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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2583 ..

Mr Berry: Because it is not true.

MRS DUNNE: Why are you afraid, Mr Berry? Why are you afraid? Why are all of you afraid to tell the truth, in this place, about what happens with abortion? Why are you afraid to tell the women who go down the road to that place that there are alternatives for them?

Why are you taking away the booklet that says that, if they do not want to go there, there are other people who can help them? Why are you subjecting people to this? I will relate one story of somebody who did not know where to go.

Today I oppose abortion because abortion is a lie. It always was. I know, because I told the lie that it got it all started ...

I said I was gang raped. And I wasn't. I said I didn't know who the father was. And I did. I said I hated my baby. And I didn't. And I said the Constitution protected my right to abortion. And it's nowhere to be found. I simply made it all up. And now, 41 million babies are dead, and counting ...

Most people don't know I never killed my baby. I never did have the abortion on which the case was based. I gave her up for adoption instead. You see [I discovered that] my lawyer never wanted to help me. She only wanted to use me by getting my name on that affidavit. She wanted me to help her legalize the violent slaughter of innocent babies ... just like she had killed hers. Although she had never met the man who broke into my childhood and destroyed my innocence with his lustful attacks, and although she didn't know the man who got me pregnant and then beat me up for it-she used me just the same [as they did].

The woman who wrote this is named Norma McCovey, but everyone else knows her as Jane Rowe. She goes on to say:

I never signed up to become a sacrificial lamb for anyone, I was desperate, [I was] scared and alone. I was just a young woman who needed help, and I turned to the wrong people.

Mr Berry is going to perpetuate this in the ACT, for the young people who, from time to time, need to go somewhere. He will not let them find out that there is an alternative to going down to the clinic and getting rid of it. In this town, there is no place, in the 21st century, for such ill feeling and barbarity.

Earlier in this debate, I pointed out the dramatic drop in the rate of abortions in the ACT in the past two years, since we began collecting statistics. The abortion rate has dropped by 25 per cent since the passage of the Health Regulation (Maternal Health Information) Act. I have no doubt that that is due to the cooling-off period and the information provided to mothers. I have no doubt that, except for today, that would continue. I have no doubt that, from time to time, legislators and people who are concerned about the rate of abortion in the ACT-as Mr Wood and I are concerned-would look at these figures and they would make us pause.

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