A Greens bill to require doctors who object to abortion to be forced to formally refer patients to somone who will perform a termination, and allow midwives and nurse practitioners to prescribe abortion pills, drew a large protest outside the NSW Parliament last night. Religious leaders, and a former prime minister addressed the 6,000 strong crowd. As the rally took place the Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025 passed the second reading vote in the Upper House, with the debate expected to be running until Tuesday.
The Other Cheek reported details of the bill and a statement protesting the bill by Anglican archbisop Kanishka Raffel: ‘Infringes faith freedoms:’ Anglicans protest Greens’ abortion bill last month.
Former PM Tony Abbott was a surprise guest and succinctly outlined objections to the Bill.
“Thank you everyone, Abbott told the demo. “Thank you for supporting decency. Thank you for supporting the best values of our country, our culture, and our civilisation.
“I’m not here to talk about abortion, although I deeply regret the fact that there are many tens of thousands of abortions every year in this country and there shouldn’t be.
“I’m not here to talk about religion, although I take our faith seriously and I wish it was held more widely and more enthusiastically.
“I’m here to talk about freedom of conscience. Conscience should be at the heart of any decent civilised society and this legislation which is about to be rammed through the state parliament, is a fundamental assault on freedom of conscience, a fundamental assault on one of the most precious freedoms that we have and we should always cherish. What this legislation is attempting to do is to force every health professional and to support every health institution into facilitating abortion. The [bill changes the] current obligation to refer into an obligation to facilitate. This is designed to drive conscientious health professionals out of the system and it’s designed to take religious institutions out of our health system.
” I want to make a political point and i want to make a point of principle. The political point is it’s absolutely shameful that the Minn’s [Labor] government is using government time to force this Greens’ bill through a parliament. Particularly after repeated assurances that this would not happen.
“So, shame on the Minns government in this conspiracy with the extremist Greens, but I want to make it even more fundamental point of principle. This is an attempt to cancel conscientious health professionals. It’s an attempt to drive good Christian people and good Muslim people and good Jewish people, good people of faith out of our health system. It’s designed to cancel them and it’s designed to drive institutions of principle, of faith out of our system. It’s a shameful attempt to change our society for the worst. It’s a shameful attempt to cancel Christianity. It’s an assault on our fundamental rights and freedoms and my friends, it must be fought . It must be fought in the conversations that we respectfully and decently have with everyone, with any influence in our public lives. So my God bless you, my God bless our country and my God bless our society from this shameful act of decline.”
The rally was organised and led by Dr Joanna Howe, like Abbott a Rhodes scholar, and a law lecturer at the University of Adelaide who has become an anti abortion campaigner.
Teeshirts with “Minns must Act” printed on them organised by Howe were handed out at the rally. But as news of the bill passing the second reading stage in the Upper House reached the rally chants turned into “Minns must Go” with Howe expressing the view that even if some Labor mmebers voted against the bill, the anti-abortion movement she leads will run a marginal seats campaign against the Minns giovernment at the next NSW state election in eighteen months time.
” Thank you all for being here,” Howe greeted the crowd. “It’s so important that we stand up. It’s so important that we rally. I’m going to tell you why. They’re going to tell you that this bill is about availability, about making abortion more available, available in the regions. That’s not true. Abortion, like any procedure, is already way more available in the regions that ‘s so many life saving procedures in our region,…than to save the life of a cancer patient.
“What this bill is about is it’s about silencing objection to abortion. It’s about trying to remove the abortion as a lower question in the public space. Back in 2016, the people in this place passed the law that prevented you form even silently protesting near an abortion clinic. [Their aim weas removing any public objection for abortion, then they decriminalised abortion right up until the day of birth in 2019. What this about is it’s about removing institutional objection. It’s about removing individual objection. … It’s about allowing nurses to prescribe pills as if they are panadol.
“They are trying to remove abortions as a moral question. They’re trying to say that abortion is no big deal. You know what? It’s a big deal. It’s the biggest human rights violation in this world at this moment.”
Howe congatulated Liberal MPs who left the chamber and lined up on the verandah behind the fence that seperated the rally from the parliament. Relgious leaders at the rally included Catholic, Melkite and Maronite bishops led by Archbishop Antony Fisher. This Reporter overheard the Catholic writer Monica Doumit who also spoke, telliing a confident that Fisher had been due to say mass at the scheduled time for the rally and had deferred the mass.
Speakers welcomed Jewish and Muslim attenders to the rally which appeared to be mostly Catholic. No Protestant religious leaders were name checked as far as this writer could tell.
As the rally drew to a close with loud chants the police were steering attenders away from a small counter protest. As The Other Cheek passed by they were yelling “Pig’s go home.” The Police remained calm. The police horses stayed lined up further down the street.
UPDATE: a post from Antony Fisher
“I was one of six bishops who attended the rally outside parliament last night, with dozens of clergy and thousands of faithful of all religions and none. They were united in their disgust regarding the radical Greens abortion bill currently before the state parliament. I thank each one for their participation.
“‘Fear not those who can kill the body so much as those who would destroy both body and soul in hel’–Matthew 10:28. For a state with some of the most permissive abortion laws and highest abortion rates in the world to move to kill the bodies of even more babies is dumbfounding. But the determination to kill the souls of health professionals and institutions as well, by forcing their participation or by co-opting our nurses and midwives is truly fearsome, indeed hellish.
“The government should never have given this bill the time of day. I am grateful to those MPs who oppose it. I pray this bill will not pass.”
Image: Waiting for the rally to start at NSW Parliament.
we know why people hate the catholic church and bigots like tony abbot
There were at least 2 Anglicans in the crowd…myself and my wife but once again was disappointed by the lack of visible Anglican clergy as speakers and crowd supporters. Was the Archbishop invited??? to speak
All speakers spoke well. There needs to be more speakers from other christian denominations….Anglican, Uniting , Jewish, Islamic. Were there leaders invitied by Dr Jo.???