Media Release 13 July 2023
Labour-Green ACT Government confiscate Australian Catholic Hospital!
The Labour-Green government of the Australian Capital Territory, in an exercise of outrageous legislative force, has confiscated the respected pro-life Mercy Hospital in Canberra. This is a warning to all Australians and New Zealanders of the threat of a Labour Green government to impose a culture of death.
The Mercy Hospital was faithful in respecting the sanctity of life every patient and prohibited the taking of life in abortions and euthanasia at the Hospital.
The ACT government had received complaints that requests for abortions and euthanasia were refused at the Mercy Hospital. The government believed that abortion and euthanasia were human rights and health services, and that the Mercy Hospital had a duty to ignore Catholic Church teaching and provide these “health services.”
In 2009 the Labour Green government sought to purchase the Mercy Hospital from the Little Company of Mary, who refused to sell it. On 31st May the ACT government passed legislation which would empower the government to take over the Mercy Hospital, and all its assets on Monday 3rd July, if necessary with the assistance of the police.
Federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton also waded into the debate, calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene and “override the Act, to stop this outrageous hostile takeover.”
Rt. Reverend Anthony Fisher, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, condemned the Mercy Hospital takeover “as an abuse of property rights and religious freedom.”
Canberra doctors opposed the takeover and condemned the lack of consultation. The Nurses’ Union was also opposed to the takeover. A petition opposing the takeover was signed by 32,000 people.
The Little Company of Mary, which managed the hospital, took out an injunction to the Supreme Court of ACT to stop the takeover. Their appeal was rejected by the Court.
Right to Life believes that this takeover is a warning, not only to Australians, but also to all New Zealanders, of the threat of a Labour-Green government that is intent on imposing a culture of death, with the killing of the unborn and the vulnerable in our community, by assisting terminally ill people in suicide or permitting doctors to kill their patients with a lethal injection.
Right to Life believes that a future New Zealand Labour-Green government could coerce the 33 hospices in New Zealand which provide palliative care, by withholding funding, if they continue to refuse to allow doctors to kill their patients or to assist in their suicide.
There are also 278 Private Hospitals in New Zealand, many of them church or religious managed, which also could be pressured to perform abortions and allow euthanasia on their campus.
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life Inc.