Event Reports

A New Campaign is Ready to Go!
A new ad has been filmed and is ready to go to air on Toowoomba TV in July!  This time we are featuring a male perspective on a baby that is not born yet.  Gavin tells of his fears when as a younger man, he thought he was not ready for fatherhood or its financial responsibility, but 7 children later, how he is delighted in his children.  Pictured below are Gavin and his wife Leisel, with 6 of their 7 children.  You can also see the ad at www.notbornyet.com in July.

Training for Pregnancy Support Workers
Next weekend, 19 & 20th June, will see the first Toowoomba training conducted by Priceless Life Centre for Pregnancy Support Workers.  This is a great step forward as the city becomes more prepared to assist those in unexpected pregnancy as well as those needing help following the birth of a baby or also post abortive support.  If you are interested in another training opportunity later in the year, please contact Liz Preston at info@pricelesslifecentre.org.au or call 07 3856 3007.
 
Emily's Voice Gala Dinner
Emily's Voice is excited to announce that abortion survivor and international prolife speaker Melissa Ohden will be coming to Toowoomba during her first Australian tour, For the Love of Life, and will be speaking at an Emily's Voice Gala Dinner on Monday, 13th September.  Please mark your diaries with this important event!  Also consider who you can invite to join you at the dinner.  Discounted tickets will be available for tables of 8.  What an excellent opportunity to promote the work of Emily's Voice and the prolife message!  Advance bookings can be made at info@emilysvoice.com.

Melissa Ohden is a saline infusion abortion attempt survivor, living after an abortion attempt on her life when her mother was 6 months pregnant. She was adopted and raised in a loving family and is now a totally healthy 33 year old, married and has a daughter of her own.

Advertising - which message?
In Britain, one pro abortion agency is advertising its services on Channel 4 TV.  Through a loop hole in the advertising code, Mary Stopes International, one of the richest abortionist groups in the world, has been encouraging pregnant women to contact them about their "options".  Over 1000 complaints have been made to the Advertising Standards Authority in the first 2 weeks the ad has shown.

Emily's Voice, however, is committed to giving the unborn a voice and giving a positive message of life in the media.  What a different message!  Thank you for your support that allows this to continue, campaign by campaign!

Abortion changes you. That is the message Michaelene Fredenberg is presenting to US commuters through her current advertising campaign.

According to LifeSiteNews, 2000 posters are displayed throughout the New York subway system for the next four weeks, as well as 5 billboards in St Louis. The posters carry a variety of messages from women, men, grandparents, siblings and friends who have been touched by abortion.

The ad campaign presents an alternative to the common misconception that everything will be alright after an abortion. Far from alright, many women find that the procedure that promised an easy solution, only brings more problems.

One poster features a young woman. The text reads, ‘I thought life would be the way it was before – at first I felt relieved, the abortion seemed to erase the problem, things are different now, I wish I could go back – abortion changes you.’

The Abortion Changes You website features personal stories and poems by those who have experienced abortion. Most describe the profound impact that abortion has had on their lives.

Michaelena, 44, was inspired to undertake the campaign after her own journey after abortion. “I thought the abortion would erase the pregnancy. I thought I could move on with my life. I was wrong,” Fredenburg explains on the website. "Abortionchangesyou.com is a safe place for those touched by abortion to begin their healing journey."

Great Feedback from Advertising 
One of the goals of Emily's Voice is "to change the way Australians think on the issue of abortion."  Some very encouraging feed back came to us recently to demonstrate that this was actually happening as a result of our advertising campaigns!

We received a report from a local high school where a classroom discussion came round to the issue of abortion and children with disabilities.  As the discussion progressed, one boy excitedly referred to the Not Born Yet ad on TV that featured Jimmy, the child with Downs Syndrome, saying, "What about that kid on the four-wheeler in the ad? He looked alright." The discussion continued and the class conclusion was that having a disability was no reason to abort a child!
 
Networking with Priceless Life Centre 
Priceless Life Centre is a pregnancy support centre located in Brisbane. They offer help to pregnant women and their families, as well as new parent support and post abortive support through both telephone and face to face counselling.  Emily's Voice is already partnering with Priceless Life Centre as they provide the practical help offered on our websites. 

Priceless Life Centre is seeking to network with individuals and groups in Toowoomba that are offering assistance to those who lack support during pregnancy and early parenting.

There will be a public meeting on Monday, 26th October at Thommy's, cnr Thomas and Neil Streets, Toowoomba at 7:30pm. 

If you are interested in this very practical area of giving support to pregnant women, please come along to this meeting.

House of Nathan and Fresh Hope representatives will also be there.   
 
Further Networking to spread the Pro-Life Message 
Emily's Voice was delighted to join a number of other pro-life organisations around Australia in supporting a recent Australian Christian Lobby initiative.  An advertisement featured in The Weekend Australian on 19th September in response to the cover of the Weekend Australian Magazine from the week before.  The cover read, "For Dear Life.  Babies born at just 23 weeks can now be saved, but they risk severe disability.  Has medical science gone too far?"  The jointly-sponsored ad used similar format to the previous week's cover, but changed the wording to:  "For Dear Life.  Babies born at just 23 weeks can now be saved, but we abort them even older.  Has abortion gone too far?" 
 
Christmas is around the corner 
To celebrate the Christmas Season, Emily's Voice is sending a precious message of life through TV, radio and the newspaper in Toowoomba.  It will be a compilation of the three NotBornYet ads shown this year, giving a Christmas spin to their stories.  The TV ads will feature the familiar scanned unborn image common to the NotBornYet ads, affirming that the best gift of all is life itself. 
 
Annual Report 
Emily's voice has released its very first Annual Report.  It has been mailed to all who have financially supported Emily's Voice during 2008-2009.  If you have not received one but would like to, please contact juliet@emilysvoice.com 

Response to Not Born Yet
Having now completed the run of the first two advertising campaigns in our Not Born Yet Series, it has been encouraging to see that our campaigns are producing a response from the general public!

People have emailed their own stories to us and these have been added to the website. Conversations have been generated on the letters to the Editor page of the Toowoomba Chronicle in the SMS section. One excited father of a child who has a disability wrote to us, "I have just seen your latest advert in relation to the parents of the child with Downs Syndrome.  I wanted to say THANK YOU! The latest campaign of "Not Born Yet" is sensational and a long time coming."

Going Further Afield!
An opportunity has opened for the Not Born Yet advertisements to be shown on Channel 10 in Launceston, Tasmania.  Through a very enthusiastic contact there, free air time has been given to Emily's Voice.  We are grateful to be able to trial the ads in another location. 
 
Conversations in Your World 
We would encourage you to generate conversations about Emily's Voice in your world, just like the ones reported above in Toowoomba's newspaper.  Talk about the ads as you gather with relatives, friends and colleagues.  Spread the word that people are being challenged and encouraged by the advertising campaigns. 

We thank you for standing with Emily's Voice during this pioneering time.  Our vision of "changing the social consciousness of the entire nation and for ordinary people to fall in love with the unborn" is huge. It's great to know there's so much support as we work toward making this vision a reality.

Used with permission