Page 1105 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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people wearing "no coat-hangers" badges. Mr Berry is wearing one. Yet Mr Berry made this point when he tabled this Bill the other night - and I quote from his own speech:
One simple fact is forgotten in the emotion of the abortion debate. The procedure to terminate a pregnancy is a safe and relatively simple procedure.
I do not agree with that, but he goes on and says:
The incidence of maternal deaths associated with legal termination of pregnancy has reduced drastically since the days when legal abortions were not available.
He is acknowledging himself that, with the legalisation of abortion in the ACT in 1978, the loss of life due to abortions has dropped drastically. He goes on to say:
NHMRC figures show that 45 maternal deaths associated with abortion were reported in the three-year period from 1964 to 1966, compared to one in the 1982 to 1984 period.
What is this coat-hanger stuff?
Mr Berry: What about the 1,100?
MR KAINE: If you, Minister, provide the resources - where there is smoke there is fire; you are talking about $400,000 to fund an abortion clinic in Canberra - and provide along with it the necessary counselling services that go with it, the problem, in my view, is solved. You do not need to do anything more. You do not need to repeal the law. I submit that the law is a good law. Let us get down to what the debate ought to be about, to what is possible, to where we can get a reconciliation of views, and act in the interests of this community. Let us be clear; let us act in the interests of the women who need abortions, because, generally speaking, they can have abortions in Canberra under the existing law if only the Minister will provide the resources that will allow them to do it.
Madam Speaker, I really do take exception to Mr Connolly's attack on Mr Humphries. I find it unworthy of him, quite frankly. To assert that Mr Humphries was somehow remiss because he administered the law, the law that has been in place since 1978 and which this Government seeks to repeal, is a pretty low trick. The Minister unilaterally could not change it. He was obliged to administer the law. Whether he agrees with it or not, he was obliged to administer it, just as you are, Mr Connolly, and just as Mr Berry is at the moment. To assert that somehow Mr Humphries is a hypocrite, or somehow was failing in his duty because he administered the law, is an underhanded blow, and, Mr Connolly, it is unworthy of you. I suggest that you ought to be asking Mr Berry the same question. If you really believe that Mr Humphries is culpable, why do you not ask your Minister the same question? Mr Berry was the Minister in 1989, and he has been the Minister again for a year now. Instead of talking about hypocrisy, you should cease practising it, I suggest.
I take issue with this whole debate. I do not think it is a debate that we can resolve. There are some fundamental issues here. If we were of a good mind, if we really wanted to solve this problem in today's world instead of last decade's or next decade's, we would be examining what can be done under the existing
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