Saturday, January 24th, a courageous man with an interesting brogue blew in from Australia, carrying with him a message of hope.

On his hurried trip around the world, the famous “Abortion Priest,” as he is known in his homeland, made a brief stop-off in Toronto. Reverend Eugene Ahern is a 41-year-old man, who has spent the last fifteen of his eighteen years as a priest, fighting against the pro-abortion forces in his country.

If the battle is weighing him down, Father Ahern gives no evidence of it. Constantly smiling, laughing and bouncing witticisms off his rapt audience. He assured us that, “The only mouse that doesn’t get eaten is the one that roars!”

Passionate zeal

Father Ahern is on the Board of the Right to Life for Australia, and Vice-President of the Right to Life organization in Victoria – a state whose population tops three-and-a-half million. When he first got active in the pro-life movement, he thought it was a matter of passing a few laws and the issue would go away. Now he realizes we’re in for a long haul. “We must fight to stop the killing, with a passionate zeal,” he urged his listeners, “Or people will get accustomed to it and this will lead to the final stage of hurrying people out of this world.”

Father Ahern first got interested in the pro-life movement, while attending an open forum, some fifteen years ago. While the Australian minister droned on about boring financial matters, he was heckled by a group of women, at the back of the hall, asking him, “What is my stand on abortion?”  When he answered that question, he began a crusade for the pro-life movement, which has taken him all over the world.

He has been thrown in jail; organized a sit-in at the largest Victoria Hospital, which want on for months; been heavily pressured to abandon his battle for the right too life of unborn babies; and is now being sued for millions of dollars, by hospitals and pro-abortion groups. “When you’re a poor man, with hardly a penny to your name,” he mused, “it can be quite funny being sued for a hundred million dollars, by a hospital alleging you have caused ‘psychological damage.’”

Is he down-hearted?  No. He just laughs it off and tells of the experience he had of meeting an American at an airport in New York, who thought Melbourne, Australia, was a town in Texas!

Brothers and sisters

He was shocked to learn that 600 babies – he called them his brothers and sisters – were killed in Ontario every week. Legal bureaucracy in Canada, and the conflict over funding of Government health plans for abortion, have made it obvious to Father Ahern that mealy-mouth politicians are not confined to Australia.

Father Ahern prays constantly for a change I people’s hearts, and for an end to pro-abortion attitudes. He has fasted for a whole week, as an intention to save the unborn. “This,” he admits, “is hard for a man who can hardly stand it if his breakfast is half an hour late.”  He has organizes “Walks for Life” all over Australia. To cite just one example – about sixty people conducted a protest, anti-abortion walk traveling over 300 kilometres, and lasting eight days.

He was not proud that Australia led the way in in-vitro fertilization and test-tube baby experiments, which leaves some people unsure “when” human life begins. The causal attitude which this engenders, is nothing, he claims, but a prelude to infanticide. These experiments have angered many Australians and in the latest polling, pro-abortion sentiment has declined five per cent. He asked, “Are embryos non-human – or vermin?”  Father Ahern spoke enthusiastically about his attendance at the pro-life march in Washington D. C., on January 22nd, where ten thousand people turned out, despite blizzard conditions. The crowd was protesting the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened up wholesale abortion. There would have been a much larger turn out, but due to bad weather conditions, the buses were not running, and many people arrived after the walk was over. Twenty-one people were arrested in the Supreme Court building, for praying; Cardinal O’Connor, of New York, addressed the crowd and was proud to acknowledge that he was a “Single Issue” person, and that issue was abortion – the unspeakable crime.

Along with many others, Father Ahern prayed at the grave of Mary Elizabeth Peace, a hospital late abortion, who was left to die. Her body – completely formed – was spirited away from the hospital by a distraught nurse and given to pro-life people for a decent burial. Mary Elizabeth was named after Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Peace was the obvious last name. On her tombstone was inscribed:

“February 11, 1979 – Born By Abortion – Died By Abortion – Mary Elizabeth Peace.”

She has now become a symbol of the world wide pro-life movement.

Father Ahern urged us to never give up hope and to continue to witness our beliefs, even if we are confused as to how to respond to the holocaust.

Although he believes in peaceful means, Father Ahern added that, “A protester’s got to protest!”  He couldn’t see why our Jewish brethren object to the pro-life movement’s use of the term “holocaust,” because there is a startling parallel between what happened to the Jews in Germany in the thirties, and what is happening to the unborn babies throughout the world, now, in the eighties.

Father Ahern’s message to all pro-lifers is, “Pray, work, and never, never lose heart.”