Sunday Telegraph editorial: Nobody is aborting healthy babies for reasons of convenience
Nobody is aborting healthy babies for lifestyle or convenience reasons — and the fact NSW is now enmeshed in a nasty emotional fake ‘debate’ about abortion is testament to the NSW government’s poor handling of this sensitive issue.
Opinion
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Let’s get real about abortion.
Babies are treasured, wanted, loved. Mothers and fathers are their guardians, their greatest protectors.
Nobody is aborting perfectly healthy babies for lifestyle or convenience reasons.
And the fact NSW is now enmeshed in a nasty emotional fake ‘‘debate’’ about abortion is testament to the NSW government’s poor handling of this sensitive issue.
At a time when she should be cruising through the first year of a fresh term, Gladys Berejiklian has facilitated the introduction of an independent MP’s ill-thought-out abortion bill to parliament, splitting her own government and reviving an issue that most voters thought was already legislated.
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Nobody wants this brawl to be happening in public, except perhaps the very small group of “conservatives” who use abortion as a tool to create hysterical myths that serve only to vilify women in awful circumstances.
Until recently, one of the few blessings of Australian politics has been that abortion — the issue which tears apart America every couple of years — has not been a political football here.
Have you ever met a woman who had an abortion without first going through the agony of decision-making? No, us neither.
And yet Fred Nile and Co would have us believe that hard-hearted career women are out there wanting to kill babies in case they interrupt their busy lives. That’s offensive nonsense.
Nile and his cronies don’t want women having any reproductive rights at all — but in this case they’re claiming the real problem is the bill allows termination up to 22 weeks with only one doctor’s consent.
But the 22-week mark was recommended by the Australian Medical Association and endorsed by every other doctors’ group because many catastrophic complications of pregnancy are only able to be diagnosed at the 20-week scan.
So women find themselves being told by a doctor their baby’s life is either unviable or likely to be terribly painful, and then discovering it’s illegal in this state to terminate the pregnancy.
Experts say among the one per cent of women who presently terminate pregnancies over 20 weeks are cases where nobody could suggest this is a lighthearted or callous decision.
Today we report on the case of the rape victim who had been in denial about her pregnancy for four months; the woman living with domestic violence; the mother of more than seven children whose husband refused to use contraception and who was facing having another in incredibly difficult circumstances.
This is what we’re actually talking about when we discuss late-term abortion.
So let’s have the debate — but leave aside the totally unfair smears on women in circumstances none of us would wish on our worst enemies.
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