Page 1107 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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and then a specialist who will decide that she should be allowed to have such an operation. Permission then has to be given by the medical superintendent of the hospital. If the woman has had her termination approved under all of these processes, she is then booked into a day ward, usually under a general anaesthetic, and she has her termination performed.
I put it to you, Madam Speaker, that this is more than an inconvenience. It can result in some very, very grave consequences for that woman. The first of those consequences is the delay that takes place in all of that permission. It can make for later terminations. This is a serious matter. Also, Madam Speaker, a woman undertaking a termination in those sorts of circumstances may feel that her privacy is not as protected as she would have liked. A public hospital system - we have all been in those systems - is not the most private of all possible places, and some women feel that very deeply indeed. Nor is there, in my view, the necessary recognition, as a matter of course, of the woman's need for psychological and emotional support in what is an extremely traumatic time. I have heard no-one in this chamber try to say that a termination of pregnancy is a matter which any woman would undertake lightly, and nor is it.
So, for all of those reasons, Madam Speaker, I believe that the current system is not ideal for those women - 150 or so a year - who have a termination performed in our public hospital system, although the service, as Mr Kaine says, is available and is legal. The other more than 1,000 women of the ACT who undertake a legal termination of pregnancy go interstate. I put it to members in the chamber that this is a far from satisfactory solution to what is an extremely serious problem for those women. For them to have to go to the expense and the difficulty of travel to Sydney to have a termination of pregnancy performed, when many of them are in extreme distress, suffering perhaps from poverty and finding difficulty in raising the fare to go to Sydney, is a very serious matter and one which we ought not to dismiss in this chamber. I believe that it is incumbent upon all of us to show compassion for those women, and to recognise the difficulty of their situation and the gravity of the decision that they face.
I believe, Madam Speaker, that we must also, through our actions in this chamber, seek to dignify the lives of ACT women. We have heard a lot about enhancing life and enhancing the life of the unborn child this evening. We have heard very much less about enhancing the lives of our ACT women, and that is, Madam Speaker, for me, the overwhelming reason in support of this legislation. ACT women must have the same sorts of facilities, the same sort of care, available to them as their counterparts in other States. It is not acceptable that they do not, particularly those women who are forced, under the current system, either to go interstate or to face the prospect of a rather later termination under demeaning circumstances. I would say that what we ought to be doing is looking at the counselling, at the care that those women need, once we have, in fact, got over this threshold issue of where terminations may occur.
Madam Speaker, I believe, as I say, that the debate here is being skewed in a way that is not helpful. I agree with Mr Kaine that, on the threshold issue of whether or not terminations may be performed, we are not going to agree; we never will. On the issue that Mr Humphries raised, of whether or not human life begins at conception, we are never going to agree. I think that the issue of whether Canberra women deserve our compassion and deserve the same kinds of arrangements that their counterparts in other States face is an issue on which members opposite in their heart of hearts would agree. I do not believe that they wish to see Canberra women disadvantaged in this way.
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