AMONG doctors and society generally there is revulsion for late-term abortions, which are indistinguishable from infanticide, being performed on even entirely healthy babies older than those in our hospital nurseries.
The prevailing commercial technique in Australia of “cranial decompression”, whereby a premmie baby’s skull is crushed during birth, has been condemned by Australian Medical Association leaders, and rejected by the American Medical Association as “never medically indicated”.
In the documentary, My Foetus, shown recently on ABC TV, late-term abortionist John Parsons agrees that it is “not nice” to see “dismembered pieces of foetus falling into a bucket between my legs”. But he will do this if the baby is “seriously unwanted”.
Unwanted? What about the thousands of infertile couples who want desperately to adopt?
Reviewing the film, feminist Naomi Wolf calls late abortion “a terrible act”, and urges that “a network of supportive adoption agencies should be on hand to help and sustain the pregnant woman and her baby”.
Our Governments must ban this cruel killing of half-born premmie babies. They must do whatever it takes to set up Wolf’s network of supportive adoption agencies and other community resources to enable a disturbed couple to let their baby live.
DR DAVID VAN GEND
Queensland secretary
World Federation of Doctors who Respect Human Life
Toowoomba, Qld
