Key Australian pro-life figure Margaret Tighe dies at age 94

Margaret Tighe, an eminent figure of Australia’s pro-life movement for over six decades, has passed away at the age of 94, leaving behind a legacy of advocacy for the unborn, the vulnerable, the sick, and the elderly.

For numerous Australian pro-life families, her name has been equated with a determination to champion the pro-life cause amid uphill political circumstances and cultural hostility.

Key Takeaways:

• Margaret Tighe, a pro-life leader in Australia involved in activism since 1967, has died at age 94.

• Tributes are pouring in from across the country, discussing her bravery and accomplishments on behalf of the most vulnerable.

The Details:

As eulogies for Margaret Tighe come from church leaders, political allies, and pro-life advocates, it is evident that Tighe did not just spearhead a movement; she also shaped countless pro-lifers by being a “tireless campaigner and protestor for the rights of the unborn,” as the Catholic Diocese of Broken Bay put it.

Tighe’s conviction, influenced by her Catholic faith, her strategic thinking, and immense sacrifice to protect the dignity of the lives of the unborn and vulnerable, enabled countless others to live. 

“She has been an inspirational leader in a movement that suffers many injustices by those who oppose the undeniable human right – the inalienable right to life,” Alan Tyson, Vice President, Committee of Management and staff of The Right to Life Australia, said of Tighe. 

Tighe and her late husband Ron were pharmacists living a typical family life before she withdrew from her career to raise their children and answer what she discerned as a lifelong call to safeguard life. She gave up career prospects and even sacrificed valuable family time to dedicate herself to the pro-life cause in the 1960s — a period of time when abortion and later euthanasia were garnering political steam in Australia.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reported: 

When the UK regulated abortion laws in 1967, she quickly became involved in Right to Life Victoria. She served as president of that group, later Right to Life Australia, for 23 years before retiring in 2010. Retirement, however, proved largely nominal. Tighe’s methods were hardline, confrontational and condemned.

In the early years of her movement, she adopted United States-style civil disobedience tactics and was accused of intimidatory tactics. In 1978, she and fellow campaigners were dragged away by police after obstructing the entrance to the clinic of Melbourne doctor Bertram Wainer, who had successfully campaigned for women to have legal access to abortion.

The Herald article added: 

Tighe was arrested several times over the course of her life, once spending a weekend in the lock-up after refusing to move on during a protest. In 1991, a coroner criticised aspects of her pro-life activism during the landmark Baby M case, where doctors were accused of starving a newborn baby to death. Tighe disputed the findings. She further enraged her critics in 2001 when, after a security guard was killed when a gunman entered a fertility clinic in East Melbourne, she said she was not surprised. ‘I just want to say very strongly that I abhor the use of violence,’ she said, while adding that unborn children were being killed there. ‘It is not surprising that somebody might want to take the law into their own hands.’

Tighe’s children, Justin and Elizabeth, recounted their mother as someone who was never intimidated to contest wrongdoing, particularly when it entailed violence or mistreatment of women. 

“She hated to see anybody badly treated, disregarded or left out,” Elizabeth recalled. “I recall one time she rebuked the proprietor of the car wash ... for the way he was talking to and demeaning his wife. She simply couldn’t sit by and stay silent.”

Other Commentary:

Australia’s current pro-life advocates, including Dr Joanna Howe, lauded Tighe as a woman of great bravery. “She had to deal with so much abuse and hate. She’s called a fetus worshipper, a Catholic fanatic, you name it, all of the things that they throw at me and you,” Howe penned on Facebook. “I’m a baby in this fight, compared to Margaret Tighe and we all stand on her shoulders.” 

Likewise, pro-lifer Monica Doumit admitted that it had always been challenging for Tighe in her pro-life cause: 

“We are now in a situation where abortion until birth is legal across the country and, with the exception of the Northern Territory, euthanasia and assisted suicide is available everywhere. It is likely that Margaret would have been discouraged as she watched MPs cast votes against the lives of those for whom she had spent her whole life advocating."

“However," added Doumit, "these anti-life realities would have been visited upon us much sooner if not for Margaret and those she inspired. While she would never have known in her earthly life how many lives she saved, we pray that she will now be greeted by many of these souls in heaven and intercede for the pro-life movement from there."