Cherish Life

20/08/2026

What does Steven Miles really believe about abortion?

When political leaders speak about abortion, we should listen carefully to what they are actually saying.

Because behind the political language are real lives - unborn children who never get the opportunity to be born.

What the full video and decide for yourself.

18/08/2026

We discuss a heartwarming story about Miracle, the most premature baby to survive in Australia at 21 weeks and 4 days, highlighting the preciousness of all life and the incredible work of medical staff.

9News Queensland

17/08/2026

O’Brien’s Federal Born Alive Bill Introduced Today

Earlier this year, Australians were confronted with the story of Baby Samuel: a 16-week-old baby boy who was reportedly born alive following an abortion at Townsville Hospital and lived for approximately 30 minutes before dying.

Samuel’s story received national and international attention after an image of him was released by Dr Joanna Howe. In Queensland, it became a catalyst for renewed discussion about what happens when a baby is born alive following an abortion and what obligations are owed to that child. His story also helped encourage thousands of Queenslanders to attend the Public Gathering for Queensland Babies in February.

Now, a new Bill is set to reach Federal Parliament. Today, Federal Member for Wide Bay Llew O’Brien MP is introduced the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2026 into the House of Representatives.

At its heart of this campaign is a question, one in which many Australians may assume already has a straightforward answer: if a baby is born alive, should that child be entitled to the same legal right to medical care as any other newborn? Of course, the answer is yes.

What would the Bill do?

The 2026 Bill has not yet been formally introduced, meaning its final text is not presently available through the Federal Parliament’s Bills database. However, O’Brien’s Bill, like previous BBA Bills, will seek to ensure that babies born alive after an abortion procedure will receive a legislative right to receive healthcare, just like any newborn baby.

The Bill follows the model of the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2022, which declared that a child born alive following an abortion is a person for the purposes of Australian law. It also placed duties on health practitioners to provide medical care or treatment and established requirements relating to the collection of statistics about babies born alive following abortions.

If the 2026 Bill follows this model, its focus is not on whether an abortion can legally occur. It deals with what happens after a child has been born alive. Australians hold a wide range of views about abortion. But the question presented by this legislation is narrower: once an abortion has resulted in a live birth, should the circumstances surrounding that birth affect the medical care and legal recognition afforded to the newborn?

History of Babies Born Alive Bills in Australia

The concept of federal legislation protecting babies born alive following abortion has been before Parliament for several years.

In August 2021, then Federal Member George Christensen (Dawson) introduced the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2021 into the House of Representatives. The Bill sought to create duties for health practitioners to provide medical care or treatment to babies born alive following abortions and require reporting of those births. It ultimately lapsed when Parliament was dissolved in April 2022.

The proposal returned on 30 November 2022, when Senators Matt Canavan, Alex Antic and Ralph Babet introduced the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2022 into the Senate. In February 2023, the Bill was referred to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry. However, it was never enacted and ultimately lapsed at the end of the 47th Parliament on 21 July 2025.

The issue has also been considered at a state level. In March 2024, Member for Traeger Robbie Katter MP introduced the Termination of Pregnancy (Live Births) Amendment Bill 2024 into the Queensland Parliament. The Bill was referred to the Health, Environment and Agriculture Committee for examination, which reported on the proposal in September 2024. The Committee tabled its report recommending that the Bill not be passed.

Now, five years after the first federal proposal, Llew O’Brien is bringing the issue back before the House of Representatives.

Why is the Bill returning now?

The renewed push comes amid increasing public attention on cases of babies reportedly born alive following abortions in Australia.

In Queensland, Baby Samuel’s story has given the debate a human face. His case prompted widespread discussion about late-term abortion, the treatment of babies born alive and the adequacy of existing protections.

Whatever one’s position on abortion itself, Samuel’s story raises an important question: what duties arise when a baby is born alive following an abortion? That is the question Mr O’Brien’s Bill will now ask Federal Parliament to consider.

The distinction at the heart of the debate is important. This Bill is not asking Parliament to determine the legality of the abortion that preceded the birth. Once a baby has been born alive, there is a living child outside his or her mother’s body. The question for Parliament is what happens next.

If every child born alive is equal before the law, the circumstances of that child’s birth should not determine whether he or she is entitled to medical care, protection and human dignity.

What happens next?

As a private member’s bill, introduction into the House of Representatives is only the beginning. The Bill will now go through a series of stages, we will update our supporters on the progress and when action is immediately needed.

