Despite a seriously flawed process, the Australian Christian Lobby believes that, the Senate Inquiry titled “Access to Reproductive Health” had nonetheless highlighted some important truths regarding Australian maternity health for women.
ACL’s National Political Director, Wendy Francis, said, “The fact that the committee treated 1620 individual detailed submissions from concerned Australians as one submission revealed un parliamentary bias and a complete disregard for the democratic process. In addition, many other submissions were excluded on the erroneous claim that they were outside of the terms of reference. The end result is that the integrity of the Senate’s inquiry system has been seriously compromised and the report recommendations of little use.
“The committee has shown disrespect to Australian citizens who undertook to contribute to the submission process. In concealing the fact that the overwhelming majority of submissions rejected the push by abortion advocates and profiteers to funnel vulnerable Australian women into life altering abortions.
“Despite this bias, the Committee has been forced to acknowledge significant truths:
- Birthing services should be readily available to all pregnant women;
- More resources are needed to maternity facilities across Australia, particularly in rural areas. The Committee refers to evidence that the closure of birthing facilities in many rural areas has prejudiced rural women, revealing an important need for more government support for women and their babies;
- There is an inordinately large number of abortions in Australia. The Inquiry evidence revealed that there are about 88,000 abortions in Australia annually. This represents 1800 lives of unborn children lost to abortion each week. That is a national shame;
- Medical abortions are difficult, involving significant supervision by doctors. It is a painful and confronting process for a woman to undergo, often alone and in her own home. This contradicts the propaganda of abortion profiteers that medical abortion is a simple and anodyne event, as well as the Committee’s careless recommendation that training for prescribers of medical abortion poison pills should be lessened;
- Collection of abortion statistics in Australia is inadequate. The only reference to a submission opposed to the promotion of abortion, was the Committee’s reference in the ACL submission that accurate abortion statistics need to be collected across Australia.
Additional recommendations in the ACL submission include:
- Any recommendation for all public hospitals to be equipped to provide surgical abortions must be rejected. (The current outrage over the Government’s heavy handed approach to Calvary Public Hospital in Canberra is an example of this overreach).
- The recommendation that abortion training be incorporated into health degrees would necessarily exclude prolife doctors, nurses and midwifes who do not want to be trained in a medical procedure that has the sole purpose of ending the life of a human being and therefore must be rejected on the basis of freedom of conscience and belief.
- The Labor Government should treat the Committee report with the scepticism it deserves;
- The government should acknowledge and the truths that the Committee was forced to accept as set out above.
