We are used to the issue of abortion often being raised in American elections, but not so much in Australia. There was a most unedifying attempt to change this in the recent Queensland state elections. Abortions have been readily available all over Australia for decades, but in 2018 Queensland passed laws which allowed abortion on demand up to 22 weeks. After that, two medical practitioners would need to give their consent. Attempts to guarantee that care be given to any child who survives an abortion have been defeated. All of this has been presented as making abortion a health and wellbeing issue rather than a criminal issue – yet another illustration of George Orwell’s ‘Newspeak’.
The Labor Premier, Steven Miles, was desperately searching for an issue that might help him to retain power, while his Liberal National Party rival, David Crisafulli, was searching for a means to unseat the Premier. Robbie Katter from the KAP (Katter’s Australian Party) most wonderfully and inconveniently raised the issue of modifying the law re. the neglect of aborted babies born alive, of which there are about 40 each year. Katter was determined ‘that they’re not thrown in waste bins, and that they’re not left to die on a table with no warmth or care.’
The champion of the working class and defender of the weak and vulnerable, Gormless Miles, now had his issue! The media pressure on David Crisafulli was intense. The LNP leader felt he needed a backflip more convincing than those of Raygun at the Olympics.
By the Tuesday before the election (22 October), Crisafulli had decided that his previous pro-life convictions belonged to what he called ‘silly little wedge questions’, and that he was now a champion of a woman’s right to choose, meaning the right to choose to kill. Ah, said the prophet Hosea, ‘Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early’ (Hos.6:4). Courage was too much to ask for, and so we have another illustration of George Orwell’s comment: ‘In our time political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.’
‘Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man in whom there is no salvation’ (Ps.146:3). That is easily applied to Queensland politics, or any other politics for that matter. It is by no means unknown for Christians to get excited that taking over the political world will lead to some kind of social regeneration. Good laws are much better than bad laws, to state the obvious. Also, we are told: ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord’ (Ps.33:12). To those politicians who are fighting for the cause of the unborn, may the Lord bless and prosper them, and we should do all we can to support them.
The greater reality is that, as Richard John Neuhaus affirmed in 1984: ‘politics is a function of culture and culture, in turn, is reflective of (if not a function of) religion.’ If this is true – and it surely reflects biblical teaching – then politics is unlikely to achieve much when it is downstream from a decaying culture, which is downstream from unfaithful churches.
If people do not believe the biblical view of human beings as being in the image of God; if God is not our creator and our judge; if ultimately not much matters except moral autonomy (i.e. I can do whatever suits me) – then we can hardly expect many politicians to stand out against an electorate which gives them their job, and a media which sets out what is supposedly popular. No wonder God tells us to be strong and courageous.
-Peter Barnes