16/08/2026

05/08/2026

Every Australian State, bar the NT, has introduced ‘voluntary assisted dying’ or VAD legislation. The NT is set to make it legal this August. All this is occurring just as Canada is on course to reach 100,000 deaths by Medical Assistance in Dying (‘MAID’).

Just a few days ago, 24th of July, on the second day of the Australia Labor Party’s National Conference the delegates decided that the federal laws relating to voluntary assisted dying should change to allow terminally ill patients to use telehealth services.

Currently Australia bans people from using telehealth for VAD consultations, with doctors facing fines of up to $300,000. The national Labor conference resolved that this should be removed

Yet even prominent members of the Australian Labor Party don’t feel comfortable supporting this change up to and including the Prime Minister. Anthony Albanese said “I’m a supporter of voluntary euthanasia… but it’s also important that protections be placed around it.” He holds the view that voluntary assisted dying consultations “...should be face to face” otherwise voluntary assisted dying would be undermined.

The Attorney-General of Australia Michelle Rolland said “I am personally not convinced that a person confronting an end-of-life decision shouldn’t be afforded the dignity of a personal face-to-face consultation with a medical practitioner." The use of dignity is extremely ironic in these circumstances. She goes on to say “These provisions are there for a good reason: they were enacted to deter ill-intentioned individuals from encouraging vulnerable people to self-harm or commit suicide.”

Of course it’s incoherent, there is no additional dignity in being approved to being killed by the government through a zoom call compared to being approved by the government in-person. It is all a defacement of human dignity.

However, it is nonetheless important that this not be implemented nationally because it will lead to, as Ms. Rowland alludes, people who are suicidal taking advantage of it and it will simply lead to more voluntary assisted dying because it will increase the exalted accessibility of VAD.

Australia appears well on its way down the slippery slope that was warned about just years earlier before the introduction of VAD laws in Queensland on the 1st of January 2023. Truly a tragic milestone in Australia’s history, a milestone that will result in thousands of lives taken that could be afforded better medical options such as counselling or greater palliative care.

In response, we urge all Queenslanders to take action immediately. If you live in a federal electorate represented by a Labor MP in Queensland, please contact your local member as soon as possible. Their phone number and email address are provided in the post link below.

If you do not live in a Labor-held electorate, we encourage you to contact the Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, or the Leader of the House, Tony Burke, by email and make your concerns known.

07/07/2026

My goal here is not to be overtly polemic or antagonistic. I am sure Simon Smart is a good man who loves Jesus, but I have a big concern with his comments in The Guardian regarding Christians voting for One Nation. Smart stated:

“The anti-immigration, anti-refugee stance of One Nation will be stumbling block to people whose faith calls them to welcome the stranger and to view all people as precious because they’re made in the image of God … those Christians who are drawn to the rhetoric of Pauline Hansen may have good reason to pause and reconsider.”

Certainly, Pauline Hanson's comments about Australia’s lax immigration policy and being a "monocultural" society have sparked huge debate. I do not wish to enter that discussion here. My concern is not primarily with what was said, but with what was left unsaid by a Christian organisation that seeks to be a voice for Christianity in the public square.

To be clear, there are many social issues Christians should be concerned about and carefully weigh when deciding how to vote. However, none is more significant than the issue of abortion. Yet Smart, and the Guardian, fail to mention that in Hansen’s Press Club speech she also expressed her disgust at third-trimester abortion. She stated:

“It’s a discussion that needs to be held with the Australian people. I can tell you to abort a baby a day before birth is abhorrent and disgusting, that is what I oppose … too many abortions happen in this country … even at 20 weeks it is too late to have an abortion. 39 weeks to have an abortion, that is clearly not humane.”

Immigration policy and the treatment of refugees are important issues worthy of serious consideration, but no issue should be more immediate on the Australian Christian agenda than abortion - a nation in which every state now permits abortion up to birth under various legal frameworks.

In Queensland alone, since the abortion law was passed in 2018, 693 babies from 2018 and 2024 have had potassium chloride injected into their mother’s amniotic sac, or directly into their hearts, causing their deaths in what should be the safest place in the world for them. Tragically, many of these babies have been born alive and left to die following the abortion procedure.

When Smart states, “those Christians who are drawn to the rhetoric of Pauline Hansen may have good reason to pause and reconsider.” My question is, pause and reconsider who?

Labor introduced these abortion laws. At a federal level, unlike Hansen, the Liberal leader Angus Taylor remains tight lipped on his abortion stance. In Queensland, the Liberal National Party has adopted Labor's ideological position and even gagged debate on the issue in 2024, preventing elected representatives from speaking or voting according to their convictions. Except for Mackay MP Nigel Dalton, the LNP then voted against a Gag reversal motion in 2026.

