Update: On May 8, MLCs forced a number of amendments to the Greens’ Bill, including the removal of the provisions relating to doctors.

The Bill passed the Upper House with those amendments. However, the bill also proposes that nurse practitioners and midwives be required to prescribe abortion pills and those provisions will be debated in the Lower House later this month.

Archbishop Kanishka Raffel has issued a statement saying "I am thankful to those MPs who upheld freedom of conscience for doctors and amended the Greens' abortion bill in the NSW Upper House.

But the burden will now also fall on nurses and midwives to be involved in something at odds with their vocation.

So, I urge lower house MPs to protect the unborn and reject the bill entirely."

Details of the amended Bill here.

The New South Wales Parliament is considering a bill to force medical practitioners to facilitate abortions, against their conscience.

At present, doctors can object and not take part in referring patients for abortion. But the Greens party has put forward a bill that would scrap that protection for doctors and force them to refer women for abortion in violation of their conscience.

The bill is designed to expand access to abortions, especially in rural and regional areas.

Christians are being urged to voice their concerns about the bill to MPs, with the Archbishop of Sydney and the Social Issues Committee of the Diocese (SIC), expressing strong objections to Premier Chris Minns and the Opposition leader, Mark Speakman.

The letter from the SIC, signed by its chairman Dean Sandy Grant, said many will find the measures ‘morally compromising’.

“Should these amendments be passed into law, many Christian health practitioners, services, organisations and hospitals may feel forced either to break the law, or to act against their Christian convictions, or else to leave their job to avoid both of those two alternatives,” the letter says.

“No government should put any of its citizens in a position where they are required to make such a decision. Furthermore, the proposed expansion of the categories of people eligible to perform abortions up to twenty two weeks to include nurses and midwives will increase the number of individuals likely to be faced with such an unjust moral dilemma.”

The full statement of the committee is online here.

The bill is in the NSW Upper House with the option for MLCs to make amendments there, and if passed it will go to the Lower House, so there is opportunity for Christians to contact MPs of both houses to express their oppiosition.

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