Opinion: Pros and cons as MPs vote on abortion Bill
AS QUEENSLAND MPs vote on whether to decriminalise abortion in the state, campaigners on both sides have their final word on the emotive, polarising issue.
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AS QUEENSLAND MPs vote on whether to decriminalise abortion in the state, campaigners on both sides have their final word on the emotive, polarising issue.
Jackie Trad, Deputy Premier
HERE in Queensland, more than 10,000 women have an abortion every year.
These women are young workers, they’re mothers, neighbours, sisters, friends and co-workers, who should have the right to access safe termination services, but are instead labelled as criminals under archaic laws drafted in 1899, before women were granted the right to vote.
This week, the Parliament will debate new laws, drafted by the independent Queensland Law Reform Commission and introduced by the Palaszczuk Government, to change this.
There is significant public support for abortion to be treated as a health matter and not a crime, and certainly not a matter of decree from the pulpit.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that those opposing the decriminalisation of abortion have sought to focus on late terminations and preach mistruths to peel off public support.
The facts are, here in Queensland, 99 per cent of abortions occur before 20 weeks. Those that occur after 20 weeks are wanted pregnancies. These are women who have had to face the heartbreaking reality of terminating their pregnancy due to abnormalities including anencephaly (the development of a foetus absent skull and brain). Anencephaly is only detected at the 20-week scan, putting women in the heartbreaking position of either seeking a late-term abortion or carrying a baby that will not live for another 20 weeks.
When Queensland women face these heartbreaking decisions, they should not be faced with the added fear that they are breaking the law, being judged by the church or scrutinised by government.
Our responsibility is to ensure that women are supported by a world-class health system and health practitioners who aren’t fearful of being charged.
Those arguing against changes to Queensland’s abortion laws are entitled to their views but, they’re not entitled to run a dishonest and desperate campaign of mistruths.
As a leader who is openly and unashamedly pro-choice, I have been the target of offensive, abusive and un-Christian material (as has the Premier) but, I get it – abortion is an emotive issue, and it’s part and parcel of leading change.
However when the debate gets under way in the Queensland Parliament today, I will be representing the thousands of Queensland women, the ones I know and have cried with and supported through an abortion.
These women – all women – must have the right to access safe and legal termination services, the right to fully control their own bodies.
That’s what we will deliver – for the women who have fought for this for decades, for the Queensland women of today and for the generations of women to come.
David van Gend, anti-abortion GP
I HAVE held a baby born at 22 weeks, the youngest age of the premature babies in our hospital nurseries.
All babies like her who are born over 20 weeks require a birth certificate and, if they die, a death certificate.
They are little Queenslanders under our law.
If someone had tried to attack that little baby while I held her, I would have protected her. Yet Labor’s Termination of Pregnancy Bill 2018 allows adults to put their unborn baby to death up to 22 weeks of age on demand, no questions asked, and any doctor who tries to protect that baby will be breaking the law of the land.
This is a time for civil disobedience. Labor’s abortion law not only declares open season on entirely healthy babies of entirely healthy mothers up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, but also crushes the conscience of doctors who object to this barbarism.
A GP colleague of mine, Mark Hobart, has already faced this coercion of conscience under section 8 of Victoria’s Abortion Law Reform Act 2008, which mirrors section 8 of Queensland’s proposed law.
Section 8 compels a doctor to collaborate in a patient’s request for termination of pregnancy, even if the doctor thinks it is medically unjustified and morally wrong.
Dr Hobart was approached by an Indian couple at 19 weeks of pregnancy who wanted an abortion because they were having a girl and they only wanted a boy.
By refusing to give a referral, Dr Hobart broke the law in Victoria – just as GPs in Queensland will be breaking Labor’s law if we refuse to sentence a 19-week unborn baby girl to death for the crime of being a girl.
We will refuse. We will defy this “unjust law which carries the hallmarks of totalitarianism”.
That was how Frank Brennan, former chairman of the National Human Rights Consultation Committee, described the Victorian abortion law, which it now appears will be replicated in Queensland.
ACU Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Law Greg Craven described section 8 of that law as “fascist”.
The late hospital ethicist, Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, said, “expecting a doctor to act against his conscience is totalitarian”.
And the mild-mannered father of general practice in Australia, Professor John Murtagh, denounced section 8 as “Stalinist”.
With virtually identical legislation due to be voted on in Queensland next week, we need courageous legal and medical voices to denounce this evil.
Queensland law always has allowed for abortion in those rare, tragic cases where it is needed to save the mother’s life.
Our law has also been principled and just in defending the weakest members of the human family, with Justice McGuire’s ruling from 1986 declaring, “The law in this state has not abdicated its responsibility as guardian of the silent innocence of the unborn”.
But under the Palaszczuk/Trad Labor government, principle has given way to ideology; the stilettos of sexual liberty and feminist power will stamp on that silent innocence.
These are dark days. We know our culture is brutalised when we violently repel these little asylum seekers at the border of life. We know our politics is brutalised when we enshrine intentional killing in our law.
As to that baby I held at 22 weeks, in the end we could not save her. Before she died, her mother asked a nurse to christen her, we dressed her in the tiny gown that volunteers knit for premmie babies, and she took a few small breaths on her mother’s breast.
Isn’t that the right way to treat a 22-week baby, Premier Palaszczuk? Think of her as you cast your vote on a life-destroying law that carries the hallmarks of totalitarianism.
David van Gend is a Toowoomba GP and Queensland secretary for the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life
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