Pro-life protestors picket NSW parliament over abortion bill

Christian leaders and human rights advocates have slammed as “deeply troubling” and “barbaric” a bill radically decriminalising abortion in NSW which will be introduced to parliament this week.

Coalition MPs will be given a conscience vote on the bill while NSW Premier Glady Berejiklian said she will support it. If passed, the bill announced on 28 July by Independent MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, would be among the world’s most extreme.

It would allow for abortion on request for women up to 22 weeks gestation. After 22 weeks, the opinions of two doctors are required that the abortion should be performed, upon consideration of “all medical circumstances” and “current and future” physical, psychological and social circumstances.

There is no requirement for a cooling-off period or counselling, and health practitioners with a conscientious objection would need to refer the person or transfer their care to someone who will perform the termination. The bill was developed by a working group including the Nationals’ Trevor Khan and Labor’s Penny Sharpe and Jo Haylen, with the support of the state’s health minister Brad Hazzard.

“New attempts to make abortion even more widely available in NSW are deeply troubling,” said Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP.

“The measure of a society is how it protects its most vulnerable, be they unborn children, their mothers who are too often pressured emotionally, financially and even physically to choose against the life of their child, or the sick and frail elderly.”

Rather than pursuing laws that will lead to more abortions, there should be investment in ways to support pregnant women who feel they have no other choice, he said.

Archbishop Fisher urged all Catholics to rally against the proposed law, “and, at the same time, recommit ourselves to reaching out with prayer and practical support for women in crisis”.

He encouraged Catholics to contact their local state MP, given the bill is to be tabled this week, urging them to vote against it.

CEO of NSW Right to Life Dr Rachel Carling said that in Victoria where similar legislation has been in place for about a decade, the ‘safeguard’ of two medical opinions was easily circumvented.

“Sometimes the required sign-off is from two doctors in the same abortion clinic,” she said.

It was concerning that the bill has no mention of a woman’s consent, she added, as women facing an unplanned pregnancy are often vulnerable to coercion from others, from subtle to extreme forms, to abort their child.

“Make no mistake, this is an abortion-to-birth bill and in practice this legislation will be abortion on demand.”

“We don’t believe in criminalising women but this legislation will add to a culture of devaluing motherhood and increases the risk of women being taking advantage of when they are at their most vulnerable,” Dr Carling said.

The NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association has given its support to the bill, saying it believes the proposed law will ensure access to appropriate care.

NSW director of the Australian Christian Lobby Kieran Jackson said that it was unfortunate that safeguards and support options for women such as cooling off periods and counselling are not being considered in the bill.

In allowing abortion up until birth the bill is both “barbaric and extreme” he said in a statement.

“There are significant numbers of doctors and nurses across the state who want nothing to do with abortion because they know what is involved,” he said in a statement.

Crowds expected at rally

The Australian bishops’ spokesperson for life Bishop Richard Umbers said that there is no issue more important in our society today than the sanctity of every human life.

He encouraged Sydneysiders to attend a rally for life outside Parliament House on Thursday 1 August from 9.30am.

“This is a critical moment for our country and I encourage every man and woman to take this opportunity to attend the rally at Parliament House in Sydney this Thursday,” he said.

“These politicians are claiming to advocate for modernising the law, but this proposed legislation is out of step with the science that supports the humanity of the unborn.”

ACL’s spokesperson for women and children, Wendy Francis, said that women experiencing an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy should be treated with “great respect and sensitivity”.

“[They should be] given true choices that promote the best interests of mother and child,” she said.

“Choosing abortion in the absence of other support is not a free choice.”

Steven Buhagiar: Three things we can do to fight the NSW abortion bill right now

• Sydney bishop slams ALP abortion policy

• Pope: Abortion never the answer

Those Confounding Confucius Institutes

Sydney University’s descent into a very dark ignorance

 

Part Two:

Those Confounding Confucius Institutes

 

 

 

“Over 400 Chinese government-backed Confucius Institutes are making an insidious attempt to restrict academic freedom by silencing debate on human rights and other sensitive issues, and whitewash its atrocious human rights records in Tibet and China”.

