Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the Senate would be aware, notice was given by Senator Guy Barnett last week of a motion to disallow item 16525 of regulations that provide Medicare funding under the Health Insurance Act 1973. The aim of the disallowance motion is to withdraw Medicare funding for second trimester abortions. The effect of the disallowance motion will be to trigger a debate on the subject of late-term abortions when the parliament returns in the spring session.

Equally, this is an overdue debate in society. It is an issue that has been successfully hidden away, wrapped in society’s acceptance of early-term abortions. But it is a much worse procedure, as are the reasons for it. I believe it is time to put the brakes on the runaway culture of violence that has developed in our hospitals and within the medical profession. It is as easy to get a late-term abortion as it is to get an early-term abortion. As is the case with such moral issues, the matter will be a conscience vote—a time when parliamentarians are released from their party obligations and are left alone to rely on their conscience to decide their vote.

For those who believe that life begins at conception—that is, that the body grows and the soul exists, and I am one of those who hold such a belief—then what choice do you have but to support a pro-life stance and reject the aid or promotion of abortion? On voting patterns, the pro-life position has not held sway in past parliaments. One in four of the conscience votes that could be considered a pro-life position have been successful in the past decade. However, the merit and substance of this coming debate surely warrant even greater moral attention than before. There seems to be a greater horror and an even more distinguishable human right of the child when discussing late-term abortions.

Perhaps when talking about legislating RU486, as this parliament has done, it can be said that it is just a pill that is available. Perhaps when discussing embryo experimentations, as this parliament has also done, it can be said that it is just an embryo in a tube or that cloning is just a single cell. But, for late-term abortions, the gravity of the issue is clearer. We are dealing with a fully formed, viable baby. If you are a pro-choicer, within the confines of past debates you have only dealt with embryos or early life. Where there are completing rights between the adult and the baby, a clear choice is available. The answer the pro-choicer gives is: the woman’s right reigns. However, the question is not the same for late-term pregnancies—there are no competing rights between the mother and the baby. The baby is viable at some 20 weeks and can live away from the mother. So the question in the debate on late-term abortions is: do adults have an unfettered right over the child? That is the basic human rights question that will be presented to the parliament in the spring session.

The woman’s health and life are often used as a reason for termination. I accept that, where the mother is in imminent danger of her life, abortion is a choice; however, we are all only too aware that that is not the source of the majority of the some 100,000 abortions in Australia every year. Moreover, this argument put up to justify early-term abortions does not relate to late-term abortions because here the baby is viable. Any danger to the mother can be attended to by evacuating the baby. That is a medical fact. The debate is therefore brought back to the sole question of: is the adult entitled to an unfettered right over the child? That is all that a vote against the disallowance motion can amount to.

With regard to the medical process of late-term abortion, it must be distinguished clinically from an early-term abortion. The method is a more invasive and difficult surgical procedure. The doctor must undertake a greater physical and mental intent to terminate the baby. The Victorian Crimes Act, section 10, describes late-term abortion after 28 weeks as ‘child destruction’, which is a measure of what I mean by a physical and mental intent. The truth of the matter is that these babies are strong and fight for their lives. The latest figures from Victoria indicate that 47 out of 309 post-20-week abortions performed in 2005—the latest figures available—resulted in the delivery of a live baby who died shortly after delivery. Late-term abortion, therefore, is clinically different because the foetus is more mature and consequently larger, has recognisable human appearance, a solid bone structure, a well-developed cardiovascular and central nervous system and is responsive to painful stimuli. It has been well featured in pictures and documentaries that a baby in the womb responds to an invasion by a probing needle by placing its hands in front of its face to protect itself.

We cannot debate this issue and give it the gravity it deserves without knowing or acknowledging the methods undertaken to terminate the late-term baby. There are three methods and each requires delivery: firstly, killing the baby in the womb with a solution injected into the heart of the baby; secondly, dismembering the body in delivery; and, thirdly, a partial birth abortion—and the controversy of this method has been the subject of debate in the congress and the Senate of the United States and consequently banned.

In Australia the partial birth abortion method is certainly undertaken in the private clinics of the most prolific abortionist in Australia, Dr David Grundmann, and there is nothing to say that, at least to some extent, it has not been undertaken in Australian hospitals. Shockingly, this method, which would be known to most people who understand the gravity of late-term abortion—that is, partial birth abortion—does attract Medicare benefit.

There is no running from the facts. What this method means to the unborn warrants the absolute truth. I will therefore quote from the Washington Times, on 29 February 1996, when the newspaper described in detail the partial birth abortion method as follows:

Partial birth abortion is a gruesome procedure that is even opposed by many who support ... legal abortion. In the procedure, which commonly takes place after the foetus is about 6 months old, the foetus’ feet and torso are delivered ... while its head remains in the birth canal. The abortionist then stabs the base of the foetus’ skull with scissors and inserts a catheter into the opening. The catheter is used to suck out brain matter, which kills the foetus and allows the skull to collapse for easy delivery.

As I say, this shocking method does attract Medicare benefit.

The landmark case in 1969 entitled the Menhennitt ruling, which effectively legalised abortion on demand in Australia, never contemplated late-term abortion, nor it was contemplated by society until recently. This is evidenced by the fact that, in my own state of Victoria, late-term abortions have been illegal. Section 10 of the Crimes Act specifically states that an abortion after 28 weeks is termed ‘child destruction’ and is a criminal offence. However, the Menhennitt ruling is being used to justify the hundreds of late-term and, consequently, illegal abortions that occur in Victoria. The laws are contradictory in the eyes of those who seek legitimacy for late-term abortions; however, they are not contradictory for those who believe there is a line in the sand to be drawn at late-term abortions.

As evidenced by the much publicised late-term abortion case of 32 weeks at the Royal Women’s Hospital in 2001, no responsible Victorian authority would enforce the law that is on the statutes. Although that law may be dormant, under the current gaggle of state authorities, while it exists, it still acts as some form of deterrent to doctors and hospital administrations. The Menhennitt ruling referred to abortion as ‘a necessity to save the health and life of the mother’. So the word ‘necessity’ is crucial, given that, if the mother’s health is in danger in a late-term pregnancy, the baby’s viability is not in conflict with the rights or life of the mother. Basically, that negates the Menhennitt ruling; in other words, there is no necessity to abort but rather to deliver a life.

What of the question of life itself? When does life begin? That question, once central, is still relevant to this debate today. In 1969, when Menhennitt ruled, the common belief of pro-choicers was that the foetus was not life, at least at anything less than 12 weeks. In this regard, over the past decade, science has been the instigator of a major shift in attitude. Science has proven that all senses and early body form exist within seven days, and the rate of growth of the embryo between one and seven days is as fast as it is during any other term of the whole human experience. In other words, the embryo is hurtling towards its human existence and selfhood.

I make this point to show that the old debate of whether or not the foetus is a life is over. Society and even pro-choicers now accept that it is life; the science is too compelling. Then, if that is the case for early term, how could personhood be denied of the baby in late term—the second and third trimesters? As I said at another time in this place, to leave this new wave of child destruction unchecked will place us on a roller-coaster ride to the outer limits.