CHERISH Life Queensland has told a public hearing that abortion is not liberation, it is coercive deception.
Abortion “is abandonment of our women at a most vulnerable time in their lives”, Cherish Life’s research director Kara Thomas told the Queensland Parliament Health Committee inquiring into a second abortion bill proposed by Member for Cairns Rob Pyne.
“It harms women because it violently interrupts the natural progression of pregnancy, with serious physical and psychological consequences,” Ms Thomas said.
“The last thing women need is more permissive abortion laws, as Mr Pyne is proposing.
“Instead, they need whatever protection the current law can provide, as well as full and accurate information, real support and safeguards such as independent counselling and cooling-off periods.”
Recently the health committee spent two days hearing submissions from organisations that oppose and support abortion as proposed under the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill 2016.
The bill is the second piece of reform legislation introduced this year by abortion advocate Mr Pyne. His earlier bill, aimed at decriminalising abortion, was put to the Parliamentary Health Committee but the committee recommended it not be passed.
Australian Family Association state vice-president Angela Duff told the inquiry that Mr Pyne’s latest bill “would be a joke if the issue were not so serious”.
“The bill includes an unenforceable 24-week limit which lets late-term abortionists do their worst without any penalty,” Mrs Duff said.
“This is an attempted con job on the public. A law without consequences is no law at all.
“Besides which, there is no medical reason to perform abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy, as there is never a situation in which a viable unborn baby needs to be killed to save the mother’s life.
“A number of submitters have argued that abortion should be treated like any other medical procedure and regulated through the Health Act rather than the Criminal Code. But abortion is only a medical procedure in the same way that execution by lethal injection is a medical procedure; indeed that is exactly the way one abortion technique – feticide – is done.”
Mrs Duff quoted Galaxy market research undertaken for the Australian Family Association that showed 53 per cent of Queenslanders either thought the law was about right or was not restrictive enough.
“Parliament clearly should keep abortion in the Criminal Code,” she said.
“At the same time, Queenslanders want safeguards for women to sit beside the current law.
“Ninety-four per cent of Queenslanders want women considering abortion to receive free independent counselling and information on the development of the unborn baby, the nature of the procedure, the physical and psychological risks of the operation and the alternatives of keeping the baby or adoption, so they can make a fully informed decision.”
Mrs Duff said the Australian Family Association was “appalled” at the claims made by medical bodies to the committee that abortion was not harmful to women.
“Besides the physical risks of infection, haemorrhage, infertility, breast cancer and even death, abortion can have a huge impact on a woman’s psyche – on her emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual health,” she said.
– Mark Bowling
