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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Wednesday, 10 March 2004) . . Page.. 955 ..

A fourth reason why I am not supporting this legislation today is that it attempts to change the legal status of a gestating foetus. It has been a longstanding legal principle that a foetus in utero does not attract legal rights until it is born. We have had this debate in the Assembly before. All previous laws about terminating pregnancy have been phrased in the terms of “pregnancy” and “miscarriage”, not in terms of “killing” or “the life of the foetus”.

Mr Pratt could have approached this in many different ways. He could have introduced a bill that reinserted the previously deleted offences of procuring miscarriage or child destruction. Instead, he has intentionally departed from legislative practice in Australia and changed the terminology to talk about killing an unborn child. If passed, this bill would be a radical and unprecedented change to Australian law and actually create a huge amount of legal uncertainty.

It is an underhand attempt to change the legal status of a gestating foetus by disguising it as a move to protect pregnant women. On examination of the detail of the bill, we can see that it will not result in any additional prosecution of offenders but is instead intended to cast increased legal doubt on the status of the foetus. The ACT Democrats deplore this deceitful method of addressing some major issues in our community and do not agree with the intention of this bill.

I believe that the current protections for pregnant women are adequate. If you hurt a pregnant woman then you commit a crime. I believe Mr Pratt’s bill is unnecessary for enabling appropriate prosecutions of people who commit crimes against pregnant women. It is a bill that is vague and uncertain in nature and places the status of artificial conception and stem cell research in doubt. It is bad law. It is inconsistent with the criminal code, and it creates additional legal confusion. I urge members of this Assembly to consider carefully what the bill actually does, separately to what Mr Pratt might intend it to do. In that sense, I do not think we can support it.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (11.34): I acknowledge at the outset that this raises difficult issues for consideration by members of the Assembly, issues the Labor Party has discussed seriously and at length, and it is the view of the government that the bill should not be supported. The government will not support the bill today.

Mr Pratt’s bill raises an important issue in criminal law. However, in my opinion it is sad that he proposes a bill that is so ideologically constructed that it will cause division in our community rather than support women who have suffered the loss of their pregnancy. Providing a sanction for violent attacks on pregnant women should not require an ideological debate and is an inappropriate way to make an essentially ideological point. There is a straightforward solution to the potential gap in our laws that embraces the whole community—a solution that provides a clear legal sanction for attacks on pregnant women that leaves neighbours, workmates, friends and family united, not divided.

A major fault line in the spiritual, philosophical and ideological conflict over the rights of women during pregnancy and reproduction in general is the issue of whether a nascent child has a separate legal personality. There is no consensus at all on this question in the

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