Page 852 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY (REPEAL) BILL 1992
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (8.20), by leave: I present the Termination of Pregnancy (Repeal) Bill 1992.
Title read by Clerk.
MR BERRY: I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
Madam Speaker, the Termination of Pregnancy (Repeal) Bill will repeal the Termination of Pregnancy Act 1978. The current Act provides that where a termination of pregnancy is to be performed legally it can be performed only at a hospital conducted by the Board of Health. The effect of the repeal of the Termination of Pregnancy Act will not therefore, of itself, make termination of pregnancy legal. The repeal Bill will, however, allow for a termination of pregnancy to be carried out at a place other than a hospital conducted by the Board of Health if the termination would otherwise be lawful.
Under sections 42 and 43 of the Crimes Act 1900 it remains illegal for a pregnant woman to unlawfully procure her own miscarriage or for any other person to unlawfully procure a woman's miscarriage. The question of what is unlawful is left to the common law. Australian courts have held that the termination of a pregnancy is lawful if it is done with the honest belief that the termination is necessary to preserve the woman from serious danger to her life, or physical or mental health.
The repeal Bill, which will have the effect of placing the ACT in precisely the same position as New South Wales and other Australian States, has been prepared to redress the indefensible situation which has existed in the ACT since the termination of pregnancy legislation was introduced in 1978. I refer, of course, Madam Speaker, to the fact that over 1,100 ACT women each year have to go interstate to terminate pregnancies. About 150 terminations are performed in the ACT. How can we continue to export our health problems because we are not prepared to face the fact that some women choose to terminate a pregnancy? How can we continue to pretend that the problem of termination of pregnancy does not exist in the Australian Capital Territory?
Because of this situation, we now have to try to address the long-term problems of post-abortion counselling, complicated by the fact that the follow-up services were fragmented by sheer geography. On a cost basis alone, Madam Speaker, this does not make sense. By not dealing effectively with the follow-up after the termination procedure, we create more problems for women. How can this situation be remedied? Not by tinkering with the legislation to further regulate approved places for terminations, but by repealing the legislation altogether so that terminations can be performed in a range of appropriate locations, thereby giving women more choice about the procedure.
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