 

 

 

The University of Sydney’s wilful abandonment of all past wisdom, love and truth, etc., in its grand project of utter folly, ‘Unlearn’, was the subject matter of Part One:

https://www.academia.edu/34776797/Sydney_University_s_descent_into_a_very_dark_ignorance That University has, as do many others, a Confucius Institute. It is not ‘Turning Japanese’, as the song goes, but Turning Chinese – and being dictated to by a crazy, authoritarian Beijing.

This is all quite fitting, of course, as part of its reckless descent into a dark, slavish ignorance.

 

As we read at: https://studentsforafreetibet.org/our-work/say-no-to-confucius-institutes/

 

Confucius Institute threatens academic freedom and free speech. It is controlled by the Chinese Government, and a central part of its soft power plan to improve the global view of China’s authoritarian system. Confucius Institutes aim to censor and silence discussions on important political and human rights issues like Tibet, East Turkestan, Taiwan, Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square.

What are Confucius Institutes?

Confucius Institutes are educational programs backed by China’s Ministry of Education partnerships in educational institutions outside China. Their stated aim is to promote Chinese language and culture in our schools and universities.

 

What is the threat of the Confucius Institutes?

Chinese government censorship and propaganda on topics such as Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen are reaching our students in high schools and universities all over the world.

 

The truth about the Confucius Institutes is that they are China’s soft power push inside our schools.

Over 400 Chinese government-backed Confucius Institutes are making an insidious attempt to restrict academic freedom by silencing debate on human rights and other sensitive issues, and whitewash its atrocious human rights records in Tibet and China.

 

What can I do?

Students, academics, parents, politicians and people of conscience around the around the world have already spoken up. Join them and take action: Say No to China’s Confucius Institutes! ….

 

 

And Alexander Dukalskis has written tellingly on the Confucius Institutes:

http://www.democraticaudit.com/2018/01/04/the-chinese-communist-party-has-growing-sway-in-western-universities/

 

The Chinese Communist Party has growing sway in Western universities

 

In recent years, China has fostered academic links with Western universities by funding Confucius Institutes and sending its students to study abroad.

As the recent uproar over the decision of Cambridge University Press to censor a list of journal articles for the Chinese market has highlighted, it also exerts growing influence in academic publishing. Alexander Dukalskis (University College Dublin) argues that the so-called ‘1% argument’ for censorship is disingenuous, and Confucius Institute activity should be strictly restricted to language instruction. Students and academics must be able to scrutinise China freely.

….

 

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) real and potential influence over higher education outside its borders came to the public’s attention last month when The Economist featured CCP “sharp power” influence – including in higher education – on its cover. Its briefing article drew its terminology from a report by the US-based National Endowment for Democracy. The Woodrow Wilson Center published a detailed report about the CCP’s effort to curry political influence abroad, including in academia. Observers are increasingly paying attention to CCP influence in areas of publishing, student exchange, classroom instruction, and research.

I have a special interest in these topics as the author of a book and academic articles about how authoritarian governments control public discourse domestically. The CCP’s export of some of these practices is concerning. I purposely use the descriptor “CCP” because in China the state is subordinate to the party. So when we talk about the Chinese state or Chinese government, what we are really talking about is the CCP.

In August, Cambridge University Press (CUP) acceded to a request by China’s import agency to censor a list of articles from its journal China Quarterly. CUP initially complied until an open letter by the editor of the journal caught the attention of academics and journalists, who then led an outcry on social media. CUP eventually agreed to not pre-emptively censor its articles, but many were startled by how quickly and easily such a prestigious press agreed to censor on behalf of an authoritarian government.

The rationale, of course, is that CUP and other presses like it wish to protect access to the Chinese market. They argue that if they censor a small portion of their offerings, then the vast majority can be accessed in China, thereby salvaging links between foreign and Chinese academics. This is the 1% argument: only 1% is censored but 99% can be accessed, so really this is not such a big problem.

