Like many other countries in the Anglosphere, the nation of Australia has a reputation for harboring the same cancerous secular leftism that is slowly killing the United States, but perhaps with a more advanced case of the illness.
Christians who reside in the United States have increasingly responded to that ailment in their nation by targeting abortion, the most deadly symptom of the disease, with the abortion abolition movement, calling for the immediate and total end of child sacrifice as a final attempt to effect healing and restoration.
Australia has now witnessed the emergence of their own abolition movement, even as their societal landscape is even more infected by the cancer than the society of the United States.
Todd Boaden, the founder of Abolish Abortion Australia, said in an interview with The Sentinel that he started the organization to address the failures of the institutionalized pro-life movement and to ensure that abortion is “abolished and criminalized to the glory of God.”
“Australia has some of the most permissive abortion laws in the world, allowing the termination of babies up to birth with the approval of two doctors for reasons as vague as the mother’s mental health,” he said.
Boaden launched the group in order to see abortion, alongside IVF and abortifacient methods of birth control, prohibited under law in Australia, ensuring that the lives of preborn people are protected with the same laws that protect the lives of born people.
Though the pro-life movement exists in Australia, he warned that they have a reputation for being “interfaith, overly inclusive, and often cowardly, embracing feminist narratives like the ‘woman as second victim’ while rarely grounding its stance in Scripture or preaching the gospel against the sin of abortion.”
“Their slogans like ‘make abortion unthinkable’ or ‘stand for life’ lack biblical weight and fail to explain why Australians should oppose abortion,” he told The Sentinel. “Over the past fifty years, the pro-life movement has only regressed, with laws becoming increasingly liberal. Even prominent pro-life advocates, politicians, and pastors admit this backward trend.”
Similar tensions between the pro-life and abolitionist approaches have emerged in the United States. While organizations and activists in the former category tend to emphasize a regulationist posture toward abortion, large coalitions of loosely aligned partners, and a secular approach, the latter pursues an immediatist posture which demands the uncompromising criminalization of abortion, a demand that advocates contend is found in Scripture.
Boaden himself used to identify with the mainstream pro-life movement in Australia, but he started to notice that very few pro-life Christians in his nation evangelized at abortion mills and hospitals where abortions are conducted. Sermons delivered by pro-life pastors rarely confronted abortion as evil, while topics like IVF and abortifacients were broadly avoided.
In the abolition movement, Boaden has found an approach toward child sacrifice that seeks to stand upon the firm foundation of Christianity, a stark contrast to the pro-life movement which has “never been distinctly Christian nor sought to confront abortion with the law and gospel.”
Abolish Abortion Australia has therefore centered their efforts on awakening the church, stirring everyday Christians to confront the child sacrifice tolerated in their society.
“We have abolitionists in prominent roles within large evangelical churches, particularly in New South Wales, who are exploring how to preach and teach on abortion and abolition,” Boaden continued. “We recently hosted our first ministry table at the Emmanuel Baptist Conference, featuring speakers Martin Iles and Joel Beeke, where God used us to make a profound impact. The soil here is fertile. Many Christians quickly embrace abolition as the faithful path forward.”
