This is a tough topic so buckle yourselves in.
On Sunday the 28th of July, a new bill was unveiled by the independent member for Sydney, Alex Greenwich.
Greenwich made an agreement with Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, that the bill would be introduced for the first time just a few days later, on the 1st of August, and passed the same day. The usual parliamentary debate on new bills would be cancelled.
Fortunately, the plan was changed when several MPs and pro-life groups pushed back.
This bill is in fact among the most extreme bills in the entire world.
I would imagine only Canada is really any worse than this.
This bill allows for no limits abortion for any reason at any time provided a medical practitioner does the job, up until 22 weeks. That’s just over five months gestation.
And remember, twenty-two weeks is the point at which a child becomes likely viable outside the womb, in the sense that a child born at this stage or delivered at this stage is a child that can go on to have their life saved. They can grow up to live a healthy, flourishing normal life.
And yet, worse than that, the bill would allow abortion even after twenty-two weeks – right up until the point of birth – provided two doctors give the nod.
Not only that, but the bill forces doctors to be complicit in abortion – regardless of their faith, regardless of their conscience, regardless of their convictions. Doctors must either perform an abortion on a woman or refer her to someone whom they know will perform the abortion.
Anybody who has a Christian faith knows that this sort of trend against conscience is simply going to force Christian medical professionals out of the profession.
New South Wales Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said that he’s going to vote against the bill saying he cannot support laws that,“Stop A Beating Heart”.
Ray Williams, the member for Castle Hill has said that he’s received nothing from his constituents in support of the bill – but hundreds of emails and phone calls in opposition.
Barnaby Joyce, for all his recent failings, said something really good in the Federal Parliament. He gave a great speech, saying:
“Vikki’s and my son Tom took his first breath. This was not the start of his life. The reality is he was part of this world for some time and was merely passing from one room into another.”
Mark Latham – the member of the New South Wales Upper House for One Nation said:
“Like all laws that are being rushed, inevitably this one will be faulty. I’m not a religious person but I gotta say, I see a heavily pregnant woman walking down the street and the woman’s eight months pregnant. I work on the assumption that there’s a human being in there.”
Well, let’s look at some proof about what these guys are saying. Here are some facts.
By four weeks’ gestation, an unborn child has a heartbeat. Sixty-five beats per minute.
Circulation has begun in the second month. Fingers, toes, and eyes are forming. The brain the spinal cord and other neural tissue is well-formed.
Bone starts to replace cartilage in the third month. This is still in the first trimester.
The child can open and close its fists and mouth. It has ears. It has fingernails, toenails.
Its teeth are growing. The urinary system is working. The liver is producing bile. I could go on. That’s one trimester, up until twelve weeks.
By sixteen weeks – a few weeks into the second trimester – the child can feel pain. I repeat, the child can feel pain. That’s significant.
At the very start of the second trimester, the child is yawning, stretching, and making faces.
This is life.
This is actual human life. It is not less than human. It’s not animal life. It’s life. It’s a baby.
One of America’s foremost neurosurgeons, Dr Ben Carson, recently said this:
“I’ve had the privilege of being able to operate on little babies that were 25, 26, 27, 28 weeks’ gestation. And I can guarantee you that they can feel. They can react. You have to give them anaesthesia if you’re going to cut them. But they can also respond to comfort and to warmth. And for somebody to say that’s a meaningless bunch of cells honestly it’s just totally ignorant.”
Dr. Anthony Levatino is a former abortionist.
He has performed over 1,200 dilation and extraction abortions, normally on women in the second trimester. His videos are online. You can look them up. On one of his videos, he describes an abortion procedure. He produces a metal grasping instrument with sharp teeth. It’s like a big set of scissors. It’s called a sopher clamp.
He describes inserting a sofa clamp through a woman’s cervix and grabbing – hard – and pulling. Out comes a little leg. He takes the clamp again; he grabs – hard – and pulls. Out comes a little arm. And so, you repeat until only the head remains. The head is about the size of a plum. You put that clamp back in. You find the head and you grab it and you crush it. He says you know you’ve done it right when white fluid flows out, because that’s the baby’s brains.
