Abortion debate: MPs have their say in State Parliament
DEPUTY Premier Jackie Trad has launched a broadside at LNP members opposing the abortion Bill, singling out one in particular for his “offensive” stance. SEE WHERE YOUR MP STANDS
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DEPUTY Premier Jackie Trad has launched a stinging rebuke against those who have opposed the decriminalisation of abortion.
Her comments came ahead of the historic conscience vote that saw the abortion Bill carried 51-40.
Speaking in favour of the Bill before State Parliament, Ms Trad said she believed “we would never be having this conversation” if men were capable of bearing children.
“The right of women to control their own reproduction, their own bodies is such an important part of equality in our society,” she said.
“The comments made by some in this chamber, and particularly the Member for Everton (Tim Mander) only serve to continue the shaming and stigmatisation of women and young girls.
“To prioritise the rights of a fetus above that of a woman is something that I find offensive.
“Because the logical conclusion to that argument is that a woman should be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy.
“In this day and age, I think that is something that doesn’t belong in our society.”
Former opposition leader not opposing
FORMER opposition leader Tim Nicholls has revealed he too will use his conscience vote to back the abortion decriminalisation bill.
The Member for Clayfield was the second Liberal National MP to reveal they will back the laws, with Opposition frontbencher Steve Minnikin to also back the changes.
He told the House there was strong support in his electorate for the changes.
Mr Nicholls was emotional as he revealed his position.
“I do not support abortion,” Mr Nicholls told the House.
“I wish that no women felt the need to seek a termination.
“I wish all of us could enjoy the enormous experience of a full challenging and rewarding family life.
“But I recognise reality.
“Our termination laws need to reflect that reality. They must be careful and understanding and importantly must not penalise either women or men and that which is beyond our best efforts or which is simply human nature.
“The current law does not do that.
“I believe the proposed laws will.
“Women are entitled to control their own reproductive health issues free from worry and stress from an outdated and restrictive law and in full knowledge that their health and wellbeing is in their hands.
“I will support this Bill.”
Member for Currumbin Jann Stuckey later became the third Liberal National MP to indicate she would support the Bill.
Premier takes her time
PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk gave a passionate speech in favour of the decriminalisation of abortion Bill, saying the current laws fail to provide “care and comfort and clarity”.
Speaking in State Parliament, Ms Palaszczuk said MPs had a once-in-a-century chance to make a “profound and lasting change” that would grant Queensland women a basic freedom.
“I support it as a respectful member of this house, as a lifelong advocate for women, as a representative of my electorate and, no means least, as a woman,” she said.
“I’ve always believed a woman should be able to talk to her doctor about her own health and her own body without it being a crime.”
Ms Palaszczuk said no MP would arrive at their decision lightly on the proposed laws, describing it as a “deeply, deeply personal issue”.
“It is one of conscience,” she said.
“I know because I took my time arriving at the decision, considering the Law Reform Commission report and talking to my colleagues and members of my electorate.
“Ultimately... this is a health issue.”
Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath also spoke in favour of the Bill, saying MPs had an obligation to the women of Queensland.
“I call on members to support this,” she said.
“I know it might not be their perfect model, but it achieves those key aspects that many across the Parliament say they truly believe in.”
Ms D’Ath said she was supporting the Bill as a woman and as a mother.
Shock event that shaped MP’s view
LIBERAL National Member for Ninderry Dan Purdie has told of how the gruesome investigation into the death of a one-day-old baby in 1998 influenced his decision to oppose the Termination of Pregnancy Bill.
Before entering Parliament, Mr Purdie was a homicide police detective. He worked on the Sunshine Coast in the Child Protection and Investigation Unit, where he was involved in child abuse cases matters.
Mr Purdie told Parliament of his part in investigating the discovery of the body of a baby girl, who had been discarded in a suburban backyard, to explain why he was voting to reject the bill.
“She had been dismembered and her sex organs had been removed,” Mr Purdie said.
“Investigators were able to prove the infant had taken a breath and subsequently both the mother and the father were charged with murder.
“I raise this not to be alarmist, but because I believe one breath between murder and a simple health issue to my mind is too thin.
“I’ve seen first-hand on more occasions than I’d like to recall where parents, mother and/or fathers make decisions that are not in the best interests of their defenceless infant or child born or unborn.”
“I spent a large part of my adult life protecting vulnerable humans who can’t protect themselves.
“A defenceless unborn child on the cusp of life I submit also needs protection.
