Statement by Fr David Ranson
Diocesan Administrator
On the NSW Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019
6 August 2019
Given that the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019 is currently being debated in the NSW Parliament, I wish to convey my strongest personal opposition to the proposed legislation in its current form. In so doing, I record also the formal objection of the Catholic community of the Diocese of Broken Bay.
The decriminalisation of abortion is one matter. The social factors in which the practice of abortion flourishes are complex and require our careful attention. The response to these requires a great deal of consideration in light of the often-difficult circumstances in which the decision for an abortion is made. However, the killing of life, with the liberal possibility allowed for in the proposed legislation, cannot make ours a more human society. If with legal sanction we kill those who are most vulnerable, either at the beginning or at the end of their life, we rob ourselves of our human dignity which is best demonstrated in a quality of care exercised even in the face of life’s demand and challenge. Such an option represents a gross failure of social imagination and public moral leadership.
The widening of the scope of the practice of abortion, which the proposed legislation suggests, is unacceptable. A woman certainly has rights of her own body, as does a man. But both also have responsibility to protect the body of the separate life entrusted to them. That independent life is not of such little value that it can be arbitrarily extinguished often with the price of silent, life-long trauma of women who feel pressured to terminate their pregnancy and the life of the child they carry. Rights can never be promoted without responsibility. And what greater responsibility do we have than to care for life?
In raising this objection, I implore the NSW Government to commit both to increasing those social services that will genuinely assist women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, and to raising sustained awareness about such services. Our own Catholic social service agencies are present and ready to assist in this enterprise.
I urge the Members of the NSW Parliament to vote in such a way that the rights of all are genuinely protected.