‘Don’t play God’ says activist

ANTI-ABORTION groups are calling for Australia to follow the United State of America’s footsteps to roll back pregnancy termination laws, with some of Toowoomba’s conservative activists comparing the procedure to war crimes committed during World War II.

Billboards displaying antiabortion slogans from Toowoomba-based group Cherish Life can be found along the highways leading to the Garden City.

Geoffrey Purcell is a Cherish Life committee member and his wife Donna is the president, and both want to revert the current abortion laws in Queensland to align with Biblical scripture.

He said his daughter had two adopted sons, both who have serious medical issues.

“(People living with disabilities) are still a person … if we start making decisions on who has the right to live – well there was a certain man in the 1930s and 40s, who had a little moustache and used to do some goose-stepping – and he decided he would make those decisions,” Mr Purcell said.

“Most people know about the Holocaust but there was also a similar program in Germany at the time which was actually also practised to some extent in the 1920s, and that was where they got people who were disabled or too feeble and started bumping them off.

“Once you set yourself up as God and ‘I’m going to decide if you’ve got this disability, so you’re going to get the bullets’, that’s a very dangerous slope and you’ll end up with what they had in the 1940s.”

When asked whether women should be able to seek an abortion after being a victim of rape, incest or for medical reasons, Mr Purcell said he still believed everyone had “the right to be born”.

“We actually have people who were born as a product of rape attend our rallies, meetings and functions, and they’ve thanked their mothers for making the decision, even though it was a traumatic experience for the mother.”