“you look at your little collection of baby body parts, and you do an audit. You make sure you’ve got the whole baby. Sometimes when you look, there’s a little face staring back at you.”
Laws are set to be passed in the Australian Capital Territory that recognise the feelings of animals, their intrinsic value, and their right to be treated with compassion. There are European countries that have recently passed laws banning the boiling of lobsters because they can feel the pain.
We treat our animals better than we treat our children.
A child at 22 weeks’ gestation is a viable child. It’s a life that could be born. A life that could be saved. A life that can be operated on, that can be celebrated, that can go on to live – to be you or to be me. And that child can be killed painfully. It can feel it. It knows. It can be robbed of a real and full life.
The logic of this debate actually is very clear and it’s very sound. But logic isn’t working. It isn’t winning this debate.
Don’t get me wrong – it should. Truth does matter. The truth does have consequences. Truth must guide us.
There’s a belief out there that I think we’ve imbibed a little bit. The thinking that doesn’t care what’s true, but pursues feelings instead. You can’t end up there. That’s a very dark place to be because lies have a very dark end.
The truth about abortion is obvious but not sufficient it seems to change many hearts and many minds.
Why?
Because people are thinking about this in an illogical way.
There is something more important to them on this subject than the truth.
You say, well, what would that be? Well, the answer is themselves.
One in four Australian women has had an abortion. Those are robust statistics.
That means a similar number of men have therefore been complicit in abortion.
That many men have made children that they don’t want to father. That many women have created children that they don’t want to mother.
People will raise the incest, rape and disability arguments, but those circumstances account for a serious minority of abortions. Most abortions are largely for reasons within the realm of convenience.
And whether they like it or not, men or women, no matter how deep it’s been buried, no matter how positive they’ve made themselves feel, no matter how empowered they’ve declared themselves to be, the problem of guilt will always linger deep within.
And it is high stakes.
If the finger of accusation which points at you – at least from your conscience – is right, then you are a killer.
More than that, a woman’s motherhood instinct runs very, very deep. We can scarcely comprehend just how deep. Therefore, equally, we can scarcely comprehend the internalised anguish of killing her child.
The psychology of abortion is absolutely terrifying.
The truth threatens to tear apart a woman’s psychology. The truth threatens to accuse her with a crime that she cannot bear the weight of. And, the same for a man who is complicit. The same for a medical team who is assisting.
The truth threatens the indulgent, hedonistic, self-centred lives that we are living in the West. Sex with whomever, whenever, as much as ever, regardless of whatever. Will we dare contemplate the idea that our lives are licencing a hideous crime?
Ultimately it is a crime against God if not merely against our conscience, if not merely against a child.
Someone has to say it, so I will:
There is one word which summarises the nature of the abortion debate in our country more than any other. Tragically, it is guilt. That’s the word. Guilt. Guilt is what’s driving people when it comes to this issue; an inability to face the reality of one’s guilt.
But you know something? Guilt can do one of two things.
Guilt can drive us into ourselves. Guilt can drive us away from the truth. Guilt can drive us away from the light. It can drive us away from goodness. It can make us double down on our wrong, and it actually start to destroy us and eat away at us and rob us of peace in ways that we can scarcely understand.
If you raise the subject of abortion in any political context in a mixed company room, I can gurantee you, you will encounter anger and incredible hostility. Why is that? It is a lack of peace – because of guilt, in ways that people can scarcely know and understand.
Guilt can do that, or actually, guilt can do something else.
Guilt can and should (and is supposed to) drive us to Christ. It’s supposed to drive us to the one who loves to forgive.
His arms are outstretched.
He desires and He longs to release, to forgive, to make right, to cover somebody in righteousness when they repent towards Him.
And if you doubt His desire to do that; to lift the weight of someone’s guilt and cast their burden off… just look at what He did in order to make it possible. Look at the weight of the cross. Look at the death that He died and look at all that He suffered in order to make this possible.
He says, “whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
Those are the words of Scripture.
We must campaign against abortion. We must stand firm against the awful atrocity of killing human life for convenience for hedonism.
But also, we must hold high the unfathomable mercy of Christ for those who are – and believe me there are many, the stats prove it – those who are labouring under the terrible and tragic guilt of abortion.
