Vikki Campion: Abortion bill not about women’s rights – this is politicians showing moral superiority
If the Green’s MLCs believe it is up to conjecture on how to define a woman, how can they define a woman’s rights?, asks Vikki Campion.
Opinion
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Humans have done the most atrocious things when they have been denied the ability to follow their conscience.
Yet, politicians next week will get a conscience vote on whether to stop doctors and midwives from using their consciences on whether a late-term abortion is medically required.
These politicians believe their political conscience is better than a medical one. This jolt of insanity has obviously been mothered by the NSW Greens. So while the nation prematurely celebrates a farewell to three federal lower house Greens, don’t dismiss their hold on Labor yet.
The mother of the bill, Amanda Cohn, is a doctor who prescribes medical abortions and gender transitions. She was voted into the NSW Upper House with 590 First Preference votes.
You can almost fit more people on a 747. Since she only got in on 0.01 per cent of the ballot, she relied on the Greens brand to be elected our 17th MLC. Did the people voting Greens think they were voting for medicinal cannabis and koala habitat? Or did they garner those votes by removing doctors’ rights to a conscience and forcing midwives to conduct medical abortions on babies aged up to 22 weeks?
If the Green’s MLCs believe it is up to conjecture on how to define a woman, how can they define a woman’s rights?
In her maiden speech, Dr Cohn noted “the importance of standing up for all persecuted people”, citing climate and trans rights. She said she was personally grateful to Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi. So it should come as no surprise that while the NSW Upper House shut down any debate on aborting little girls in favour of male heirs, they did find the time to chew the fat on babies in Gaza, a region they have precisely zero influence.
In Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann’s 922-word sermon on the bill, a full third was devoted not to the women of NSW, her actual constituents, but to pregnant women in Gaza who “have no safe place to give birth”. Apparently, the plight of NSW mums birthing roadside because the NSW government shuts down so many maternity wards is not dramatic enough.
“I heard one member who opposed the bill say that none of us has the right to take away the life of another. I ask where are they in condemning the actions of the Israeli government, for example, in bombing hospitals where newborn babies are?” she said.
Yes, Ms Faehrmann, they should not be bombing babies in incubators, nor doing what is practised in Australia, which is leaving babies born alive after abortion to die in a tin basin, without so much as palliative care, in a country where we do have incubators but exclude them from it, thanks to some perverse mind-trick where they have no worth.
Compassion, it seems, is simply an argument of geography.
Is she perhaps forgetting that this bill is about forcing doctors who don’t want to end a life to end life – even if they cannot find a medical reason to do so? Don’t be fooled. This bill is not about giving women access to abortion. If you want abortion, give us maternity care.
We have lost 140 maternity wards across Australia. In rural NSW, almost one in 50 babies are “born before arrival”, beside the road, in cars on the road, in ambulances and even in public toilets. Many maternity wards are now basically part-time.
If the bill goes through in its current form, nurses and midwives will also be asked to perform abortions on babies up to 22 weeks old, by any means, including by using an instrument. If anyone but a doctor does that now, they risk a seven-year jail term.
It’s one thing to give a pill to a woman who does not want any more children at six weeks gestation, but this idea of midwives performing an abortion up to 22 weeks is not even a matter of conscientious objection because they have chosen the role of bringing new life into the world.
Which politician is asking midwives if they even want to abort babies?
This is not about women’s rights; this is about politicians showing their moral superiority, giving themselves a conscience vote so another person cannot exercise theirs. The conceit is astounding. They also gagged debate on how easy this makes sex selective abortion, shutting down Liberal MLC Damien Tudehope and Libertarian MLC Phillip Ruddick.
If these measures are justified, have the conscience to have the debate.
GET BACK TO BASICS ON ENERGY INSTEAD OF TRYING TO IMITATE LABOR
Forget worrying about the leaders this week, whoever is in charge now won’t be by the time the Coalition claws back power.
It’s one of the history lessons Australia forgets. Leaders of oppositions after election losses never become a leader of government, a fact they forget at their peril.
Aside from arguing over the spoils of defeat and exposing further internal wounds, the LNP’s biggest blunder would be cuddling up to Labour’s intermittent power folly and keep calling for the magical potion made up of “a balanced mix of renewables”.
Stop promising in opposition what you cannot perform in government.
This idea that more wind and solar will be cheaper is a lie. The facts are in your power bill, your taxes and the subsidies going to generators.
You are no better than the alternative if you proffer a lie as your preferred policy.
So why did the LNP think they could promise cheaper power with more of the same, plus nuclear, which seemed so far away when so much had to be done to lift the ban?
Nuclear needs not to be abandoned but wholly explained – by experts, not politicians. But the cheapest form of power is coal and perversely not in consideration.
Their muddled message was against certain ocean wind factories, but not all. Some were bad for the whales, others weren’t. Voters saw through this concoction.
Those Nationals who had the courage to call out the environmental vandalism and economic suicide of Labor’s intermittent energy obsession increased their margins. Voters reward backbone.
It’s time to rip up the old script and return to economic sanity, energy realism and a total rejection of the associated climate dogma fleecing us all. As so many Liberals learned last weekend, a pale imitation of Labor will always come second to the genuine article.
LIFTER
The winner of the game in a grand final where they were walloped, LNP Flynn MP Colin Boyce who brought home a 6.3 per cent swing to him against a tide of red, while he talked energy realism.
LEANER
Albo rebuking his supporters ready to boo Peter Dutton saying in Australia, we treat people with respect”. Great attitude. Where was the respect for the rest of the campaign when he was being dehumanised as a nuclear monster? It only appeared once Dutton lost Dickson.
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