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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2502 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Mr Berry and other members today seek to ditch that legislation, and I am opposed to them doing that. Accordingly, I'll be opposing those bills. The bill I will be supporting-and will speak briefly to it when we come to it later on today-is Mrs Dunne's bill, which I think is sensible legislation and has some improvements in it.

Speaking to the general issue, I think the rights of the child and the rights of the unborn child are very, very important. If we allow Mr Berry's bill to succeed, there are a number of grave fears, but one of the gravest fears is the fact that an abortion can be had, I understand, at any time during a pregnancy. Mr Berry has always been true to his convictions. I completely disagree with them, but I respect his convictions, and he has consistently tried to change the law. I think each time I have voted against his attempts to do so.

There is a lot of debate in this, as usual. I have received more letters on this subject than any other, and that is usually the case in this debate. Before I start into some of the arguments of the scrutiny of bills committee and my colleagues on it, I commend the scrutiny of bills committee, which tried to balance the various arguments. And I think in the scrutiny of bills reports on this subject-and I'll touch briefly on a couple-there is some quite good background information for members which I hope has been of assistance in this particular debate. I commend my colleagues on the committee for doing that. It was not particularly easy on an issue such as this, which has traditionally always been a conscience issue.

I am going to quote from a number of sources. Might I firstly say that I cannot think of any jurisdiction in Australia that has actually gone down the path which Mr Berry seeks to go down. I think the most recent example is Tasmania, where that bill was defeated. It brings to mind one point, and that is that, if this bill is successful, the ACT again will be a social laboratory, and I think the vast majority of people in our community are sick and tired of the ACT being a social laboratory. I want to make that point.

Various approaches are taken overseas, and in scrutiny report No 2 of 19 February 2002 the German approach is mentioned. I think it is interesting to look at what occurs in that country, a country that in the not-too-distant past has not had a great respect for human rights, when one looks at the Nazi era, but since then has had a much better approach. The report states:

The Basic Law of Germany states: "Everybody has the right to life and bodily integrity", and it allows that "these rights may only be restricted by or pursuant to the law". In what is called the First Abortion decision, the Federal Constitutional Court reasoned through a number of steps to a conclusion that this provision cast on the state an obligation to take measures to protect the foetus.

The first step is that the term "everybody" includes the unborn human being. The court said "Life in the meaning of the chronological existence of a human exists, according to scientific findings, at least from the beginning of the 14th day after conception ...".

Second, while the foetus may not hold individual subjective rights against the state, the Basic Law contained an objective value judgment in favour of the protection of the unborn child's right to life. This required the state to protect and promote that life, including from intrusion from third parties.

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