Photo Credits: ABC News
In New South Wales, Australia, the Upper House of parliament has decriminalized abortion by passing the bill that will overturn a law that has been on the books for 119 years. This bill is a big step forward because it removes abortion from the criminal code allowing the procedure through 22 weeks of pregnancy, and even beyond that with the consent of two doctors.
This new bill has not been taken well by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, who described it as a "dark day" for the state. “The new abortion law is a defeat for humanity,” he said, as Patheos reports, “[It] may be the worst law passed in New South Wales in modern times, because it represents such a dramatic abdication of responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of our community.”
The Archbishop Fisher has already expressed his disappointment with this abortion bill when it passed the lower house of the New South West parliament during August. Right before the voting in the Lower house, St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney was opened for 65 hours of continuous Eucharistic adoration and hundreds of pro-life persons participated in a prayer vigil. According to The Catholic Herald, Archbishop Fisher thanked “the thousands of people who spoke up on behalf of the unborn and their mothers by contacting their MPs, by maintaining a consistent presence at Parliament House, and by praying for the defeat of this bill at round‐the‐clock vigils at St Mary’s Cathedral and elsewhere.” “Please continue to pray for a civilization of life and love, and to make your views known to the members of the Legislative Council, asking them to vote against this bill,” he urged.
It looks like Australian Archbishop and Australian Catholic Church are investing too much energy in fighting against women’s right to have an abortion while there are many problems inside the Church itself that remain unsolved. The Australian Catholic Church is a place where priests have tried to conceal admissions of abuse made in the confessional booth and a place where one priest confessed to abusing children many times to 30 different priests over 25 years and the question is what has been done to prevent such things in future. Even the prime minister of Australia felt the need to formally apologize to victims of child sex abuse in the Church. And this kind of institution is now pretending that it cares about vulnerable members of community by fighting against the abortion law. They pretend to care about those who are vulnerable by trying to force women to give birth against their will while many of those women are also vulnerable.
