Chapman calls for calm as Catholic Bishops warn Bill allows ‘infanticide’
Politicians have called for calm over abuse levelled at MPs while church leaders prepare to tell followers to resist ‘infanticide’
SA News
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The state’s top law maker has called for calm over abortion reform debate as the battle for the conscience vote of local MPs starts to intensify.
“People have the right to express their opinion but I’d ask that the debate remains respectful and based on the facts,” Attorney-General Vickie Chapman told the Sunday Mail.
Ms Chapman is sponsoring the Termination Pregnancy Bill due for debate in parliament next month.
She said the proposed changes would bring SA law in-line with the rest of country and reflected the expectations of a substantial majority of South Australians.
Abortion-related correspondence and pro-life messaging, described as “abhorrent” and “sickening” by one MP, is beginning to pile up on politicians’ desks and inboxes.
Today, thousands of South Australian Catholics will be warned against proposed abortion laws while attending church services through a letter penned by Adelaide Archbishop Patrick O’Regan and Port Pirie Bishop Greg O’Kelly.
The Bishops raise a number of concerns over the Bill, including fears it will increase the rate of terminations, particularly those after 23 weeks.
“Allowing abortion up until the time of birth seems to be of very little difference to infanticide,” said Bishop O’Kelly in the parishioner communique.
The Bill decriminalises abortion in SA, requiring the approval of two medical practitioners for termination after 22 weeks and six days gestation – a provision that already exists and is practised today in SA.
Australian Medical Association SA President Dr Chris Moy said it was “absurd” to suggest removing abortion from criminal law would increase the number of abortions, which had not been the case following law changes interstate.
Nor would it mean that hospitals and health professionals would cease to practice under normal clinical or ethical standards involving later term abortions, he said.
Labor MP Nat Cook, said she was approached by a man last week alleging that full term babies would be aborted.
“I asked him if he’d actually read the bill – he said he hadn’t,” Ms Cook said.
“The suggestion of aborting full-term healthy babies is abhorrent and to say this is what the bill is about is completely sickening.”
In 2017, 2.6 per cent of the 4349 abortions performed in SA were at or after 20 weeks gestation. Almost half were for congenital anomalies, with the vast majority for severe foetal conditions detected only in the second trimester.
The report on which the proposed bill is based can be viewed at http://bit.ly/abortion report.