Like many high profile people, French President Emmanuel Macron decried this week’s US Supreme Court decision on abortion, tweeting “Abortion is a fundamental right for all women.”
Like many Macron was ignorant, wilfully or not, about the basic details of the Supreme Court decision and the abortion law in his own country.
In France, abortion is banned after 16 weeks gestation, and the decision the US Supreme Court made this week involved a Mississippi law that prohibited abortion after 15 weeks, with similar provisions to French law.
In upholding the Mississippi law, the US Supreme Court did not prohibit abortion in the US. It simply overturned a previous decision (*Roe v. Wade*) which had established a constitutional right for abortion.
This week the US Supreme Court returned the power to make laws about abortion to State governments. You would not believe it by some of the commentary but this is the same approach that Australia has. Abortion is a sensitive issue but the debate is not helped when people can not get basic facts right about how it is regulated.
Over the past few years all Australian states have decriminalised abortion. Until these changes abortion had been permitted in practice. The old Australian laws had created much confusion and there was a large gap between the written law and the practice.
However, in the rush to decriminalise abortion we have effectively legalised abortions up to birth, and that puts us way out of step with the rest of the world. After Roe v. Wade, Australia joins just 6 other countries in the world (China, North Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Netherlands and Canada) that effectively legalise abortions up to birth.
The situation is complicated in Australia with variations around the regulation of late term births by state. In New South Wales, there are lengthy consultation requirements and restrictions on where late term abortions can occur.
Queensland is at the other extreme. After 22 weeks just two “medical practitioners” can approve a late term abortion. There are no restrictions on the medical practitioners having an association with the abortion centre. That is there is no protections for conflicts of interest. These are restrictions in name only.
The rest of the world prohibits, or severely restricts, late term abortions because the details of them are horrific. One reason why the pro-life movement has gained support in the US in recent decades is because of the scientific progress in understanding the development of a foetus.
Thanks to 3D ultrasounds we now see how human late term babies are. An unborn baby can be seen seeking to avoid the instruments of a late term abortion. After 20 weeks a baby can feel pain, yet no pain relief is normally administered in a late term abortion.
The procedure itself often involves the crushing of the skull or the ripping off of limbs. Still many babies are born alive during an abortion procedure. They are normally left to die with no care. As the ABC reported a few years ago “In 2015, 27 babies of five month’s gestation survived, only to later die after not receiving life-saving treatment.”
These are brutal facts that many do not like to hear. But if we can not even talk of how these abortions occur maybe there is something wrong with permitting them?
Once the next Parliament resumes I will reintroduce the legislation that George Christensen drafted that would require clinics to administer life saving care to any baby born alive during an abortion procedure.
I will of course be denigrated for being a man and contributing to this debate. However, unborn babies have no voice at all so I will not shy away from speaking up for them.
