We believe that women's rights and interests could have received more consideration. I also want to add that it wasn't a complete surprise. There has been commentary for a while saying that these provisions might be unconstitutional, and, obviously, the litigation doesn't get.... Someone who raises constitutionality to the Supreme Court doesn't get a decision in a day. It often takes many years.
It was, I might say, reasonably foreseeable that we could be put in this situation. That's why NAWL's primary concern, or one of the things we've been most vocal about, has been why the consultations hadn't taken place before. If there was such a need to act so quickly, which is hard to understand given the minister's insistence that the defence is so rarely used, then why weren't these consultations started much earlier with women's groups?