There wasn't a single mainstream media outlet at the pro-life rally in Melbourne this week. That's a shame, because the people in that crowd had more to say about this state election than any panel of experts. Most of them were Christians, and they came because Jess Wilson has signed the Liberals up to Labor's promise of taxpayer-funded late-term abortions. It took her about four hours to fall into line.

The crowd spilled off the footpath and onto the road on a warm evening with storms forecast: families with white balloons, older couples holding hand-painted signs, people quietly praying, and a line of police along the kerb keeping an eye on it all. Labor you expect. It was the Liberals folding so fast that brought these people out.

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Across the road were the usual suspects. A small bunch in pro-Palestinian gear, the same faces I see at every Melbourne protest about every issue, doing their best to drown out people who were praying. Police had the power to move them on and didn't. Every time we turn up at one of their protests and ask a question, Rebel News gets accused of disrupting them. Here they were, right next to us, doing the actual disrupting, and nobody was moved on. It's also exactly why we don't go anywhere in Melbourne without security now. On this night we only needed one guard, and apart from a couple of minor run-ins it was all good, but at every event we have to decide between one guard and ten, and it's your support at ProtectAvi.com that pays for them. 

 

 

Nobody on the pro-life side was interested in shouting back. When I asked a couple of the Christians whether they'd make an exception to their principles for that lot, I got the answer I keep hearing at these rallies: "We still have to pray for them."

A woman told me the money would do far more good helping couples who are struggling to have a baby, through adoption or IVF. A nurse whose specialty is babies put the medical case as plainly as I've heard it: elective abortion is not healthcare, because healthcare does not electively end human lives. Then a woman shared something she said she wasn't proud of. She'd had an abortion herself, at a time when she had no support, and she wanted any woman in that position to know there's a community here that will look after her and her baby. You won't hear that on the evening news.

What united the crowd was less the policy than the betrayal. One voter told me his journey: Labor as a new immigrant, then Liberal, then further right once he realised they were the same thing. Now it's One Nation. He doesn't deny women end up in hard positions, but the government paying for it is a bridge too far. "It's not the government paying for it, it's us," he said, in a state already drowning in debt. The Liberals signing up to it he called the loser Liberal mindset, chasing polling instead of principle. Moira Deeming, now running for Family First and someone who knows that party better than most, was blunter. Why would the Liberals pick this as a platform now? "Because they have rejected and exploited and abandoned their own base." I asked whether Wilson actually believes in any of it, she told me the fact I had to ask was proof she's unworthy to govern.

Then there's what Victorians are actually being asked to fund. Dr Joanna Howe, the Adelaide law professor who called the rally and travelled over for it, says 483 babies born alive after failed abortions in this state between 2010 and 2023 were left to die, a kindergarten class every year. She described feticide after 20 weeks, a potassium chloride injection into the baby's heart, with the mother going through labour anyway. A bill in New South Wales got smashed last year, she said, after her movement put more than 10,000 people on the streets. "This is a vote turner. People will vote for these babies."

One bloke in the crowd summed up the night. Looking at the counter-protesters, all he felt was sad for them. "Look at these people," he said of the rally around him. "They're living a good life. They are happy. And they're here to stand up for human life." Across the road, all the other lot could find to fight for was a mother's right to kill her own child.

Watch the full report and decide for yourself who the extremists were. Then, if you want us at the next one with the cameras the mainstream media won't send and the security Melbourne now demands, head to ProtectAvi.com and chip in. Do me a favour and share this one, too.