“I think it is our responsibility as a humane society to provide vulnerable persons protection and from the evidence I have seen an unborn child on our about 22 weeks, and certainly post 22 weeks, exhibits all the attributes and characteristics consistent with life.
“Which is no doubt why a stillborn baby after 20 weeks requires a birth and death certificate under our current laws.
“As a former homicide detective I also struggle to reconcile that if it can be proven that a newborn baby has taken a breath, a person who terminates the life of that baby is guilty of murder and subject to mandatory life imprisonment.
“But terminating that baby not long before it takes that first breath is nothing more than a health matter.”
Meanwhile, LNP Member for Coomera Michael Crandon said he feared the laws could lead to a woman being forced into “feticide” by an abusive partner.
“What protections will be in place for these women?” he said.
“What sort of mental and physical torture could an expectant mother be subjected to in these situations from an abusive partner.
“I ask all members to consider their position on this very important and emotional issue.
“Think of the unborn children as well as their mothers.
“I will not be supporting the Bill — in all conscience I cannot.”
LNP Member for Scenic Rim Jon Krause also said he would not support the new legislation. He said he the “overwhelming view” of his constituents and feedback to his office was to reject the Bill.
Mr Krause’s speech to Parliament said the safe zones that would be created around abortion clinics under the proposed new laws “sets a dangerous precedent” for freedom of speech.
He also anticipated the zones could become larger in the future, and supposed it could extend to 1km safe zones.
“Restricting freedom of speech is a dangerous slippery slope,” he warned.
Mr Krause conceded there was there was room to improve existing laws around ending pregnancies, but that any such move should reflect the values, aspirations and ideals for Queensland, the starting point of which should be that “the unborn child must be protected.”
LNP Member for Theodore Mark Boothman said he would not support the Bill.
He said it was an issue that went beyond politics and went to “our innermost beliefs.”
“While I have a deep-seated belief in the individuals right, there is also the rights of the unborn child.”
SUNSHINE COAST MPs SAY NO
SUNSHINE Coast-based Liberal National MPs have indicated they will oppose the Bill.
An emotional Member for Maroochydore Fiona Simpson said medical services already existed to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons.
She said she opposed “abortion on demand up to 22 weeks for social reasons”, and raised concerns about victims of domestic violence being coerced into terminating their pregnancies.
It was wrong that doctors would be forced to refer women seeking an abortion to another doctor and that the women would not receive mandatory support, such as the opportunity for counselling, cooling-off periods and other options.
Ms Simpson also raised concerns that there was no definition of what social circumstances would enable a late-term abortion or that she had not seen Queensland Health guidelines on who terminations would be performed.
Meanwhile, Opposition education and industrial relations spokesman and Member for Kawana Jarrod Bleijie told his story of a difficult predicament involving his first-born child 15 years ago.
Mr Bleijie, a former attorney-general under ex-premier Campbell Newman, said his wife Sally was just 17 years old and he was just a couple of years older when she fell pregnant with their daughter.
He said the couple had been rock ’n’ roll dance partners and seeing each other off the dancefloor when, to the surprise of their families, they revealed the pregnancy.
Mr Bleijie said he has not spoken publicly about his private discussions with Sally after she learned she was expecting a child.
“We didn’t tell anyone for three months because we were scared,” he said.
“I recall saying to my girlfriend Sally at the time: what are we going to do?”
He said she responded without a second thought that “we are keeping this baby”.
“I wish I had been as strong then as my 17-year-old girlfriend,” he said.
“If we had made that decision I would not have been able to forgive myself.”
He also attacked comments that existing laws were archaic, saying “killing a baby in 1918 is not different to killing a baby in 2018”.
“There are options available to not getting pregnant. There are options available to prevent pregnancies,” he said.
“To kill a baby a child with a beating heart up to nine months is something that I would never, ever vote for.”
He said keeping abortion in the Criminal Code set a deterrent.
“If keeping it in the Criminal Code means one baby is stopped from being aborted then I think that is good.”
Another Opposition MP to speak against the Bill was Member for Gregory Lachlan Millar.
Mr Millar has joined some of his parliamentary colleagues that the laws could be abused by domestic violence perpetrators who would seek to “march off” their partners to the doctor to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
He argued the laws were unnecessary, as “we are not seeing women and their doctors being charged by police, so I clearly cannot see the pressing case for changing the law”.
“The existing laws do seem to achieve a balance, however, there is probably a case for strengthening protection of doctors and patients.”
But he said he did not believe the Bill before Parliament was the right way to do this, and suggested existing laws should instead be amended to stop any harassment of those seeking medical care.
