A Letter To Your MP:

Dear MP,

I’m sending this letter to implore you to reject the Bill currently before parliament that is supporting abortion up to birth.

At least since the Hippocratic oath, our medical profession has upheld that doctors are committed to saving human lives. Of course, sometimes lives cannot be saved, and sometimes doctors have to make difficult decisions when applying their resources so that they cannot save a mother and a baby both. But we already have the necessary systems of law and medicine to handle such situations. Where are the multitudes of doctors asking for this law to be changed? Nowhere!

In more recent history, our society has developed the belief that women should be able to choose when they are going to be pregnant. The obvious way is not having unprotected sex, of course, which is a legal right. We also have laws that allow women to terminate when they do discover they are pregnant.

To be clear, I believe this is morally wrong and that our government has failed its one God-given duty to protect life—but I know that many people disagree with me and that abortion and “morning-after” pills are currently legal. And in this email, this is my point: laws enabling abortion already exist. Where are the multitudes of citizens demanding that the law be changed and expanded? Nowhere!

So what is this bill about? Where are the masses of people trying to defend their rights and change the law? Where is the public cry in favour of this? There is none. Save for a small number of narrow-minded public health “experts” and radical activists, No-one wants this. What is worse, is that this is being done quietly.

The year before last, when Queensland passed the most permissive abortion bill in the world, I only heard about it because I happened to be in Queensland and attended a church there. I couldn’t even find an article about it on the ABC news website when I searched! It seems that this radical change in SA is also intended to fly under the radar. Perhaps because if people knew about this Bill and thought about it for a few seconds, they would realise—it is not only the law they never asked for, it’s a law that is abhorrent to them!

This Bill before parliament would extend the permissible range of abortion right up to Birth. This has several problematic aspects:

1. If the right to abortion is about a woman’s control over her own body, then why would she need it after having waddled around carrying the baby for nine months? Is abortion intended to protect people from parenthood now? Please, if that’s the case, let’s re-write adoption laws instead!

2. Making the argument that an embryo is not human as it cannot yet think or have a heartbeat is understandable (though I believe mistaken) but how can you argue that a baby is not human the day before it is born? You cannot. And hence its death is not short of murder and you, as a law-maker in this state, will truly have blood on your hands if you support it.

3. If such babies are to be aborted only when they might have a mental illness or another physical deformity, you must answer this: At what age does it then become wrong to kill a child with a deformity? Will we soon kill deformed or disadvantaged 1-year-olds? 2-year olds? Be honest… are we motivated to protect such children from a difficult life, or to protect society from the cost of caring for them?

4. If such a bill is intended to allow a doctor to make a judgement call when the mother’s life is in danger… doctors can already do this! The only difference is that death must currently be passive, rather than active, and a child’s life must be saved if it can be! It is not a ‘small thing’ or a ‘matter of choice’ to reverse that. It is the difference between moral culpability and innocence.

5. And last of all – if permitting abortion is intended to protect the mother from mental harm, rather than physical harm, because she’s emotionally unprepared or something like that… ask yourself this: How much emotional or mental harm does someone experience after they kill a baby? I guarantee you—this Bill will make mental health worse, not better. For evidence, perhaps you should contact people who’ve already had late-term abortions and see how they’re doing mentally. Then contact all the people who would have done it but didn’t and ask them—do you regret giving birth? Do you regret your child? Has parenthood mentally harmed you?

I want to end, however, with a positive argument. Children are a blessing. They are a blessing to society and a blessing to their parents. Of course, in those few cases where a parent is so incapable of looking after a child, then the child should be taken from the parent for their safety—but a child should be protected through adoption, not discarded through abortion!

For most parents, children are even a blessing to them mentally. Having a tiny charge who is dependent on you, obliges you to reorient your life to be more selfless. The obligation to monitor and meet a little person’s needs stokes love and compassion which has its own reward. Caring for children also helps us re-frame our own childhood and realise what was done for us by the people who raised us, and should make us rejoice in the opportunity to pay it forward. Children are not a burden, but a blessing from the Lord.

Please, I request again: Vote against this Bill. It is not needed. It will not improve society or the country. No-one wants this.