Australian Bishops Statement on abortion as ALP policy

The following is statement is taken from the book Australian Catholic Bishops' Statements since Vatican II St. Paul Publications 1985

Adoption of abortion as official ALP policy.

July 24, 1984
The Australian Bishops are greatly disappointed by the ALP National Conference decision on abortion.
Archbishop Francis Rush, president of the Australian Bishops' conference, says this in a letter to the prime minister, Mr. Hawke.
Archbishop Rush says the Catholic Church insists that human life is to be respected from the very beginning.
Here is the text of the letter released by the conference Secretariat:

The a prime minister,
He used a great disappointment to the Catholic Bishops Australia that he Australian Labor Party has made off by shall party policy to support " the particular rights of women to choice of fertility control and abortion."
We even question the logic of making abortion by choice party policy at the same time as insisting that it is a question which each member will decide according to conscience.
Whether intended or not, it constitutes pressure on the conscience of members who disagree.
We believe that the supporters of a right to abortion make themselves part of a strange "Establishment" which, in the name of a right to choose, flies in the face of proven scientific facts and denies the right of the most defenceless human beings.
There is no need to tell you where the catholic church stands on abortion. We insist, as we have always done, that human life is to be respected from the the very beginning.
The burden of proof is on people who assert that the embryo is not human. Until they micro their case they have no right to run the risk of killing a human being.
Four years ago the Australian catholic Bishops wrote:
" There is no human being so defenceless as an unborn child.
Yet there is none at greater risk in Australia today.
Statistically, the most dangerous place forum of Australian in 1980 is a mother's womb."
What was true in 1980 is more obviously true in 1984.
Yours sincerely,
Francis Rush
Archbishop of Brisbane
President of the Australian Episcopal Conference.