Anti-abortion campaigner Troy Newman was in the custody of Border Force officers yesterday, after he refused to accept that his visa had been cancelled and arrived in Australia without one.
Crikey reported that he was intending to dispute the cancellation, but that “the hearing did not take place this morning after the court was advised that he didn’t wish to proceed with the application”.
Good.
Well, good that he has left the country. I’m not convinced that it’s good his visa was cancelled.
Newman has a long, and to my mind, abhorrent history in the US. He’s shown up at schools and churches displaying large gruesome photos of alleged abortions, been photographed with thumbs up in front of the clinic where Dr George Tiller was murdered, he wrote a book about abortion in which he described doctors who perform abortion as “murderers” and called for their “lawful execution”, said women who have abortions are “contract killers”, written guidelines for anti-abortion protesters on invading the privacy of women who have abortions, including taking photos of them and sharing them around their community, and advocated systematic harassment of clinic workers. I could continue, but you get the general idea. In case you need any more, here’s a quote from his book:
The innocent blood of the New Covenant in Christ has the power to atone for all the innocent bloodshed from the beginning of time to the end, and to purify the whole earth – the land. Rejecting that innocent blood is to reject the only standard that is effective against innocent bloodshed, excluding the lawful execution of the murderers, which is commanded by God in Scripture.
If you were playing devil’s advocate I suppose you could argue that he was calling for the lawful execution of people he claims are murderers in a country that still executes murderers. It’s revolting and dangerous, but not, in America, illegal.
Newman has been very careful to stay just on the right side of the law in America. He’s been detained on disturbing the peace charges, but he’s never been convicted of a serious crime.
Which makes the cancellation of his visa slightly disturbing.
While I find his views ridiculous and his methods abhorrent, I’m not convinced that banning him from entering the country is in our best interests.
Richard di Natale promised Peter Short (now deceased) that he would bring euthanasia legislation to the parliament. If he manages to get the subject into the public debate, it would not be unreasonable for doctors from overseas who have advocated or even assisted in euthanasia to come to Australia and participate in that debate.
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants recently cancelled his trip to Nauru because current legislation could mean that staff at the camps could be imprisoned for talking to him. Again, in the public debate on this, would we want a Nauruan national, or an international expert on human rights to come to Australia and speak about the internment camps?
Under both those circumstances the immigration minister would be within his rights to refuse or cancel visas to such people, and after Chris Brown, Newman and that rapey guy no one wanted here, there is a precedent to do so.
Newman is particularly dangerous to women in Australia who still don’t all have access to safe legal abortion, his stance puts women’s lives at risk. If he had been allowed to come to Australia, women would have rallied, we would have protested, lobbied, written, spoken and demanded that our public access to abortion not be further limited. It would have been a fight, and it would even ramped up public debate on abortion, which absolutely carries its own risks.
But banning him from coming at all is not going to stop the anti-choice lobby groups, it’s not going to have any effect on changing the current laws that prevent women in Queensland and New South Wales easily accessing safe abortions, it’s just going to set a precedent that may not be something we are so willing to celebrate when the next person banned from Australia is someone we actually want to hear from.