THOUSANDS of anti-abortion supporters packed Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral yesterday before rallying outside parliament in an emotive last stand against decriminalising abortion. Two days before the Victorian upper house was due to debate new abortion laws, demonstrators made an impassioned plea to MPs to reject the bill, which would give women access to abortion at up to 24 weeks.
The protest came as Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart, in a rare presentation to the media, vowed to defy the new laws by not forcing Catholic healthcare workers to comply with the reforms.
Under the legislation, doctors with a conscientious objection to abortion are required to refer a woman to someone with no such objection. Doctors must also perform abortions in an emergency if it is necessary to save the woman's life.
"I would say we can't perform and we can't refer ... we have nowhere to go. That is a firm, irrevocable position, and I believe it's the only position that people of conscience can hold," Archbishop Hart said. "To put it plainly, the Catholic church believes in life from womb to tomb."
Archbishop Hart told a congregation of more than 2500 in St Patrick's Cathedral that the abortion bill was a "strident challenge" to many people's fundamental religious beliefs.
He said every person from conception deserved the protection of the law and described women with unwanted pregnancies as the "principal victims of the new culture of death".
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(Source: TA)