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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 2900 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

To the members of this Assembly who are supporting or considering supporting this Bill, I do want you to explain to all women in the ACT what gives you the right to make up their minds for them on an issue as personal as carrying a child, giving birth to that child and nurturing that child.

If you think it is equally a man's choice, how is it that men do not feel equally responsible once the child is born? There are exceptions, of course; but, on the whole, men do not feel the same degree of obligation and commitment to their children. The statistics show clearly how often, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. It can be especially tough when a child is born ill or with a disability, when the honeymoon is over, when the financial burdens increase. Who is left to cope? Most often it is the woman. That is just how it is. If we get to the situation where we see equal responsibility being taken, maybe there will be a slightly stronger argument, although even then it is only the woman who can carry the child to birth and that does give her a unique place in the decision. But this will come about only when we see male politicians arguing for and funding appropriately the services which support families, only when we see them acknowledging the value of parenting and following that through with serious policy decisions and resourcing.

Do they really think that it is an easy choice for women? Do they really believe that women use abortion as a form of birth control? What a sad and sick view of women that is. Where on earth does such a view come from? Maybe some women do take the decision more lightly than others, as some men make life decisions more lightly. But to suggest that women on the whole do not have a sense of the importance and seriousness of their decision, to suggest that it is not difficult, to suggest that women are incapable of making such decisions without compulsory information sessions being imposed on them is both insulting and unacceptable in the extreme. Women have to take many personal factors into account. Women have to go to their own conscience.

How is it that the men in this Assembly, and sadly it appears even the Chief Minister, would deny them this right? I am quite unable to comprehend how they could believe that they have that right or how they could be so cold in their self-righteousness. This Bill must be rejected. If it is not, I hope that members of the ACT community will remember the arrogant men and one woman who have ensured that we have turned the clock back, who will be responsible for trauma for disadvantaged women and families, for serious ethical dilemmas for medical practitioners, and for problems for the courts as well, according to the DPP, and who will be responsible for women having to undergo compulsory, absurd and biased information sessions concocted not to be objective but to actually persuade the women in a certain direction. I cannot believe that members on that side have said that this is objective information. It is clearly directed towards one outcome, which is: Do not have an abortion.

An argument was put by Mr Smyth or someone else - I do not know who it was - that there is an obligation to give this kind of information anyway. I would be fascinated if I went to a doctor over a heart complaint and was told by that doctor only the risks of having surgery. I would also expect to be told, and would be told, the risks of not having surgery, and I would make a balanced decision. This Bill in its present form is nothing like that. It is a joke. It is so biased that I cannot believe anyone can stand up and defend it. Its object is totally clear. It is to dissuade women from going with the decision that they may have made.

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