Page 1100 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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MR HUMPHRIES: You know exactly who it was. Madam Speaker, I table the letter and seek leave to have it incorporated in Hansard.
Leave granted.
Document incorporated at Appendix 1.
Mr Moore: Tell us who it was. Are you embarrassed about who it was?
MR HUMPHRIES: No, I am not embarrassed about who it was. It was the Reverend John P. Kelly.
Mr Moore: Ah, right.
MR HUMPHRIES: It makes a difference, does it, Mr Moore? Members of the church are not entitled to those sorts of views? Their views are debased? Madam Speaker, there is real anger in that letter, as there was in many letters that I have received and I am sure other members here have received over the last few weeks.
The proposition that we should free up abortion, as well as the way in which that proposition has been deceitfully advanced, debases this community. What does it say about us and the ambitions we hold for our future when we destroy human life with potential as a matter of public policy? It is little short of astonishing that this debate should seriously have arisen at a time when we are pressed in so many other ways by far worthier needs. Even if one were to accept, as I do not, that abortion is a woman's right and that opportunities for it in Canberra are limited, does the Minister for Health really believe that an abortion clinic is anywhere near the top of our health shopping list? I can point to many things, Madam Speaker, that surplus cash in our hospital system could be better spent on. Waiting lists to enter our public hospitals today stand at almost 2,000 patients - longer than they have ever been before in Canberra. Should not reducing that waiting list be our top priority for our health dollar?
We have only 820 beds in our public hospitals, as last advised - goodness knows what they actually are - the lowest number for many years. For the cost of an abortion clinic you could create an awful lot of beds. We have no facilities for cardio-thoracic surgery in this city. We have no slow-stream convalescent unit. We have no medical teaching facilities. We have no hospice for the terminally ill. But this Government wants us to have an abortion clinic. Madam Speaker, no thank you. To borrow some of the Prime Minister's words, what we are doing here is elevating a tenth order issue into a first order issue. There are more important, more dignified issues for this Assembly to be working towards.
The argument over abortion, Madam Speaker, must face a threshold question. The question is, essentially, how you view the unborn foetus. If you accept that from the moment of conception a distinctly human life has been created, you have no choice but to concede that life should be protected. In my view, there is no clear place at which to draw the line between oblivion and life, except at the point of conception - certainly not at the point of birth. Ultrasound technology demonstrates quite clearly that distinctly human characteristics and traits are present from the earliest stages of pregnancy. The potential of a fertilised ovum to develop into a fully developed human is very great. That of an unfertilised ovum is nil.
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