Pro-life advocates gathered outside Parliament House in Sydney on Tuesday to provide their support for legislation calling for a ban on sex-selective abortions in New South Wales. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
The private member’s bill, introduced by Libertarian MLC John Ruddick and set to be debated in the upper house this week, calls for the prohibition of abortions performed on the basis of the unborn child’s sex.
The legislation is based upon peer-reviewed research conducted last year by Edith Cowan and Curtin universities, which found sex ratios at birth in NSW and Western Australia were male-biased, and exceeded the biological norm of a 1.05 sex ratio at birth.
Rally organiser and long-time anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe said the primary goal of both the bill, and the pro-life movement more broadly, was to protect the human rights of unborn children, “who don’t have a say in the matter”.
“The horrible reality is that in NSW, close to 20,000 unborn babies are killed every year, and in NSW, unborn babies have no human rights protection through all 40 weeks of pregnancy,” Dr Howe said.
“This is not healthcare, this is not protective of women, and we are here to say tonight that it ends with us.”
Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Tony Percy began the evening by leading the crowd in praying the Lord’s Prayer and sharing an anecdote about the “miracle of God which exists in all babies”.
Mr Ruddick also addressed the crowd, saying there were “no good arguments against this bill” and asking the crowd to “maintain the rage”.
He claimed the universities study had “proven” sex-selective abortions are happening on a “frightening scale”.
“This may be a bill about abortion, but it’s also about whether we think little girls or little boys have equal value,” he said.
Federal One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce had been promoted as a key speaker at the rally and he didn’t disappoint the crowd, telling them that supporting pro-life legislation “is the right thing to do.”
“If, by some perverse form of logic, it was legal to kill toddlers because they were the wrong sex, we would have a demonstration that would go from here, over the Harbour Bridge, all the way out to Blacktown, but for some unknown reason, it’s ok to kill babies in utero,” he said.
FULL STORY
‘The time is now’: Thousands of Sydneysiders rally outside Parliament House to ban sex-selective abortion (By Alex Woolnough, The Catholic Weekly)
