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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2604 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

punish-no doubt about that-women who had chosen to have an abortion, not only those ones who were thinking about it but also those ones who had had an abortion in the past. There is no question about that.

I will go through the bill shortly and deal with some of the contents of it and how they are being dealt with, should this act be repealed. But I think people need to understand that this act was about punishing-making sure that women understood, for their own good, as my colleague Mr Quinlan said, that this was sinful, and they needed to be reminded of it as many times as possible. And that is the thing that I object to, because this was about sending women on a guilt trip at every opportunity. That's why the statistical information has been required and used. I will come to that a bit further in a moment.

Let me go through the contents of the current act. Part 2, Procedure, begins:

Abortions must be performed by medical practitioners in approved facilities.

Well, if that's repealed it won't matter, because it is picked up in Ms Gallagher's bill. I continue:

Abortion must not be performed unless information has been provided.

That obligation is picked up, quite clearly-and I want to thank again the good bishop for sending us down a copy of Health Care and the Law by Meg Wallace, because it sets out all of the information which is required by the High Court decision in relation to informed consent. Ms Tucker has dealt in detail with the information which is already provided at the clinic.

What information must be provided? Again, I refer to Health Care and the Law by Meg Wallace-the checklist-and the guidelines for giving information for client decision-making go right across the field when it comes to the information which must be given to conform with the decision of the High Court. So that is covered there.

A "Declaration that information has been provided" will not be required if this act is repealed, and I don't think it needs to be anyway, because we must rely on the integrity of medical professionals in the provision of information. We do in all other medical procedures, so there is no reason why we should not rely on them in the case of this particular procedure.

"Abortion must not be performed without consent." That is as plain as the nose on your face. No medical procedure can be performed without one's consent. At this point I would like to deal with the 72-hour waiting period. This is just outrageous. There is no more outrageous a provision in a piece of legislation than this. How patronising it is to tell a woman, "Look, you're considering abortion. Go away for 72 hours and think about it, because you're really not up to it at this point. You couldn't, after many weeks thinking about it, have come to a judgment." We legislators have just sent you off home again-think about it a bit more, then you can pop back in and we might be able to deal with it. That is an outrageous thing to do.

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