Page 337 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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in adequate protective measures for pregnant mothers and their unborn children. Put plainly and simply, this leaves the ACT in the position of not affording what I believe to be adequate protection to pregnant women and, indeed, unborn children in the eyes of the law. In fact, the Stanhope legislation blatantly weakens the law in relation to the unborn child and all because, I believe, the government simply cannot recognise when a foetus becomes a baby.
Ask any woman who knows she is pregnant what she is carrying in her womb and she will tell you unequivocally that she is carrying a baby, a human being, no more and no less, from that moment that she knows that inception occurred and a baby is being formed. I do get slightly worried when I feel that the Stanhope government may be trying to rewrite the medical textbooks to say that somehow a foetus which becomes a baby becomes something else after a certain period in a woman’s womb.
Mr Speaker, if the Stanhope government recognises that a baby is a baby once outside the womb, which it does, what does this make the living organism inside the womb prior to that event occurring? The Stanhope government’s position on this issue simply does not make sense. Accordingly, my concern is that perhaps the point Mr Pratt makes is at the heart of the matter. Even if the Stanhope bill mirrors the opposition’s rejected bill in some ways, the key component lacking is that the Stanhope bill does not recognise the unborn child as being recognised by law as an individual. I would therefore appreciate clarification from the Chief Minister and from the government in general as to why recognition is not afforded to an unborn child as a separate being to a mother prior to birth.
I see it as being a pointless exercise to protect a pregnant woman in isolation from the baby she is carrying, leaving the unborn child she is carrying with no separate identity. There has been little to no explanation by the government as to why this must be the case. An interesting differentiation is seemingly emerging in this sense whereby Mr Pratt has extended to the government a situation and a possible response to that situation. Perhaps the most poignant point we, as members of the Assembly, must reflect upon is the one made by Mr Pratt when he said:
If injuries sustained prior to birth can be recognised as having affected the individual after it is born, that is in effect recognising retrospectively that the unborn child was an individual prior to birth when it originally sustained the injuries that led to its death.
I believe that it is crucial to give consideration to Mr Pratt’s amendment, which seeks to inject some sensible measures, which seeks simply to identify the importance of considering that, if a manslaughter charge applies to an offender when a child dies after birth as a result of injuries sustained while in utero, then so too should a manslaughter charge apply to a child killed prior to birth. If the government is seeking to water down the legislation, perhaps from external pressures—I am not sure—from groups such as groups civil libertarians, it may well do nothing but imply that the government does not want to determine nor recognise when life actually begins. I think that is a very serious position for the government to be placing itself in.
Other jurisdictions are recognising the need to have a debate around this sensitive matter, with a measured approach to tackling the multitude of issues that lay embedded in such a
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