Page 1102 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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that Mr Humphries has just made, because Mr Humphries has used all the rhetoric. He has used the slaughterhouse rhetoric. He has said that there is no clear point at which to draw the line on the issue, except the absolutist point that abortion is fundamentally wrong; that life begins at conception, and the state must intervene to totally outlaw abortion. I can respect that point of view from anyone apart from a man who, for 12 months or almost 18 months, had the responsibility for running the health service in this Territory. Mr Humphries, you were, in your own terms, the Minister for slaughterhouses for 18 months, and you did nothing. I find that position very, very difficult to accept. You can run the rhetoric here and play to the gallery, but you will have to examine your own conscience about that period for which you were the responsible Minister.
Madam Speaker, this is essentially a matter in which every member must examine their own conscience on this proposal or on any further proposal. I am quite happy with my conscience on the proposal currently before the Assembly. The proposal is to repeal a Bill which currently says that abortions are not unlawful, because the law in Australia is that abortions can be lawful in certain circumstances defined by the common law. The law in the ACT, Madam Speaker, is the same as the law in New South Wales, in Queensland, in Victoria, in Western Australia and in Tasmania. There are different laws in South Australia and the Northern Territory. The law in all those other States says, under the Crimes Act or its equivalent, that an unlawful abortion is a criminal offence, punishable with quite severe penalties, and properly so.
The law does not say what is an unlawful abortion; we have to look to the common law on that. The common law in Australia, at least since the 1960s, has been that where the physical or mental health of the woman is endangered an abortion is lawful. That is the position in the ACT. The ACT differs from all other parts of Australia in that a law was passed in the 1970s to give a government monopoly for abortion; to say that only abortion performed in a public hospital system is lawful. I certainly see no justification for a public monopoly on abortion. I certainly see no justification for a hypocritical law which sends over 1,000 Canberra women to Sydney. It is really the Dublin situation, Madam Speaker. It is the law that the Supreme Court of Ireland struck down, in effect, by saying that it was unconscionable to have a law that purported to say, "We are taking a high moral stance on abortion; but we know that people, in fact, are fleeing this jurisdiction and having abortions performed elsewhere". I can see no comfort in that.
I could respect any member who got up here and moved a private member's Bill to actually impose restrictions on abortions. I could respect a person who said that their conscience dictated that they say that the law should totally ban abortion. I would not support that. My belief is that it is a matter that someone could conscientiously put forward; but I would take the view - almost the view that John Kennedy took in his famous speech in the 1960 election campaign in the United States on the relationship between the church and the state - that there are some issues that are properly an issue between an individual and their conscience and their church and their God, and there are other issues for the state. I think that this issue is one that is essentially one between the individual and their conscience and their God and their church, and the state should not be imposing one particular view on that. I am certainly comforted, Madam Speaker, in the view that whenever there have been opinion polls on this and whenever public opinion is tested, the absolutist ban, which Mr Humphries says he supports although he did quite the contrary when he was Minister, does not find wide favour.
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