Tired of being told that he cannot comment on abortion because he is a man, one Australian lawmaker declared himself to be a woman last week during a debate in the country’s parliament.
Australian Sen. Barry O’Sullivan made the remark on Nov. 14 to prove a point, not actually to declare himself as transgender, the Washington Free Beacon reports.
“I’m going to declare my gender today, as I can, to be a woman, and then you’ll no longer be able to attack me,” O’Sullivan said mockingly.
The pro-life lawmaker has been attacked for supporting even modest abortion reforms, such as a ban on late-term abortions when unborn babies are viable, according to the report. O’Sullivan said most Australians support these reforms, too, but they are an “ever-increasingly silent majority” who are afraid of backlash.
“These people come and attack me for my religion … using words like ‘rosary beads,’ because I had the audacity to raise issues around late-term abortions, where babies who are only minutes away from getting a smack on the ass and a name, are being aborted under the policies of the Australian Greens,” O’Sullivan said.
“So I will not stand silent, I will not stand mute while these people try to continue to marginalize policies and ideas that we want to continue to discuss for this nation,” he continued.
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Here’s more from the Catholic News Agency:
The declaration was part of longer and heated remarks given by the senator, who said he was tired of the “vomit” and “vitriol” he received from far-right colleagues whenever he tried to raise “issues around strong values.”
Earlier that week, O’Sullivan, a Catholic, had motioned for pro-choice protesters to be banned from the annual pro-life Day of the Unborn Child events. This prompted Larissa Waters of the Australian Greens party to say that O’Sullivan would never understand abortion as a women’s issue.
“Senator O’Sullivan needs to get his hands and his rosaries off my ovaries and those of the 10,000 Queensland women who have an abortion each year,” Waters said, according to the Australian Associated Press.
She later complied with a request to withdraw her comment on the grounds that it attacked O’Sullivan’s religion.
“You cannot say the word abortion without being attacked …” O’Sullivan said in his remarks Nov. 14.
Abortion activists often try to silence men who stand up for unborn babies’ rights, claiming that men should not have a voice in the debate because they cannot bear children. But it’s a nonsensical argument. No one should be excluded from debates about human rights, especially the most fundamental right of all – the right to life.
