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We are more than halfway through our month of Prayer and Fasting for Family and Nation, and there are many things we are praying for. One prayer we did not expect to see answered so dramatically is that the euthanasia bill, recently tabled in the NSW parliament in a cloud of seeming inevitability, has hit a major speedbump.

As MercatorNet reports, the government and opposition have agreed to send the bill to the upper house, where an inquiry will be held with a report due in February before debate can begin again. “This by no means guarantees the failure of the bill. But the aura of inevitability has evaporated,” the article reads.

“New South Wales has just dodged a euthanasia bullet.”

While the role that Dominic Perrottet played in this decision is not entirely clear, it can be safely assumed that he favours the decision. A devoted Catholic, Perrottet is by far the most pro-life premier in the country. We are still astounded at the hand of God in his ascendency.

During the first five days of our month of Prayer and Fasting, Gladys Berejiklian stepped down along with two of her pro-abortion colleagues, and Perrottet was overwhelmingly voted in by his party room.

And in another act of God, Perrottet and his wife announced just this week that they are expecting their seventh child. Clearly, his pro-life credentials are more than theoretical.

In 2017, while Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet penned a moving piece in the Sydney Morning Herald in defence of life. It began by noting how news articles about suicide include links to suicide prevention organisations at the end. He then wrote:

If NSW or Victoria did cross that threshold, would news organisations continue to include the same potentially life-saving referral to suicide-prevention services in their reports? Or will that footnote need to be updated, with one message for those whose deaths the publishers wish to avert, and another for the people whose deaths they are happy to facilitate?

And what about the suicide prevention hotlines themselves? Will they screen out people whose wish to die sounds rational, and who may qualify under the relevant legislation, distinguishing them from the thousands of callers desperately seeking help to avoid the tragedy of suicide? Will those hotlines be asked to refer people who can legally end their own lives to places where they can get more information on how to go about it? Will the hotlines acquiesce in such requests?

Perrottet also rose the very real and concerning issue of medical mistakes that can take place once assisted suicide laws have been passed:

Doctors will make mistakes. Victims will be pressured. Judgments will be clouded, and among all the arbitrary rules and safeguards, only one thing is absolutely certain: innocent people will die at the hands of these laws if they pass. At least the falsely imprisoned can be exonerated and freed years after the fact. For the innocent victims of assisted suicide laws there can be no long-awaited justice, just the silence of the grave.

He was very clear in his stance on the issue.

“This is the dark, dangerous void of confusion and contradiction that we are steering our society into if we back these bills,” he wrote.

“I will be voting against the NSW legislation, and I call on all people of goodwill here in NSW and in Victoria to consider these issues and make their voices heard.”

Let us now pray that Perrottet holds the line on this issue, and that, by February, enough of NSW’s lawmakers will have their eyes opened to the danger posed by this legislation.