Religious Right Groups
Right to Life Australia
| Leadership: | President: Mrs Margaret Tighe |
| Date formed: | 1973 (as Right to Life Victoria) |
| Area of operation: | A national body dominated by its Victorian branch. |
| Estimated membership: | Tighe claimed 14,000 Victorian members in 1988, but the group has been in fairly steady decline since that time. Formal membership is probably still in the low thousands, but the activist core is almost certainly no more than a few hundred. |
| Finances: | Revenue peaked at around $300,000 in 1986-87 but then fell sharply. The budget still probably runs into six figures but the organisation struggles to keep its head above water. |
| Main objectives: | ‘To provide an organisational structure for collective citizen action to maintain the right to life of every human being from conception’. (Right to Life News, Jan.-Feb. 1982, 11). Effectively this boils down to opposing abortion, euthanasia and related practices. |
| Main activities: | Lobbying politicians, including the ‘targeting’ of unsympathetic candidates at election time; picketing and other harassment of abortion providers; ‘pregnancy action’, i.e. organised attempts to persuade pregnant women to carry the foetus to term; public demonstrations. RTLA is a militant organisation, but declining numbers and legal action have restricted some of its activities in recent years. |
| Links with other groups: | For many years RTLA stood apart from mainstream anti-abortion groups, such as the members of the more moderate Australian Federation of Right to Life Associations, but Tighe and her friends seem rather more welcome in these circles now. Several Religious Right bodies such as Salt Shakers maintain a friendly relationship with the RTLA and advertise its conferences and marches etc. |
| Publications: | Small bi-monthly newsletter RTLA News; occasional letters from Tighe. |
| Sample quotes: | “Your country is bleeding - bleeding with the blood of your children.” (RTL News, Jan.-Feb. 1983, 2) |
| “Plans are being considered to allow the infamous Morning After Pill (Postinor-2) to be sold over the counter in pharmacies. Those who are in favour of this claim that it will prevent unwanted pregnancies. The reality is that the morning after pill will cause early abortions if taken after fertilisation occurs. The woman in question will have no idea as to whether or not she has been pregnant and if using this powerful hormonal substance regularly … she could have multiple early abortions. There will be increased pressure on teenagers in particular, to be frequently available for sex …” (Editor’s note: “Mrs Tighe practised as a pharmacist before having her family and then becoming Australia’s foremost prolife activist”) (RTLA News, June-July 2003, 4) | |
| Assessment: | RTLA no longer strikes fear into the hearts of politicians as it did during the 1970s and 1980s. Its major campaigns have met with little success and there appears to be no prospect of improved fortunes in the foreseeable future. However, its very existence acts as a brake on the demands of those seeking more liberal abortion and euthanasia laws. |
| Contact details: | 45 Nicholson Street, East Brunswick, Vic. 3057 P O Box 540 Carlton North, Vic. 3054 www.rtlaust.com |
