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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 2907 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

We have advice from Mr Refshauge, we have advice from Ms Follett and we have advice from Ms McGregor that this legislation is seriously flawed; yet here we are, blithely charging on, negotiating these troubled waters. "She'll be right at the end of the day. Don't you worry about it. We are just making sure women have a little bit of information here and there. Don't you worry about that. Nothing to worry about in this legislation. Just a little bit of information here and there". Well, I am just a bit more cynical than that.

Each of us has received correspondence from a number of medical practitioners in town. Each of us has received correspondence from the society of general practitioners expressing their alarm at what this Bill does to the relationship between a doctor and patient. I referred earlier to the correspondence from the ACT Division of General Practice, a letter written by Dr Stan Doumani. I do not wish to defame him but Dr Doumani is not exactly a raging radical in the community. Dr Doumani is trenchant in his criticism of these proposals. Dr Doumani wrote in relation to the Osborne abortion Bill and Gary Humphries' amendments. This is the point I was making in relation to Mr Moore's amendments which upset Mr Moore. Mr Moore sees them as his least worst option, but they compound the felony. They do not make it go away. They compound it at this stage. A concern that I have about where we find ourselves is that those second tier amendments suffer from this same criticism. This criticism from the ACT Division of General Practice applies just as much to Mr Moore's amendments as it applies to Mr Humphries' amendments, which now make up Mr Osborne's Bill. Dr Doumani wrote:

In relation to the Osborne Abortions Bill, the ACT Division of General Practice considers Gary Humphries' amendments to be insulting to the intelligence of women in making informed choices about their health care, and to the professionalism of their medical practitioners.

That is the view of the doctors of the ACT about this Bill.

We have advice from specific practitioners. This was a letter written to me and I think to all other members of the Assembly. It is from a practice in Belconnen. I will not name the individual doctors as I do not know whether the letter was for publication. It says this:

We have been general practitioners in Canberra for a total of 50 years and are against the proposed Bill ... Abortion is an unhappy and undesirable outcome but in my opinion the present arrangement in the ACT is the best service that can be offered to the women of Canberra who find themselves confronting this problem.

Abortion is a very undesirable option for a pregnant woman but we accept that for some it is the least undesirable outcome given the circumstances confronting the woman. In our experience it is not a decision that most women attain without the most considerable soul-searching and anguish. In our experience most doctors help the woman to arrive at her own decision after considering all the pluses and minuses of either outcome. There will always be some women and

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