Noisy demonstrations in front of Parliament House do work, say the politician and the activist behind a bill to stop sex-selective abortions in New South Wales. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
“When there’s a rally out in front of Parliament House, everyone inside Parliament has a little sneak peek to see how big it is. If you’ve got 150 people there, that’s one thing. If you’ve got 5000 people there, that’s quite another thing,” John Ruddick said.
Mr Ruddick, the sole member of the Libertarian Party in the NSW Parliament, will introduce his private member’s bill, the Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Sex Selection Prohibition) Bill, on October 22.
Joanna Howe, the pro-life crusader from South Australia, will be leading a twilight rally to support the bill. Dr Howe believes that these demonstrations are an essential part of the political process.
“Every great social change is precipitated by people coming out in large numbers like that. That is just such an important part of driving change,” she said. “In my view, if you’re, pro-life, and you don’t attend the rallies, then you’re not really pro-life.”
Sex-selective abortion is aborting an unborn child on the basis of its sex. A couple may prefer a son instead of a daughter, or they may only want a boy and a girl.
What has energised Mr Ruddick’s bill is what he calls “the rolled gold Olympic champion of studies” – a peer-reviewed study published in May in the journal PLOS Global Public Health written by academics at Edith Cowan University and Curtin University in Western Australia. Using data gathered from 2.1 million registered births over 21 years in WA and NSW, they found that “the sex ratio at birth exceeded expectations for children born to Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese mothers”.
Mr Ruddick’s bill aims to stop doctors performing sex-selective abortions by fining convicted doctors $21,000 or five years in jail or both – and their employers $42,000. There would be no penalty for the mother.
“Now that we’ve got the evidence from the Edith Cowan University study, I really do not know what arguments abortion supporters can use against the bill, except for racism,” Mr Ruddick said.
The rally will take place on Macquarie Street, Sydney, in front of NSW Parliament House, from 5.30 to 6.30 pm on October 22.
FULL STORY
Ruddick, Howe unite to ban sex-selective abortions in NSW (By Michael Cook, The Catholic Weekly)
