt in this life,
this world was not worthy of them, but there is a place where they will be heard
and they are all our friends and I look forward to meeting their redeemed souls
in paradise and so let me finish with this, what you do changes things,
it changes people, it changes culture and it changes eternity.