At the very least, the erroneously named Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill, which will be debated in the NSW upper house this week, is incompetent legislation. Coming from an apparently socially progressive platform, it allows discrimination in the starkest form by permitting sex-based abortions.

It removes a doctor’s right to conscientiously abstain from a process that may be diametrically against their values, disregarding their freedom. It bases rights on the random timing of birth: after birth, you are a person; before birth you could face termination, which if it is on a day the baby could be viably born, basically reinstates the death penalty, though this time without needing a crime.

Whoever drafted it has obviously a limited understanding of legislation or zero comprehension of legislative consequences. That it passed the NSW lower house, accompanied by clapping and cheering before group hugs and photos, gives no confidence at all in that chamber, which failed to correct the bill's many problems. Clearly the legislative skill set in the state has fallen abysmally in recent years.

The reason the legislation is a fiasco is because its backers absconded from deliberate and transparent process in favour of a select cross-party committee working clandestinely in its member's alternate offices.