As the Catholic Weekly goes to print today, the Greens abortion bill has still not been voted on in the Lower House, so we do not know what the final wash up will be.
We know that an amended version of the bill passed the Upper House on Thursday evening, 27 votes to 14.
We know that the proposed attacks on individual and institutional conscience were taken out of the bill, and that the attempts to restrict reporting on abortion in NSW backfired. Not only did a majority of MPs vote against an attempt to remove existing requirements for abortions to be reported to the Secretary of Health; they added an obligation to provide an annual report to parliament that will finally give details of how many abortions are performed annually and the adverse consequences of those.
The most likely scenario is that the bill will go through the Lower House in the same form passed by the Upper House, meaning that the parliament will vote to accept the problematic provision allowing nurses and endorsed midwives to prescribe abortifacient drugs for babies in their first 9-10 weeks of life.
If that’s the case, how might those who phoned or wrote to their MPs, who rallied and prayed and lobbied in other ways feel about this result?
On the one hand, we can consider it a pro-life victory. The bill was gutted of its attempts to coerce health professionals and faith-based hospitals to participate in the taking of unborn human life, and the abortion data kept hidden for so long will now start to be made known.
On the other hand, we can also view it as a loss. At the same time thousands and thousands of people were rallying directly outside the parliamentary chamber on Wednesday night in opposition to the bill, a majority of those inside the chamber voted to let it proceed to the next stage.
So, what do we do after the passage of this bill? Do we cry and commiserate that our already extreme abortion laws have once again been expanded by a parliament seemingly disinterested in hearing from the people they are elected to represent? Or do we celebrate that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and congratulate ourselves from turning a very bad bill into a bad law?
As advocates for life and truth, this seems to be the tension in which we live, and often it’s difficult to know exactly how to feel when these battles end.
If I can offer one thing that I have learned from these rollercoasters, it is regardless of whether we count it as a win or a loss or a mix of the two, we have to suit up for the next battle and the one after that and the one after that.
We will win some of these battles, we will likely lose many more of them. But – as the late, great Cardinal George Pell used to say – the real shame is in not putting up a fight at all.
What I’ve learned is that we won’t always know the fruits of our efforts, at least not this side of heaven.
While this particular bill might pass in a reduced form, perhaps the next one or the one after that might be defeated, and a future one might never be tabled at all because some would-be proponents will fear the backlash that will come.
And once we stop the bad bills from seeing the light of day, then maybe we can go on the offensive, proposing our own laws that will actively save innocent lives rather than simply stopping any more from being killed. Perhaps we will even help convert the culture into one that wants to protect the vulnerable.
But this will only happen if we keep fighting and rallying and lobbying and praying, though, regardless of how we feel about the outcome of this particular bill. Our God is much greater than that, and so too must be our vision.
