Victorians have not tended to welcome radical politicians. In a political moment where various forces are disguising their radical goals, Victorians need to watch politicians’ own words to understand what that candidate might mean for the state’s future. Is Moira Deeming a radical Christian politician?
To begin to answer that question, these are Moira Deeming’s words from 2021. In October of that year, not so very long ago, she wrote a sermon on “Australia’s Largest Christian News Site” The Daily Declaration declaring that “each” abortion is a “terrible evil.” Each one, according to Deeming, “wounds a mother and father, murders an unborn child.” Furthermore, and bizarrely, she declares that the abortion “ends a whole family line.”
Those of us with a more nuanced understanding of the psychological and medical stories about abortion know that there are a range of reasons that they are sought. We see that women who desire to be pregnant in America are dying because this imposition of theocratic rulings of complete abortion abolition are making emergency doctors too scared to treat women whose pregnancies are failing. That is before we tackle the fact that one faith’s moral rulings on such matters should not dictate the decisions made by, or stripped from, fellow citizens who do not belong to that faith.
For Moira Deeming in 2021, the individual is damaging their community, not just themselves. She mourns the “wider wounds to the losses felt by siblings, grandparents and barren families that would have given anything to have a chance to love and raise that child.”
By contrast the “abortion industry” is “powerfully seductive.” Healthcare providers are demonised as some predatory “industry” that “promises us with shiny human rights posters that we deserve to keep using sex selfishly and without consequence!”
People exercising their right not to be forced to give birth are, according to Deeming, tempted by the industry’s “promises to keep our darkest secrets forever away from the light. It promises to put an end to our deepest tragedies and even to heal us from them! Abortion promises us that unplanned parenthood is an unbearable bondage and that abortion can set us free.”
Deeming recognises the harms that can make abortion a solution. She acknowledges the “weeping, terrified, horrified daughters and granddaughters” as needing help.
Where would she send them? “To the Lord! To the Church! To Christians! That is our instant, and passionate answer.”
Deeming bemoans that young Christian women have turned to abortion, and not sought help afterwards, because they fear that their Christian community will turn on them for sinfulness in engaging in sexual activity or choosing abortion to hide the fact. She exhorts, “Brothers and Sisters, if we are to turn the tide against abortion, we must overcome the lies of abortion both inside and outside the Church.”
It is indeed a virtuous Christian who, like Deeming, commands her fellows not to drive Christian women to abortion because “they think that God’s people who are forgiven and beloved sinners, would refuse to forgive and love them!”
The format requires a prayer. Deeming exhorts that young women should find love and kindness to “save them from the evil lies of abortion.” She concludes: “Help us to lovingly persuade each member of our family, church, and community that abortion is not the answer but a terrible evil!”
Deeming’s sermon concludes with three “prayer points” that may have been written by her or by the site. They sit beneath her authorship.
- Pray for the restoration of FAMILY, FATHERHOOD and MOTHERHOOD in our nation.
- Pray for healing for MARRIAGES, protection for CHILDREN and restoration of the sanctity of LIFE.
- Pray for Revival, Renewal and Reformation for Australia, that our nation might return to God.
The capitalisations, unlike the multitude of exclamation marks, may not be Deeming’s choice. She may not be echoing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni: that may be the Canberra Declaration’s decision. Set beneath her signature, however, it grimly reminds that while Meloni, in her fascistic pronatalism, has only begun to chip away at abortion access, she has instead focussed on a steady attack on LGBTQIA+ equality.
Like Meloni and fellow travellers, Deeming marks out “human rights” as part of the enemy in this sermon. Rights are an impediment when one desires to impose one’s own punitive morality on the total population.
In 2020, Deeming’s sermon for The Daily Declaration demarcated the fight against abortion as the new Abolition movement. The characterisation of the forced birth movement as the new fight against chattel slavery is a trope taken direct from the American movement. She states, “Just like slavery in the 1800s, abortion is a powerful, profitable industry and a reflection of our culture’s contempt for the sanctity of life and depraved love of money.”
It may be, as stated in this sermon, that her intent is merely for prayer to change “hearts, minds and laws.”
Moira Deeming may not intend to begin steps towards banning the “terrible evil” inherent in “each” abortion. She may have decided that this is not her political goal. She came to Victorian politics, however, as Berne Finn’s protege. He is an abortion abolitionist, stating no exception even for rape can be made. Deeming belonged to his March for Babies organisation which has posted abortion abolition material. (It is alleged she was secretary, but this is wiped from the internet.) It may be that Deeming has had a moral epiphany since 2021, discovering that she cannot begin to impose her morality on the state.
Deeming may not intend a facile American war on Victorian schools on the matter of making LGBTQIA+ students feel included, but her past rhetoric is ugly. Nonsense such as this characterisation suggests otherwise: “Every single resource in schools is trying to change a child’s gender and sexual identity…”
She is also opposed to voluntary assisted dying.
Both “freedom” movement conspiracists and Christian Right extremists are committed to secrecy and deception about their allegiances in the intent to gain political power. Whistleblower Clare Heath-McIvor has described both the intense secrecy that surrounds Pentecostal groups’ intent to colonise “conservative” politics and the fact that these cults do not believe that members owe outsiders any truth.
Moira Deeming is cruel in her rhetoric around trans people. She did not find the presence of supportive Nazis at an anti-trans rally an adequate reason to leave the event, despite being a member of parliament at the time.
In America, the issue of abortion was selected by the nascent Moral Majority almost 50 years ago to galvanise an Evangelical voting base that believed the fight against abortion to be a Catholic oddity. Now, women are dying, Republican states are preventing the collection of data on the spike in pregnancy-related harm, and a Republican politician has introduced another bill attempting to win 20 years to life in prison for anyone who “transports” a teen to another state in search of an abortion. With the recent eruption of abortion as a Trumpist political issue in South Australia, Queensland and Canberra, it will not take nearly as long to roll back rights in Australia.
It matters particularly in the case of Moira Deeming, because Peta Credlin reportedly told “Deeming how she might avoid expulsion. “We need you to survive this,” Credlin wrote. “You will lead the party one day.” She has the support of Tony Abbott and the insurgent, Trumpist faction of the Victorian Liberal Party. One needs to question a candidate’s merit if even Scott Morrison reportedly found her too risky.
Victorians can choose to trust Deeming’s public characterisation that she is fighting for women. More cautious voters ought to reject her on the basis of her own words. She is not worth the risk.
See also: The Liberal Party, Moira Deeming and political Christianity
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She won’t be getting my vote.
People can believe whatever they want and form cohorts, each believing theirs is the only “true” religion, but laws should not be based on “faith” or the rantings of loud self or group appointed religious types that occupy the moral high ground.
Wars are being fought, cruelty inflicted and significant damage done to society, all in the name of god.
As for Moira being opposed to voluntary assisted dying – why? Anybody going down that path isn’t expected to have a long run to go and the reasons why someone uses VAD often involves pain, extreme distress, etc. where it is cruel to prolong life.
We need to stop pandering to/being blindly led/conned by religions and remove “special” conditions, that allow hateful etc. utterances be made where they align with the religion.
Many religions have a hierarchy where the higher up put their spin on what god makes of current events. Given the lack of sightings in recent times of an omnipresent and omnipotent god, supposedly the maker of the entire universe and capable of any technology, we should be wary of what these “god conduits” have to say.
This article is an example of journalism that seeks to polarise the public by not providing a balanced reporting.
Thanks for your input, Bev. Personally I read the article as an opinion piece, as is much of the content on AIMN.