He said suffering would occur should the Bill pass.
“Allowing abortions for social reasons for the length of the pregnancy appalls me.”
Mr Millar also argued that it would put an “onerous burden on the medical profession”. Some young doctors may “feel this is not what they signed-up for when they took the Hippocratic Oath,” namely to do no harm.
LIBERAL NATIONAL MP’S SUPPORT CRUCIAL
LIBERAL National MP Steve Minnikin will vote for Labor’s Bill, describing his speech in support of the changes as the toughest he has made in the House.
His support helps shore up support for the Bill, with the vote to be tight.
Mr Minnikin is one of at least two Liberal National MPs expected to be voting for the changes after being afforded a conscience vote on the issue.
At least one Labor MP will vote against it: Jo-Ann Miller.
“No one should be forced to endure a pregnancy they do not want,” Mr Minnikin told the House.
“I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-choice, pro-autonomy, pro-respect.
“If we are truly to be a modern egalitarian state... we need to decriminalise archaic laws.”
“The hardest speech I have written thus far in my life took place four years ago when I delivered a eulogy speech at my father’s funeral.
“I still miss him every single day.
“This speech I am about to deliver is by far the hardest speech I have delivered as a State Member of Parliament. I do so with the privileged gift of a conscience vote as the result of a unanimous decision of the LNP party room.
“One way or another we are all about to make history this week in this chamber that I love so much and which will be forever recorded in the parliamentary Hansard.
“For many of us our names once added to the members honour board will fade into political obscurity but the impact the passage of this Bill will have on subsequent generations to come will not.”
Earlier, Tourism Minister Kate Jones told Parliament it was “fundamentally important” a Bill talked about all of her life was to be decided by a conscience vote.
But she said it was disappointing to see media reports “that elements of the LNP were still putting pressure on MPs in regard to them exercising their conscience”.
Abortion vote: New threat to disendorse MPs
“I hope they (MPs) do have the strength to stand up to those threats within their party,” she said.
“I fundamentally believe it should not be considered a criminal act in our state.”
She said that the current criminal status of abortion unfairly impacted women, particularly those in remote areas of the state, from low socio-economic backgrounds and those of an aboriginal and Torres Strait Island background.
LNP Member for Surfers Paradise and onetime opposition leader John-Paul Langbroek saying he believes abortion should be removed from the Criminal Code.
However he revealed he would be voting against the Bill and the proposed amendments that would allow abortions up to 16 weeks gestation.
‘TO ME IT IS NOTHING SHORT OF MURDER’
LNP Member for Burdekin Dale Last said he would not vote for the Bill, insisting it was flawed and fell well short of community expectations.
“I shudder to think that a women and perhaps her partner would consider terminating a life because it is the wrong sex or the relationship dissolved or it was no longer convenient to have a baby or the mother had lost her job,” Mr Last told the House.
“To me this is nothing short of murder.”
He said his constituents had urged him to oppose the changes.
Earlier another Liberal National MP, Mark McArdle, took a swipe at both sides of the debate for their behaviour in the lead-up the vote.
“I say to all people I will vote in regard this bill in relation to my conscience. I will not accept the gratuitous advice of those who seem to have the opinion that I should vote in a certain set manner,” he said.
“I accept that this is an emotional Bill. But I want to put on the record that some parties on both sides of the debate need to reflect on their behaviour and tactics.”
He described some of those tactics as “quite repulsive”.
Mr McArdle will move amendments to the Bill including to reducing the gestational period until which a woman procure an abortion on request from 22 weeks to 16 and removing the reference to “social circumstances” as a consideration for a doctor deciding whether or not to grant an abortion after that gestational period.
“I have to say at this point in time I cannot support it (the Bill),” he said in explaining his call for amendments.
Katter’s Australian Party MP Nick Dametto confirmed he would also vote against the Bill.
He told Parliament he and his now wife grappled with her pregnancy when they were in high school and that experienced shaped his decision to vote no.
“Seventeen years ago I was on high school and contemplating completing grade 12 and my now wife and I were faced with the dilemma of a teenage pregnancy,” Mr Dametto told the House.
“We were given options and coming from a small town with all the social pressures in the world it would have been easier to abort.
“No one would ever had known.
“It could have changed or lives. But when I was faced with the stone cold facts that we were facing, the killing of our unborn son or daughter that was something that I would not be able to live with on my conscience for the rest of my life.
