Abortion back on the agenda in Victoria

Ms Candy Broad, member for the Northern Victoria Region in the Legislative Council (i.e. the Upper House) in the Victorian Parliament has introduced her Crimes (Decriminalisation of Abortion) Bill 2007 into the Upper House. The purpose of the Bill in amending the Crimes Act 1958 is threefold:

1. to remove the offence of unlawful abortion in relation to procuring a woman’s miscarriage (Section 65 of the Crimes Act 1958);
2. to remove the application of the offence of child destruction to an abortion (Section 10); and
3. create a new section to restrict the right to perform an abortion to a medical practitioner or someone acting under the direction of a medical practitioner (new Section 34AA).

The press report Ms Broad as saying most Victorians believed abortions were completely lawful but the outdated laws remained.

This statement is of dubious value: most Victorians are concerned about late term abortions and if confronted with the statistic of more than one abortion for every three live births, would say 20,000 abortions each year in Victoria were too many.

Ms Broad also claimed that her legislation would safeguard women and doctors against the threat of prosecution. This also is a nonsense claim. Who in the recent past has faced prosecution in Victoria other than the doctor who aborted a 32-week-old dwarf who wasn’t a dwarf?

Again Ms Broad says, "I want to see abortion being provided in a safe as well as a legal way”. Who says abortion is a safe procedure? Certainly not for the unborn child. There is nothing in her Bill that renders abortion safe.

Contra Ms Broad, there are sound reasons why Parliament should reject any attempt to decriminalise abortion.

The major problem with making abortion legal without qualification as Ms Broad’s Bill does, is that the general public, including the young, will begin to think of abortion - once considered morally wrong, or at the very least morally dubious - as morally right. Abortion is not morally right. Even the ancient Greeks recognised the value of the unborn so that Hippocrates bound all doctors in his oath against procuring an abortion.

One practical consequence of the change in emphasis associated with decriminalisation of abortion would be that it will become much harder for a woman to resist calls from her boyfriend, her husband or other family members to undergo an abortion.

More particularly, it is worth drawing attention to following disastrous and unacceptable aspects of Ms Broad’s proposed Bill:

Given the already high level of abortions carried out each year in Victoria, the Bill does nothing to reduce the number of abortions - rather than relaxing abortion laws, Parliament should be toughening laws to protect the unborn.

As matters stand, should Ms Broad’s Bill be approved, the culture of death becomes more firmly entrenched in the State of Victoria - surely a matter of shame to all Victorians.

The proposed changes to the law basically treat an abortion like any other medical procedure, when in fact it is a developing unborn child with its own unique DNA material which is being aborted.

The Bill institutionalises abortion on demand - any pregnant woman at any stage in her pregnancy up to term can go to a medical practitioner and demand an abortion.

The Bill fails to acknowledge and describe the alternatives to abortion that preserve the life of the developing unborn child.

There is no requirement to make available to any woman considering an abortion, suitable material displaying colour pictures of the growing child in the womb, or better still an ultrasound view of the developing unborn child in the woman’s own womb.

There is no requirement in the Bill to warn women of the risks associated with abortion. It does nothing to address the trauma that many women undergo for decades after an abortion: flashbacks, anniversary reactions, temptations to suicide, difficulties in maintaining and developing relationships, turning to drugs, increased susceptibility to breast or other cancers, and so on.

There is no requirement for independent pre-termination counselling from someone who is not an advocate of abortion and therefore no cooling off period between counselling and possible abortion of the developing unborn child. Nor is there any provision for post termination follow up.

What is required for any woman contemplating an abortion is truly independent written advice with attention drawn to other services such as those offered by the churches which can provide a second opinion.

There is nothing in the Bill to regulate the medical profession’s conduct, no guidance is offered to the medical profession as to the conditions under which an abortion of the developing unborn child might be considered (not that we wish to be considered in any way supportive of such an outcome), nor does the Bill, in a major omission, give the right for a doctor to refuse to undertake an abortion for the sake of conscience, something which the otherwise deplorable ACT legislation, Crimes (Abolition of Offence of Abortion) Act 2002 does.

If Parliamentarians wish to change the law in regard to abortion, rather than decriminalising abortion, a step in the right direction would be to alter the Crimes Act 1958 to apply the offence of Child Destruction whenever an unborn child of 20 weeks or more is aborted. Such a move would be far more widely supported in the Victorian community than Ms Broad’s ill considered and dangerous Bill.

Abortion is bad: there are far too many of them, and so the question to our politicians is, “what are you doing to reduce the number of them?