Page 1103 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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Madam Speaker, it is an issue of fundamental difficulty. It is an issue on which I can respect people of a different view. I can understand their point of view and I would not claim ill of anyone who takes a different view on this. But I would say, while respecting their view, that it is fundamentally a matter for a woman to decide between herself and her conscience. It is an issue on which I, as a man, have some difficulty, almost, in entering the debate. It is easy for men to get into this debate. We do not have the same responsibilities. If we lived in a society, Madam Speaker, where men and women were equally responsible not only for the physical act of conception but also for all the consequences that followed, it would perhaps be an easier society in which to respect men's views; but this is not the case.
It is not the case that we live in a society where there is a perfect method of birth control. I would never say that abortion is a sensible method of birth control. Of course it is not. In a sense, abortion is an acknowledgment that our society has not provided a foolproof method of birth control. Our society has not provided a method of allowing women more control over their own fertility. It is almost an acceptance of failure. But, Madam Speaker, that decision, and the enormously difficult moral issues involved in it - I acknowledge those difficulties and I respect those difficulties - is fundamentally, I think, one for a woman to make.
I will, with a clear conscience, Madam Speaker, be supporting the Bill currently before the Assembly tonight, which is a Bill to repeal the Termination of Pregnancy Act, to lift a government monopoly on abortions; not in any way to alter the law in respect of the availability of abortions; not to provide for abortion on demand; not to alter the Menhennitt and Levine rulings, which currently provide the common law in respect of abortion; and most certainly not to provide a publicly funded, freestanding abortion clinic, for that, Madam Speaker, is not before the Assembly. What is before the Assembly is a Bill to lift a hypocrisy, a Bill to say that the law in the ACT ought be the same as the law in New South Wales, as the law in Victoria, as the law in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia. Madam Speaker, I, in a clear conscience, comfortable with that, will support the Bill.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (8.24): I must say that it is a matter of considerable regret to me that we are here tonight debating the termination of human life. The legislature of the Territory, in my view, should be dealing with questions the solutions to which enhance life for all people, born and unborn. It should not be dealing with questions the likely outcomes to which serve only to degrade us all. That happens to be my view and I express it forcefully.
It seems to me quite incredible that we are doing this in a time when we should properly be debating important issues of genuine concern to this community; issues that are on the top of the community's agenda, but clearly not on the top of this Government's agenda, such as unemployment, homeless youth, small business breakdown, the plight of the disabled, the needs of the ageing, equality of women in all aspects of society, and the poor in this community. Where are these on the agenda? No; what we are dealing with, the matter that has come to the top priority in the terms of this Government, is one which involves the termination of life. You cannot disguise that. No matter how you look at it, that is the outcome of tonight's debate. We are going to debate that issue.
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