“Right there and then I knew where I would be voting on this, and I would be voting against the abortion Bill if it came up in the House.”
FACTS HAVE BEEN TWISTED, LIES HAVE BEEN PEDDLED
Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch has spoken in support of the bill and slammed the “incredibly distressing” anti-abortion campaign, saying “facts have been twisted and lies have been peddled.”
“I’m personally appalled at the baseless attacks on my parliamentary colleagues,” she said.
Ms Enoch told Parliament her decision to support the bill was influenced by her childhood encounter with a young pregnant woman who was forced to travel interstate to obtain a legal abortion.
She said she was just six or seven years old when a woman came to stay with her family and witnessed the anguish she faced with her decision to end her pregnancy.
“It was one that weighed heavily on her,” she said.
“She was not in this position because she was irresponsible or a terrible human being.
“She had thought this through. She had received medical advice ... and she had reached a conclusion that this was the best choice for her.”
Ms Enoch said she never wanted another woman to suffer the same ordeal.
“It supports the fact that it is fundamentally a decision that is between her and her medical practitioner not anyone else including the criminal justice system,” she said.
“I want to be part of a society that allows women choices, even if not everyone agrees.”
‘SERIOUSLY, IS THIS THE BEST WE CAN DO’
LNP frontbencher Trevor Watts told State Parliament he would vote against the Bill, criticising it for being extreme.
“Labor’s extreme abortion Bill will allow termination of pregnancy for any reason, including gender selection, up to 22 weeks,” he said.
“Labor’s termination of pregnancy Bill is more extreme than legislation in other western nations.
“I ask everybody in this chamber to look to their conscience and ask themselves seriously is this the best we can do.”
‘WOMEN BEST PLACED TO MAKE THE DECISION’
Transport Minister Mark Bailey said the Bill was about “trusting women to make their own health and medical decision for themselves because they are in the best place to make those decisions.”
Mr Bailey said it was well known he had been a long-time supporter of decriminalisation of abortion in Queensland.
“Health and medical matters are an issue for a woman and her doctor to discuss. they are not a matter for the Criminal Code.
“The time is long overdue in our state for women to stop being criminalised for making their own health choices in terms of fertility and pregnancy in consultation with their doctors,” he said.
“While it may be true there have been few or no convictions under the current laws, it is undeniable the current law has been used as a weapon against women.”
‘I CAN’T AND WON’T BE SUPPORTING THIS BILL’
State Opposition MP and Member for Glass House Andrew Powell has told State Parliament he will vote against the bill and any amendments.
Mr Powell, a father of five and Evangelical Christian, has told Parliament he took issue with the absence of the word “abortion” in the bill, which uses the wording: “termination of pregnancy.”
He also raised concerns about the difficulty of practitioner to refuse to have any role in an abortion.
“Yes this bill allows registered health practitioners, doctors and nurses, to consciously object, to advise, perform or assist in a termination, but it also requires that same practitioner to refer that woman to another health practitioner who the first health practitioner believes will perform the termination,” Mr Powell said.
“For me it’s pretty simple. While I accept that in some tragic situations, abortions are sadly required. I believe that life is precious and that that life starts at conception. Life doesn’t start at 22 weeks. It doesn’t start at 16 weeks. It doesn’t start at four weeks. It starts at conception.
“I cannot support the proposal of a 22 week on demand abortion. I particularly cannot stomach an aborition for social reasons or that such could be allowed beyond 22 weeks.
He detailed the early arrival of his nephew at 28 weeks and three days back in 2013 to highlight the reason for his opposition.
Mr Powell said his nephew weighed just 1.1kg when born and “you could hold him in the palm of your hand.”
“He is now a bubbly vivacious train-addicted five year old. But the point is he was life at 1.1kg, just as any other child delivered at term.
“I can’t and won’t be supporting this bill and I can’t and won’t be supporting any amendments.”
‘NO LAPEL PINS OR RIBBONS, BECAUSE IT’S UNCOMFORTABLE’
Labor backbencher Melissa McMahon has shared her personal story of miscarriage in an emotional contribution to the House on the Termination of Pregnancy Bill.
She pointed to the debate taking place in a week that began with International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.
“You may not heard much fanfare about it. It’s not a widely recognised day. No lapel pins or ribbons, maybe because it’s uncomfortable.
“It disrupts a narrative that pregnancy is all flowers, baby showers and nursery swaches.
“The reality is not all pregnancies have happy endings.”
Ms McMahon described her joy at learning of her first child’s impending arrival.