This is disingenuous, for two reasons. First, it ignores that censorship is even more insidious and powerful when people do not know they are subject to it. By selectively pruning offerings for the Chinese market, presses lead readers to believe that the post-censorship catalogue represents the full picture of foreign perspectives on China.  Editing out so-called “sensitive” topics like the Tiananmen Square repression of 1989, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and studies of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan gives the false impression that the CCP view on these issues is the only legitimate one and that foreign academia agrees.

Second, the 1% argument obscures the likely financial motives behind such censorship decisions.  In CUP’s case the CCP threatened to halt the press’ best-selling English language curriculum.  SpringerNature now not only censors some of its offerings in the journals International Politics and the Journal of Chinese Political Science but has also signed a letter of intent with the People’s Publishing House apparently to publish propagandistic works by CCP leader Xi Jinping.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that financial motives play a major role in these sorts of decisions.

Of course publishing is not the only higher education target of the CCP. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students study abroad each year, which is a source of funds for universities in the West. In my admittedly anecdotal and limited experience, these students are most often a joy to work with because they are smart, curious and have interesting perspectives.

However, they are also subject to surveillance and mobilisation by the officially-sponsored Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). Western universities have been mostly silent about the CSSA, which is understandable. The CSSA presents itself as a means of helping Chinese students settle in abroad, so university leaders may feel there is little they can do.  However, some troubling examples suggest that it also plays a more assertive role in policing public discourse. This includes instances of policing what lecturers say in the classroom.

Indeed, one function of the CCP’s strategy to control public discourse about China in foreign universities is precisely to influence classroom instruction. Hundreds of Confucius Institutes teach Chinese language and culture at Western universities and schools.

Confucius Institutes present themselves as politically innocuous, but it does not take long for instruction in Chinese “culture” to morph into China “studies”, with all the off-limits topics that this implies for the CCP. It is worth remembering that the parent institution of Confucius Institutes is Hanban, which is a department of the Chinese Ministry of Education, itself ultimately under the purview of the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. Indeed, high-level CCP officials have often been quite blunt about the Confucius Institutes being a part of the party’s foreign propaganda effort.

Here again, part of the motivation for welcoming Confucius Institutes on campus in the first place is financial. Typically Confucius Institutes come with financial subsidies from Hanban (and thus ultimately the CCP). Additionally, university administrators may see the prospect of tighter links with the CCP as facilitating the recruitment of fee-paying Chinese students.  The upshot is that universities outsource their Chinese language instruction while Confucius Institute officials sometimes get a seat at the table in discussions about the curriculum in which those language or culture offerings are embedded.

The CCP also attempts to sway the tenor of research about China. Projects like the Institute for China-America Studies or the CCP-linked endowed professorship in China Studies at Johns Hopkins University are prominent examples. The overall aim is to influence the way that China is researched, discussed, and presented.

Ultimately, what is to be done? First, leaders of universities and publishing houses need to firmly and publicly stand up for academic freedom. They should say early, often and publicly that the university places free inquiry at the centre of its engagement with China. If this offends CCP partners, then so be it.

Second, universities should re-evaluate their relationships with Confucius Institutes, particularly given the CCP’s more aggressive turn under Xi Jinping. Confucius Institute contracts sometimes have clauses that call for re-evaluation every so often and universities should take advantage of these opportunities. Ideally, universities would use such clauses to terminate their relationships with CIs and CI-affiliated “research” institutes. 

Short of that, they could press for terms relating to academic freedom to be included and for the activities of CIs to be strictly restricted to language instruction.

Third, individual academics should consider boycotting peer review and submission for presses that censor their catalogues for the Chinese market. Publishing houses rely on the mostly free labour of academics to generate their products. Scholars therefore have some leverage to influence the situation. In a petition that is still open, more than 1,000 have already signed up to boycott reviewing for publications that censor their content for the CCP.

It is incumbent on university leaders, publishing houses, individual academics, and the general public to preserve free inquiry when it comes to China. This is of pressing importance because as a rising economic and military power, China will only play a more important role in the world. It is up to all of us to ensure that this role can be scrutinised freely and fairly. ….