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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Wednesday, 10 March 2004) . . Page.. 958 ..

and they would attract the aggravation of the loss of the mother’s pregnancy, serious harm to the pregnancy, or death or serious harm to the subsequent child.

The government will also amend the sentencing principles in the Crimes Act to require the court to have regard to the loss or harm caused to pregnancy, or death or harm caused to a child after birth. The effect of making the loss of the mother’s pregnancy, serious harm to the pregnancy, or death or serious harm to the subsequent child an aggravating feature would be to give the court a higher maximum penalty to apply to an offender in those circumstances.

For example, the offence of manslaughter carries a maximum sentence or penalty of 25 years, and the aggravated offence, which I have just foreshadowed, would carry a maximum penalty of 35 years. The maximum penalty for the offence of dangerous conduct causing death is 25 years’ imprisonment, but for the aggravated offence involving a pregnant woman it would be 35 years.

This solution goes much further than Mr Pratt’s bill because it covers all stages of pregnancy, from conception to the point of birth. By adding an aggravating feature to the offences I mentioned, we can address this issue—of grave concern to the community, and rightly so—without a debate that would divide the community and reopen the debate on abortion and the argument about the meaning and beginning of life.

Mr Speaker, the government opposes the bill, and I believe it important that this bill not succeed. In essence, Mr Pratt’s bill seeks to create division between mother and foetus at law: a pregnant woman will be legally constructed as herself and her pregnancy as separate entities. The government advocates a solution we can all embrace, a solution that unites the community and supports the victim by focusing on the crime and on the criminal act.

MRS DUNNE (11.45): Mr Speaker, in the debate on a proposed amendment to the Human Rights Bill last week, I said:

The logic works like this…women must have a right to abortion because they have a right to choose, and if the unborn child has rights that might interfere with the right to abortion, and therefore the unborn child has no rights. Therefore, the unborn child is not human…

I have a feeling that the opponents of this amendment did not care for the characterisation of their approach on that occasion. Today members have an opportunity to prove me wrong because, as my colleague Mr Pratt pointed out in the introduction to the in-principle debate, abortion is not the issue here.

We have had that debate, and I do not intend to reflect on it, as my views on the subject are well known and are superfluous here. But this is a case where you can provide some protection to the unborn without affecting access to abortion. There is very limited protection under civil law for the loss of a child before or after birth. Since a child is considered of very little economic value in this area, we rely on the criminal law. In fact, the Crimes Act provides some protection for the unborn.

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