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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 542 ..

Mr Stefaniak: You don’t have abortions at seven or eight months.

MR STANHOPE: Well, we’re opening up the debate now. All of a sudden the opposition needs to specify a date or a term or a time. It’s a debate without end, it’s a debate without answer. In the Human Rights Act the government chose to ignore the debate and acknowledge that as an Assembly we decided to decriminalise abortion. I know you don’t like it and would prefer it otherwise but the decision’s been taken. It’s important, to me and to this community, that we not cloud or confuse the development of a bill of rights or a human rights act with an argument about the commencement of life or the right to a termination or abortion by including in the Human Rights Act a provision that would open up a debate that divides the community. We all know it does, but as a legislature we have made the decision on this issue. We decriminalised abortion, and it was our intention to avoid debating it again in this instance. I repeat that the advice available to me from my departmental advisers is that the claims made by the Right to Life Association in its release today about the interpretation of the conventions quoted are legally incorrect.

MR PRATT (8.59): The Chief Minister’s position on this issue is an assertion which is well-matched by advice to the contrary. There’s a lot of advice and debate about these questions. The Chief Minister’s position is not backed up by irrefutable evidence. Can the Chief Minister imagine how a woman feels when her unborn dies? Look at the Byron Shields case in New South Wales in 2002. Did Mrs Shields, who lost her seven-month-old unborn in Sydney due to reckless driving, not feel that she had lost a life? Did she not feel that? We believe it is fundamental that clause 9 be amended to reflect that life begins before birth. We seek to remove subclause 9 (2). The question of when life actually begins is disputed—is it three months or is it six months—but it is generally believed that life begins before birth and that position is gaining growing acceptance among many in the community. All the evidence points to the fact that a woman seven to eight months pregnant has a fully-formed child in the womb. Many people in the community will be very concerned about this provision in this bill of rights as well as being very concerned about the bill of rights. The community will abhor what they see to be an attempt to fix the provisions in this bill to pursue an ideological position on abortion. Apart from the issue of abortion, many in the community will feel that the unborn child should be protected and that an assailant who assaults a pregnant woman and injures or kills the unborn should be charged and held accountable. Clause 9 (2) needs to be cancelled. We feel so strongly about this that we will be continuing with the debate on the bill to seek to protect the unborn.

MS DUNDAS (9.01): We won’t be supporting the amendment moved by Mr Stefaniak. It’s important to refer back to the international covenants from which the right to life is taken, and comments made by the UN about the right to life. It is observed that the right to life enunciated in article 6 of the covenant has been dealt with many times before. It is the supreme right from which no derogation is permitted even in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation. However the committee—the UN committee covering these rights—has noted that quite often the information given concerning article 6 is limited to only one or other aspect of this right. It is a right that should not be interpreted narrowly, and I fear that this debate is heading down that path. The committee observes that war and other acts of mass violence continue to be a scourge of humanity and take the lives of thousands of innocent human beings every

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