“But with each successive pregnancy and with each successive pregnancy loss, darkness and foreboding sets in and optimism goes out the window,” she told the House.
“You don’t get excited. You don’t tell anyone because then you have to deal with the looks of pity when it is yet another loss.
“I know for myself I changed the rules. Don’t tell anyone after 20 weeks and only if the scan is good.”
Ms McMahon also revealed she believed her own mother may have made a different choice had the laws been different when she fell pregnant as a teenager.
“I am not insensible to the fact that had an abortion been legal and accessible some 40 odd years ago perhaps I may not be here today,” the MP told the House.
“I don’t think I would begrudge my mother for having looked at all the options in front of her. I’m sure it wasn’t her plan to have to leave school and to be married before she could vote.
“Maybe she could have finished high school. I know she wanted a career. She could have studied. She could have travelled. All the things anyone would wish for their teenage daughter.”
Ms McMahon will support her Government’s changes.
LAWS WOULD LEAD TO GENDER SELECTION
KATTER’S Australian Party leader Robbie Katter has renewed his party’s opposition to the abortion decriminalisation laws.
Mr Katter said he was concerned there was a greater chance that those who were “different” could be “cast aside from the gene pool” under the proposed laws.
“These children to me are certainly a gift to us and personally have enhanced mine and the parents’ lives so much that I can’t get my head around why they’re now going to have a slimmer chance of experiencing life outside of the womb,” he said.
“It stirs me very emotionally to think of the rights of the defenceless unborn life that I believe we are charged with protecting at all costs.
“I see it as the pinnacle of civilisation that we have the medical advancements to preserve life.”
Mr Katter said it would be naive to believe the laws would not lead to
gender selection.
He said his party acknowledged “both sides of the argument” on the debate, but insisted their opposition to the Bill was central to their principles and beliefs.
KAP will also not be voting in favour of the amendments that have been put forward by Caloundra MP Mark McArdle, that would allow abortions to occur up to 16 weeks instead of the proposed 22 weeks.
‘THESE WOMEN ARE NOT CRIMINALS’
Senior Government Minister Grace Grace has urged MPs to “make history” and support the Palaszczuk Government’s Termination of Pregnancy Bill.
“We have a duty here today and an historic opportunity,” Ms Grace told the House. “These women are not criminals, nor will they ever be. It is a modern world...and we have a duty in this House to make history.”
Ms Grace rubbished claims the changes would lead to an increase in the number of abortions being performed.
“I don’t accept for one minute that by doing that (removing abortion from the Criminal Code) we are going to have women lining up to have abortions.
“That is disrespectful.
“It was the same when we decriminalised homosexuality and I don’t see everybody all of a sudden becoming a homosexual.”
‘THE PUBLIC OUTCRY HAS BEEN HUGE’
Pro-life LNP Mark Robinson has outlined his objection to the Bill, telling the house he believed the Queensland public was “strongly opposed” to the Bill.
Mr Robinson pointed to the thousands of signatures gathered on pro-life petitions and participated in marches and the large number of submissions to the parliamentary committee urging it to reject the Bill.
“The public outcry here in Queensland has been huge,” he told the House.
“Altogether the public, I believe, is strongly opposed.
Mr Robinson, who attracted criticism for charging taxpayers to attend a pro-life rally in Melbourne, argued the changes would increase the number of abortions being performed and raised concerns about the impact of the Bill on late term abortion access.
“In terms of late term abortion, the Bill fails on many levels,” Mr Robinson said.
“The issue of what is the latest term at which a late term abortion would be allowed...I haven’t seen an upper limit of age in terms of the law itself.”
He will vote against the Bill.
“Life is precious, life is sacred and I encourage the House this week to choose life.”
BOLTON GIVES STATE GOVERNMENT CRUCIAL VOTE
Queensland’s only independent MP Sandy Bolton has risen in State Parliament to indicate her support for the decriminalisation of abortion.
Her support would give the government another crucial vote to pass the Bill.
Ms Bolton said she believed the proposed laws could lead to a decline in the number of abortions in Queensland.
Her support would give the government another crucial vote to pass the Bill.
Ms Bolton said she believed the proposed laws could lead to a decline in the number of abortions in Queensland.
“To insinuate that decriminalising abortion will open the floodgates to rampant terminations is offensive, disrespectful and inaccurate, as statistics from Victoria indicate,” she said.
“What is even more distasteful are the comments that women without a catastrophic reasons will be lining up for a late-term abortion.
“The inferences that are being made defines women in the most negative ways.”
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