Former PM and deputy PM deploy incendiary language to describe decriminalisation bill being considered by NSW parliament

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The former prime minister and deputy prime minister of Australia have claimed at an anti-abortion rally in Sydney that a proposed decriminalisation bill has nothing to do with decriminalisation.

Tony Abbott described the bill as “infanticide on demand”, while Barnaby Joyce described it as “the slavery debate of our time” while also perpetuating a false claim about pro-choice protesters on Saturday.

Several thousand people rallied against the Reproductive Healthcare Reform bill in Sydney’s Hyde park on Sunday afternoon, in what was a heavily religious but diverse crowd.

Introduced as “a legend of the conservative movement”, Tony Abbott told the crowd he’d been happy when Gladys Berejiklian’s government was elected because he had spent 25 years lobbying for a northern beaches funnel and he assumed she would do it.

NSW abortion law: the decriminalisation reform bill explained Read more

“What did I find? The first serious bit of legislation the new government puts into this parliament is for the most radical abortion laws in this country,” he said.

NSW is the last state to decriminalise abortions in Australia. The bill, if passed, will remove abortion from NSW’s 119-year-old Crimes Act and bring the state in line with other jurisdictions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tony Abbott speaking to the rally. Photograph: James Gourley/AAP

It would make abortion legal on request up to 22 weeks, and with the approval of two doctors beyond that.

Several speakers including Abbott and Joyce said the bill has nothing to do with decriminalising abortion in NSW.

“We elect sensible governments of the centre-right to serve us in practical ways,” Abbott said.

“Not to engage in social engineering.”

He said the bill was was a license for sex-selection and late-term abortion and was “effectively infanticide on demand”.

Joyce compared the abortion bill to the US slave trade and the abuse of convicts in Australia. He said the use of the word “foetus” instead of “person” was a deliberate strategy to dehumanise someone you wanted to kill.

He also invoked the claim of sex-selection being a driving factor for the bill.

“If you can vote down an amendment [for sex selection] because they’re a boy or girl, then why stop there? Why not vote them down because they’re too dark or too fair or the wrong complexion? When does this animalistic process stop?”

Joyce and NSW minister Damien Tudehope repeated false assertions by anti-abortion student group, Life Choice Australia, that a pro-choice rally on Saturday heare demonstrators chanting “throw the foetus in the bin”. It has been repeatedly reported the chant was “throw the bigots in the bin”.

Gina Rushton (@ginarush) They were chanting bigots not foetus. https://t.co/iEdkxCDjeW

The bill passed the parliament’s lower house 59 to 31 last month, and was due to be voted through the upper house before Berejiklian agreed to delay its passage after a split within her party.

Upper house MPs will next week consider a raft of proposed amendments on the bill.

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters supporting the bill also rallied urging politicians to ignore the proposed list of amendments, saying they could make the situation worse.

Pro-choice rally MC Dee Madigan told the crowd that “amendments are being brought in that have the power to make things worse for women than they currently are.”

Social commentator Jane Caro said many of the proposed amendments were illogical and were being pushed for one reason.

“To continue them having some control over us and what we do with our lives,” she told the crowd.

“I hope that common sense prevails and that the women of NSW can join with their sisters across Australia in being allowed to be fully adult, fully free and in control of their own bodies and reproductive systems.

“Anything else is not acceptable.”

• With AAP