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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2516 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

In July 2001, in Tasmania, a medical student, who was apparently opposed to abortions, started asking questions based on his own reading of the Tasmanian Criminal Code in relation to abortion. This led to a police investigation of a particular termination and a historical investigation of records of terminations performed in the Royal Hobart Hospital. This resulted in the threat of charges being laid. It also led other hospitals to cease providing abortions. Consequently, women seeking abortions had to travel to Melbourne-where there is a public fund to assist Tasmanians requiring surgery not available in Tasmania to travel to the mainland for that purpose-in order to access a legal service.

This clearly illustrates the flimsiness of the legality of abortion and, hence, access to abortion, while it is simply a common law ruling. Other decisions leave the matter unclear. Model Criminal Code paper, at page 152, says:

It appears to the Committee that the CES decision [Kirby et al] leaves the non-statutory states (that is, all but SA and the NT) in a legal quagmire.

It is unjust to allow such murkiness to remain in the criminal law.

What will this bill do and what will it not do? This bill will remove the criminal threat of 10 years jail. Much of the debate and campaigning about this bill has assumed that we can somehow stop abortions. Not so. Prior to the Levine ruling in 1971, which opened the way for abortion to be made available lawfully and therefore openly, albeit a tenuous legality, illegal abortion was a major cause of maternal deaths in Australia. Between 1931 and 1971, on average 25 per cent of maternal deaths were related to illegal abortions, according to the Public Health Association of Australia-based on ABS data.

Along the same line is the argument that the number of adoptions has dropped because abortion is more freely available. That may be partly true, but it is also true that the stigma and ostracism of single mothers has been partly chipped away-there is a long way to go, but it has reduced, so that women are now more comfortable to become single mothers.

It is also true that doctors no longer virtually order single women to give up their babies for adoption and refuse to give them information about any alternatives, including how to support the child. I have heard of this happening as recently as the 1970s. Can you imagine the pressure?

Timing and the law. This bill does not change or remove any laws about timing, because, in the ACT, there are no laws about the timing of an abortion. There are several mentions in the Crimes Act of gestational stage, but these clauses are not affected by this bill. For the purposes of ACT law, a foetus, or child, has been born once it has been delivered wholly from the mother and has breathed, regardless of whether or not it has an independent circulatory system. (See section 10 of the Crimes Act 1900.)

Development of the lung system occurs at around 22 to 23 weeks. Section 47 of the Crimes Act concerns the crime of concealing the body of a dead child, whether or not it was born alive. (Extension of time granted.) That does not apply prior to 28 weeks gestation. Under the Births, Deaths and Marriages Act, a doctor is required to certify the death, and cause of death, when there is a stillbirth-meaning at least 20 weeks

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