Many of the amendments proposed were by MPs who were never going to vote in favour of the legislation, and nearly all were rejected. The three days of debate were impassioned and emotional, but they were civil. Loading That, for mine, made it slightly less galling to hear man after man (for it was mostly men) stand up to argue passionately against women’s sovereignty over their own bodies. The woman who leads the state – Premier Gladys Berejiklian – did not speak on the bill, even though she voted for it. People on both sides of the issue criticised her silence as weak and a failure of leadership.

Abortion is a visceral topic that makes many squeamish . It brings into the public domain the private world of women’s bodies – powerful but imperfect, prone to mistakes, bearing the consequences of biology as best they can. Child-bearing is a bloody business – men don’t usually like to talk about it, in my experience, but when it comes to abortion, you can find plenty who explain to you the moral difference between 20 weeks’ gestation and 22 weeks’, as though they are the first ones ever to scrutinise an ultrasound. Loading The abortion debate is likely to be less civil in the upper house. The bill will almost certainly pass, but not before the more extreme voices in that chamber have shouted as loudly as possible. A couple of federal politicians weighed in on the issue. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said he supported a woman’s right to choose, but he would have voted against the bill on the basis that 22 weeks’ gestation was too late a point for the extra regulation of late-term abortions.

Barnaby Joyce – whose status as a moral champion is entirely self-appointed – said his baby son Tom had rights in the womb and no state parliament should take them away. Former prime minister Tony Abbott, newly unyoked from the strictures of political life, called it “death on demand” – another three-word slogan to add to his list. Abbott linked the abortion bill to Victoria’s assisted-dying laws and said the nation had lost its “moral anchor points” which “used to be anchored in the Christian faith”. “Faith is a gift," he said. "Some people have it, some people don’t.” Faith is a club, apparently. It’s pretty clear what he thinks of those not in it.

Abbott made the comments on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference – a new Australian offshoot of a powerful American libertarian movement. CPAC launched Donald Trump as a presidential contender when he spoke there in 2011. It is as American as apple pie, and its importation to Australia is fitting, because increasingly the far-right and religious-right conservatives in this country seem to be nicking their ideas from the Americans. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video The objections to the abortion bill were lifted straight from the playbook of the US pro-life lobby. Focus on rare late-term abortions, induce fear about women aborting babies mere weeks before their due dates, and when it looks like you’ve lost the main battle, erect administrative and medical barriers to accessing terminations. The late attempt by one MP to move amendments ostensibly to prevent “sex-selection abortions”, which they said occur in Indian and Chinese communities, was dishonest at best and xenophobic at worst.

This furphy – there is no evidence sex selection occurs in NSW – is directly imported from the American pro-lifers. “They were trying to put Alabama-style anti-abortion talking points into the legislation,” said Alex Greenwich, the independent who brought the bill. Loading This Australian embrace of American-style, hard-right, often-religious conservatism is interesting for several reasons. This branch of conservatism frequently links faith with morality, and implies that the decline of religion in developed democracies is responsible for a fragmentation of social order. It is divisive – it sees religious people as the only ones fighting a war against that decline.

It is reactionary rather than conservative. It doesn’t seek to carefully manage social change; it opposes it reflexively. This is a zero-sum game that often ends in loss. Look at the battle waged and lost by religious conservatives against same-sex marriage. It is obsessed with the sex lives of others, down to the smallest physical detail. Witness, for example, One Nation MLC Mark Latham trying to police which toilet transgender children use at school. But most importantly, it is nasty – the worst parts of Trump’s rhetoric combined with a religiosity that denies the humanity of anyone who doesn’t adhere to it. It is one American import we could do without. Twitter: @JacquelineMaley