On Sunday, March 26, Australia held its annual March for Life in the country’s largest city, Sydney. The March began with a Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral officiated by Archbishop Anthony Fisher, who then led the procession from the cathedral to the New South Wales Parliament a mile away. Organized each year by PRI’s Australian affiliate, Family Life International—Australia, led by the redoubtable Paul Hanrahan, this year’s keynote speaker was PRI President Steven Mosher. Paul introduced Steve to the crowd, noting that he, along with Father Paul Marx, had been instrumental in the founding of FLI-Australia back in the nineties. Read Steve’s remarks to the marchers below:
It is wonderful to be with you all here today, to be part of this great company of pro-lifers. And I mean “great company” not just because of your many thousands here present. You are joined in spirit by millions across Australia, by hundreds of millions in the United States—where I am from—by hundreds of millions more in Latin America and, let’s say, two billion or so more in Africa and Asia.
But you are also a “great company” because of what you do. You are the voice of the voiceless; you are speaking today on behalf of those who have no voice. And you are doing it out of sheer love.
There is no interest here represented. Nobody is trying to sell anything; nobody is trying to get you to buy anything. You are here because you are warmhearted, kindhearted, loving people who realize the sanctity of all human life.
You are a “great company” for that reason–each and every one of you. And I am proud and honored to be part of your great company today.
I was not always with you. Forty-three years ago—in fact, I realized just this morning that it was 43 years ago to this very day—March 26, 1980 I was in an operating room in Communist China. In that operating room Red Army doctors were doing forced abortions on women who were 7, 8, and 9 months pregnant.
These doctors were also forcibly sterilizing these women. They were also killing babies at birth. So I was an eyewitness—an unwilling eyewitness, I must say–to forced abortion, forced sterilization and, of course, infanticide.
In my naivete—because I had never really thought about the pro-life issue up to that point–I said to myself “Well, this butchery is happening in a one-party dictatorship, Communist China, but these kinds of abuses couldn’t possibly be happening in my own country.”
But it wasn’t long after I returned to the United States that I realized—a little late, of course—that seven years before–almost 50 years ago now–seven black-robed tyrants on the Supreme Court declared abortion legal in my country up to the very moment childbirth.
And there it was.
All of the evils I had seen in China were happening in my own country.
· The young, frightened teenage girl who is told by her school counselor that she has no choice but to get an abortion is being denied a choice. She is being forced into something that she will perhaps regret her entire life.
· The husband or boyfriend who tells his girlfriend that he doesn’t want another child and that she should get an abortion if she want him to stay with her is being denied a choice.
· We in the U.S., under some presidential administrations, pay for abortions, lots of them. We also pay for sterilizations, and for contraception as well.
· I was shocked to learn that all of the things I had seen in China—including the killing of handicapped children—were happening in my own country.
And so I decided—like each and every one of you—that I had to do something about it. I began to speak out on behalf of the unborn in China, and in my own country, and around the world.
In so doing I joined the pro-life movement. This great movement was already in existence in the United States at that time. It is, I think, the greatest movement in human history.
Billions of people are with us around the world. We are not alone—although it might sometimes seem like that from reading the newspapers or social media posts. The truth is that we pro-lifers are the majority—a pro-life majority—in the world.
After Roe v. Wade legalized abortions, we had marches like this in Sydney today in our own capital, Washington, D.C., and in all fifty states.
We wept for the unborn. We erected tombs to the children who had been sacrificed to abortion. We sought to remember them—to memorialize them—in every way we could so they would not be forgotten.
We sought to pass pro-life legislation at the state level, legislation that was often overturned by the Supreme Court.
We sought to open crises pregnancy centers to help women who needed—who deserved—a real choice instead of just being coerced into having an abortion.
We did everything we could.
By 1980 we succeeded in putting a pro-life plank into the platform of one of our major political parties, the Republican Party, a plank that protected life. And we tried to elect politicians who promised us that they would be pro-life.
Some of these kept their promises. Some of them didn’t. They were politicians, after all.
In 2016 we elected not a politician but a businessman. Donald Trump actually kept his promises. He put not one, but three, pro-life, Catholic justices on the Supreme Court.
And in June of 2022 Roe versus Wade went into the dustbin of history. (cheers and applause)
That victory did not mark the end of our struggle. But perhaps it marked the beginning of the end.
For what it did was send the issue of abortion back to the state legislatures, to city councils, and county boards of supervisors across America. There the battle for Life continues.
Post-Roe, nearly half of American states have severely restricted abortion. In some states like Tennessee and Texas it is banned from conception. While in others like Georgia heartbeat legislation has been put in place. In these states the law now says that when the unborn child’s heartbeat can be detected—at roughly six weeks—it is not legal to take the life of that child.
Heartbeat legislation is the gift that keeps on giving because the technology keeps improving. This means we can detect the child’s heartbeat earlier and earlier in pregnancy, and we know that the heart begins to beat at 21 or 22 days after conception. And so we are gradually moving back the date at which the baby’s heartbeat can be detected, and saving more and more babies in the process.
The struggle to save babies continues in our local crisis pregnancy centers. What we now have under consideration in my home state of Florida, for example, is a bill that will give 25 million to crisis pregnancy centers throughout the state. This will help them compete with the very well-funded death machine that is known in the U.S. as Planned Parenthood.
Above all, we continue to march, and we continue to pray. And we will continue to march, and pray, and work as long as one single child is sacrificed to abortion. Even one death is one too many. (applause)
I am going to look to Archbishop Fisher for confirmation of my next point—and let me say that I am so pleased, Your Grace, that you are here with us today, leading us in this fight. And the point on which I would like your confirmation is this:
I believe that the soul of one baby is worth the entire material universe. Because the material universe will one day pass away, but the soul of that baby will be with us forever.
(Archbishop Fisher nods in affirmation.)
So carry on bravely in this struggle. Fight on. Never give in.
And never, ever give up.
