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Further implications
The campaign waged by opponents of the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill has centred on its most extreme potential consequences:
- that it will allow abortion on demand up to 22 weeks, increasing the likelihood of abortion for gender selection and
- that it will increase the number of late-term abortions.
The call for further debate and community consultation seems largely a stalling device intended to give those who oppose the legislation a greater opportunity to present their arguments and hopefully sway the wider community.
This indicates the change in the abortion debate in this country over time. In 2007, during a similar debate in Victoria over the decriminalisation of abortion, Rita Joseph, author of ''Human Rights and the Unborn Child', focused the debate on what has more traditionally been at its centre '' the right of the unborn child to protection of his/her life. Joseph opposed the decriminalisation of abortion, stating, ''Such an attack on laws that protect unborn children contravenes the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognised the child before birth as having human rights to be protected by the rule of law.
In every premeditated abortion, deprivation of life is the intended outcome for the child. Despite the current ideologically driven campaign to decriminalise abortion, arbitrary deprivation of life, under modern international human rights law, is still strictly prohibited.'
Arguments such as Joseph's are now less commonly put. In a joint statement issued on August 5, 2019, by Archbishop Anthony Fisher (Catholic Archbishop of Sydney) and Glenn Davies (Anglican Archbishop of Sydney), the unborn's right to life was raised. The statement asks, ''Where is the right of that unborn child to take her first step? Her first day at school? Where is her right to become herself? Her right to live.'
However, even this statement from prominent church leaders focuses on late-term abortion rather than abortion per se. Churches appear to have lost credibility as moral arbiters within Australian society such that they have not put forward their traditional defence of the rights of the unborn with their usual vehemence. Indeed, Archbishop Fisher has complained that he and other church leaders have been excluded from the debate. Some critics of the Bill have noted that the language in which it is framed removes the unborn child from consideration. There is only one reference to ''fetus' and the procedure to be decriminalised is defined as the ''termination' of a ''pregnancy'. Neither ''fetus' nor ''pregnancy' are defined.
It appears that the debate has shifted so that the formerly asserted rights of the unborn have been largely displaced by the widely accepted reproductive rights of the woman. Individual autonomy in a woman's reproductive life '' including ready access to abortion '' is now generally endorsed and forms part of a set of mainstream values that include equal treatment in the workplace, equal representation in parliaments and boardrooms, and protection from all forms of physical, sexual and verbal abuse.
This position has been articulated by Independent MP Alex Greenwich who introduced the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill into the lower house of the New South Wales parliament. Greenwich stated, ''The vast majority of people from all walks of life support a woman's right to choose and this comes from a moral position based on social justice, fairness and the fundamental human right to bodily autonomy. Ensuring women have access to safe and legal terminations is vital to protecting their health, welfare and control over their bodies and their lives. It is about women's rights to appropriate health care and it is our role as community representatives in this place to protect those rights. The need to end a pregnancy is a health matter, not a criminal matter and the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill recognises this and removes abortions from the Criminal Code and regulates them as a medical procedure.'
Those who oppose the Bill by focusing on abortion for sex selection and late-term abortion are highlighting extreme consequences of the Bill which may provoke popular concern and objections to the decriminalisation of abortion.
The question of abortion as a means of sex selection appears largely to be a high-impact diversionary tactic. Abortion for gender selection is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent. There is little data to suggest it is happening and where it may be occurring the families concerned are not usually revealing their motivations to their medical practitioners. Despite this, the issue has proved problematic for the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, and has led her to promise support for an amendment to the Crimes Act which would specifically prohibit sex selection.
The period of gestation at which abortion is allowed has always been contentious and may pose even greater problems for the passage of this Bill. The nearer an unborn child/fetus is to viability outside the womb, the easier it is to argue for its independent rights. Thus, commentator Andrew Bolt has stated, ''Have they no respect for the life of a child just days from birth?
Perhaps we should oblige all politicians in favor of this bill to inspect the body of one baby aborted in the final weeks of pregnancy, just to be absolutely clear that they understand the moral gravity of their decision.'
Those who support late-term access to abortion typically argue on the grounds of fetal abnormality.
Those who would restrict late-term terminations stress that many are conducted for psychosocial reasons. The issue of late-term abortion remains an area of concern for Australians despite long-standing data showing general support for a woman's right to choose.
The Victorian Law Reform Commission has identified five studies on popular attitudes to abortion as having the greatest reliability; however, none demonstrated majority community support for abortion past the first trimester. In one of these studies, 60 percent of respondents claimed to support a woman's right to abortion on demand, but 51 percent opposed abortion for financial or social reasons, increasing to 82 percent opposition to abortion after 20 weeks for non-medical reasons.
Division within the New South Wales Government has made it no longer certain that the Bill will be passed in its current form. Liberal backbenchers Tanya Davies and Kevin Connolly have said they will move to the crossbench if amendments are not made to the bill. Were this to happen, it would rob the government of its two-seat majority. The Bill will be voted on in the upper house in September, after a delay of three weeks in the original schedule.