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Angela Shanahan

Left doublethink paints abortion as a ‘health’ issue

Angela Shanahan
Pro-choice protesters outside Parliament House in Adelaide, October 16, 2024. Picture: Matt Loxton
Pro-choice protesters outside Parliament House in Adelaide, October 16, 2024. Picture: Matt Loxton

Readers of my last column might have thought that it was just about that awful topic, abortion – and they would have been partly right, as we were on the cusp of the US election.

In this country, the left has long tried to use the availability of “reproductive services”, elaborate code for abortion, to push for it to be available in public hospitals and, by extension, to attack Catholic public hospitals.

However, a second, more imminent political issue over this vexed subject looms. There is a move among the left to split the Coalition using abortion, with a several-pronged tactic. First, it is being insinuated into the public consciousness as a “public health” issue; second, following on from that, over the next months it will be pushed as a political issue.

The argument is that the Liberals are in the Donald Trump aggressive mould and the Coalition is going to use abortion as an election issue, which is a weird bit of ­doublethink since it was the Harris campaign that tried to make it almost her only issue.

Here in Australia, the left appears to be taking a leaf out of the Harris playbook which attacked Trump on abortion, mostly because Roe v Wade was found to be unconstitutional. But this is Australia, not the United States.

However, that has not stopped the ever-cynical Greens from baiting the Coalition and Peter Dutton using abortion. Recently, they have ramped up the attack on the public health front, announcing that they want a billion dollars spent on providing abortion services in all public hospitals, particularly in regional and rural areas.

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As well, alert readers may have noticed that articles are appearing in various publications – and not just the left’s usual suspects – about the so called “health issue”.

Why are abortions not permitted in public hospitals? Recently, the two most reliable mouthpieces of the left, the ABC and The Guardian, have gone in boots and all. The Guardian recently published a long opinion piece criticising the lack of abortion access in public hospitals, especially at the Mater in Queensland, a Catholic public hospital; and Patricia Karvelas on the ABC tried to corner Dutton on the issue.

All of this skirts the good reason that elective abortions are not permitted in public hospitals. This is not about sick people. Elective abortion takes beds and public-health facilities from sick people. What is more, this campaign goes on despite the fact that the majority of elective abortions are paid for by Medicare, and that is even the case for late abortion. In 2008, when senator Guy Barnett brought a motion to restrict the use of item number 16525 which funds second-trimester abortions, pro-abortion advocacy group Children By Choice said restriction of 16525 would “likely shift some of the provision of the procedures covered by the item to the public hospital system and place additional pressures on these services”.

Pro-Choice Protesters outside Parliament House in Adelaide in October. Picture: Matt Loxton
Pro-Choice Protesters outside Parliament House in Adelaide in October. Picture: Matt Loxton

Niki Savva in The Sydney Morning Herald, using her own form of doublethink, writes that the Coalition is going to do the same as Trump and use abortion as an election issue, even though it was the left that tried it in Queensland, and continues to drum it up.

Sava blames the “Christian Right”, which she claims is more prominent than it was. She seems to have forgotten the prominence of the evangelical Australian Christian Lobby during the Howard era. What she really seems to be saying is that it is a Catholic LNP preoccupation.

Thus, Senator Matt Canavan’s Born Alive bill, which would allow lifesaving treatment for babies born after late-term abortion, has indeed become a burning conscientious issue that some LNP members feel is being ignored. ACT senator Katy Gallagher, who was one of the principal movers of the eventual takeover of Calvary hospital, wants the Canavan bill to be dropped.

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Dutton, however, doesn’t want to revisit the issue in an election campaign. He is right. As he knows, for Australians it is not the burning issue it is in the US, but it is a very uncomfortable issue for most people. Politically, it provides a distraction from the everyday issues of cost of living and energy that is the opposition’s strength and Dutton wants to campaign on. What is more, aside from hospital funding, it has no application to federal law. As Dutton said this week, “to use abortion is the most cynical thing you could do because federal laws have nothing to do with abortion”.

However, from now until the federal election, don’t think we won’t hear any more about this. It will be used relentlessly by the left to try to split the Coalition, although pursuing this issue could have the opposite effect from the one intended because it is the Coalition sticking to bread-and-butter issues. And it shows an element of desperation from the left as Dutton’s star rises because he is seen as a strong leader, whether in the Trump mould or not, versus Albanese, whose personal rating is falling. However, Dutton’s warning not to use it as an election issue is seen by some members as suppressing their conscientious principles. Dutton will, in all likelihood, be targeted on this issue, as he is a Catholic. Perhaps Dutton knows that to implement conscientious principles it is first important to have government, and perhaps he knows better than some of his more impetuous colleagues that for people who are propelled by good principles about human life, Christian or not, it is best to be “wise as serpents”.

Angela Shanahan

Angela Shanahan is a Canberra-based freelance journalist and mother of nine children. She has written regularly for The Australian for over 20 years, The Spectator (British and Australian editions) for over 10 years, and formerly for the Sunday Telegraph, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times. For 15 years she was a teacher in the NSW state high school system and at the University of NSW. Her areas of interest are family policy, social affairs and religion. She was an original convener of the Thomas More Forum on faith and public life in Canberra.In 2020 she published her first book, Paul Ramsay: A Man for Others, a biography of the late hospital magnate and benefactor, who instigated the Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/left-doublethink-paints-abortion-asa-health-issue/news-story/3e7046a17b5a1fe491d9bead48b145ea