In SA in the Upper House, a third trimester Bill led by Sarah Gane (Family First) passed. In the Lower House, a Bill led by One Nation MP Chantelle Thomas, to stop third trimester abortions was voted down. At a state level in Queensland and Perth, The KAP and the Australian Christian Party have been a constant voice advocating for the unborn. However, the current political reality is that One Nation is the only party with genuine momentum behind efforts to to succeed in stopping some abortion practices in Australia.

So again, I ask, if abortion is the immediate issue that Christians should concern themselves with – then who else should we consider? Is this not, in the words of Francis Shaeffer, who experienced a similar trend in the 1980’s with the Republican Party in the US, a “unique open window”?

Let’s be frank, The Guardian wants to weaken the One Nation ascendency, and one way to achieve that is by fracturing her potential support base of which there is none bigger than the Christian voting block - in the article’s own words “44% of the population identifying as Christian.”

My fear is that, with this article, Simon Smart has unfortunately, played into the Guardian’s narrative and, in doing so, has come across as potentially misleading to the very people I am sure he wants to educate.

Out of curiosity, I scrolled through Centre for Public Christianity's social media accounts. I found zero posts addressing abortion. I also searched for abortion on their website – the last article written on the issue was over seven years ago.

So, we are left with the strange situation of a non-Christian leader of a political party publicly calling for an end to late-term abortion, while a Christian public commentary ministry remains silent on the issue altogether.

Maybe the real question is do Christians need to pause and reconsider who is informing them in the public arena given this unique open window that is presented to us?

30/06/2026

Donate today through the link in our bio

Every day, innocent lives depend on people who are willing to speak when they cannot.

The unborn have no vote, no platform, and no voice of their own. That’s why Cherish Life exists—to advocate, educate, and equip all people to stand for the dignity of every human life.

When you give to Cherish Life, you’re not simply making a donation. You’re helping to build a culture that values every life, support campaigns that defend the vulnerable, and ensure that the voice of the unborn is heard in our churches, communities, and parliament.

If you believe every human life has inherent value, would you consider standing with us today?

Together, we can be a voice for the voiceless.

22/06/2026

Great little shoutout at the weekend from the “leftwing” media.
 
Here is Tory Shephard from the Guardian

At the summit, Matthew Cliff, of the rightwing lobby group Cherish Life, said for two years it had been working with the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), FamilyVoice, the Australian Family Association, Answers in Genesis and the anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe.

“We keep on working, we’re always strategising,” he said.
Cherish Life was “obviously the tip of the spear” of a coalition of anti-abortion groups, ACL’s Rob Norman said.

 
So my response is this – absolutely we never going to stop advocating for the unborn
 
And the goal of the coalition is simple – the Church is the biggest voting block in the state and our goal is make every Christian aware of who are the ‘real’ pro-life candidates and when the time comes who to vote and who not to vote for.

17/06/2026

Flying home after a full and inspiring few days.

It was a real privilege to attend the Church and State Conference over the weekend and spend time with so many like-minded people who are passionate about shaping the future of our nation.

The conversations were a powerful reminder that momentum is building right across Australia as more people step forward to champion a culture that values and protects every human life.

To finish off the tour, I had the opportunity to speak at a school in regional Queensland on one of the most important questions any person can ask: What does it mean to be human?

Grateful for the friendships and the shared commitment to making a lasting difference. The work continues ‼️

Matthew Cliff
Dave Pellowe
QLD Australian Christian Lobby
thelolastand
Bird Flip
Pro-life Health Professionals Australia (PHPA)
Lyle Shelton
Robert Katter
Senator Malcolm Roberts
Pauline Hanson

08/06/2026

Queensland is fast becoming the abortion capital of Australia.

In 2024, there were 17,005 prescriptions for the MS-2 Step abortion pill in Queensland—accounting for 37% of the national total. By comparison, Victoria recorded just 10,000.

So the question must be asked: Why is Queensland moving even further down this path?

The changes allowing nurses and midwives to prescribe the abortion pill will make abortion more accessible than ever before.

At a time when abortion numbers are already soaring, the Government’s response is not to pause and ask why—but to expand access even further.

And there is another question that deserves scrutiny: who benefits from these changes? With thousands more prescriptions being issued, pharmaceutical companies stand to profit from every additional abortion pill prescribed.

Queensland should be supporting women and protecting children—not normalising abortion as a routine part of healthcare.

The concern is clear: we are witnessing the deliberate creation of an abortion culture?