Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Most Australians agree that we have too many abortions and most would be surprised to learn that in 2005 some 47 babies out of 309, or 15 per cent of the post-20-week abortions in Victoria, were actually born alive and then simply left to die. Data on late abortions performed in Victoria in 2005 shows that not a single abortion was performed because of any danger to the mother’s physical health. Late abortions are being done for ‘maternal psychosocial reasons’, which in reality means abortion on request.

Leah Bowlen was just 22 weeks old in her mother’s womb when the brilliant surgical team at Monash Medical Centre operated on her to remove amniotic bands from above her left ankle. This in utero surgery saved Leah’s left leg. Amillia Taylor was born on 24 October 2006 in Florida at 21 weeks and six days gestation. By her first birthday she suffered from no major health problems. 4D ultrasound takes three-dimensional still ultrasound images and adds the element of time to the process. The result is live action images of the unborn child. These remarkable scientific developments compel us to see the child in the womb through new eyes.

Medicare currently funds abortions of babies as old as 26 weeks, which is well after the age when babies like Amillia Taylor are born alive and survive and at which little Leah Bowlen underwent surgery in the womb. Australian abortions involve the partial birth abortion method, which was banned by the United States congress some five years ago. In upholding the right of congress to ban this procedure, the Supreme Court observed:

It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns … that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.

The latest available figures on late-term abortions in Victoria show that in that state alone in 2005 there were 108 abortions of babies aged between 23 and 27 weeks for maternal psychosocial reasons. Babies born at this stage of pregnancy obviously can survive and flourish. Zak Rowles:

… laughs a lot and really grizzles. It is a trait that is sure to serve him well in future, but his mother, Tracy, believes Zak’s tendency to look on the bright side has already saved his life, sustaining him through a perilous beginning after he was born at 23 weeks of pregnancy (at Nepean Hospital in Sydney) weighing just 665 grams.

Eli, a baby born at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney in December 2005, at just 25 weeks gestation, was described by his parents just eight months later as a baby who has:

… the cutest smile, loves chewing his hands and looking at himself in the mirror and recently started rolling. We have been blessed with another very happy and content baby and are so very grateful for having him in our lives.

How can it be right to use government Medicare funding to intentionally end the lives of babies old enough to survive outside the womb? Nearly 60 per cent of all post-20-week abortions, or 180 out of 309, performed in Victoria in 2005 were for psychosocial indications. Of these, 112 were performed at 23 weeks gestation or later—that is, after foetal viability. Significantly, there were no recorded terminations for maternal physical health risks.

It is hard to believe that Australian taxpayers are happy funding such procedures. Indeed, a national survey conducted in 2005 by market research in Queensland found that two out of three Australians are opposed to Medicare funding of second trimester abortions. The Medicare item for late abortions refers to ‘managing second trimester labour’ for ‘life-threatening maternal disease’. However, it has been revealed that this phrase is open to broad interpretation. The Medicare item refers to ‘gross foetal abnormality’. This has no fixed meaning and, again, is open to interpretation. Conditions like missing fingers or dwarfism are not excluded. In 2003-04 at least three babies were aborted in Victoria solely because they had cleft lip or palate with no other disabilities. Cleft lip and palate, as I am sure most senators here tonight would be fully aware, are correctable by surgery.

Recent evidence demonstrates that abortion is harmful to women’s wellbeing. A 13-year study of women in Finland found that the suicide rate among women who had abortions was six times higher than that of women who had given birth in the prior year. A New Zealand study found that women who had abortions were twice as likely to drink alcohol at dangerous levels and three times as likely to be addicted to illegal drugs compared with those who carried their pregnancies to term. Women are human beings with emotions, but Medicare item 16525 suggests to these women that it is okay to claim funding of late-term and second trimester abortions on request, with little or no emotional consequences. This is utter nonsense.

I fully understand the arguments concerning cases where a woman is raped or where her life may be endangered by carrying the baby to term, and that ending Medicare funding for late abortions would discriminate against those in low socioeconomic circumstances. I also understand how women may be offended by male commentary on abortion and by all the insensitivities men seem to be able to muster in this debate. I am not so heartless as to think the abortion debate can be engaged solely by puritanical argument devoid of emotion but I am persuaded by the rights of the child and the right to live. I cannot and will not shake this sentiment.

The abortion debate is one of the most intimate and wrenching debates we will have, but I am confronted by the fact that late abortions are often done to eliminate unborn children with unwanted physical or intellectual disabilities. The Australian idea of a ‘fair go’ leads us to value the contribution that people with disabilities make to our national life. Using Medicare to eliminate children with disabilities before they are even born is wrong. It discriminates against such children by depriving them of any chance of life.

Since 1994 the Australian taxpayers have paid about $1.7 million for more than 10,000 second trimester and late abortions. In 2007 alone the Australian taxpayers paid over $150,000 for nearly 800 late-term abortions. The law governing when and under what conditions abortion may be lawfully performed is a matter for the states and territories. However, the Commonwealth has clear responsibility for the Medicare scheme. Each year the new Medicare table which sets out which procedures are to be funded is tabled in the Senate as a regulation. This table contains item 16525, which provides for the funding of second trimester and late abortions. Medicare does not fund third trimester abortions.

By doing nothing, the Senate is effectively authorising these abortions to be funded and continue unchecked. The Senate has the power to disallow any regulation. In light of the evidence about late abortions, I was compelled by my conscience to move to disallow Medicare funding in the Senate last week. A briefing paper on this sensitive but important issue is included on my website, www.guybarnett.com, and it is my hope that this matter of conscience will be considered in a compassionate and thoughtful way by not only federal senators, who are expected to debate and vote on the matter in early September, but also the general public, who will no doubt express their views in the media, to each other and to senators. I thank the Senate.