Society

Call for QLD parliamentary inquiry into botched abortion cruelty

The unforgivable inhumanity of 19 Queensland babies being born alive and then left to die following botched abortions in 2007 reveals the human face of Australia’s alarming abortion statistics, the Australian Christian Lobby said today.

ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace called for a Queensland parliamentary inquiry into late-term abortion practices and the ethics, morality and legality of leaving babies to die when premature babies – sometimes at a similar stage of development – are being cared for in neonatal wards.

“This is an issue from which we cannot simply turn our faces. Babies are now surviving in some places at 22 weeks gestation and above, while research supports the proposition that unborn babies feel pain by at least 20 weeks gestation. Is it right that babies of the same age are being cruelly left to experience pain and death when they could be helped and given a chance at life? How long are legislators and pro-abortion activists going to pretend these aren’t real people with a right to live? How selfish and cruel are their agendas?

“The debate over abortion has been continually sidetracked into arguments over women’s rights and doctors’ indemnity against prosecution, with scarily little recognition of the tragic loss of life involved and even the pain felt by helpless unborn children,” Mr Wallace said.

“Figures obtained this week under the Freedom of Information Act by the Courier Mail have shed more light on an appalling practice which is seeing babies as advanced as 26 weeks being the victims of botched abortions and being offered no medical help when they are born alive. It is extremely upsetting to see pro-abortion activists like Dr Caroline de Costa talk about how distressing it is for parents and medical staff when abortions go wrong, with seemingly no concern for the pain and distress faced by the baby who has been callously left to die.”

Mr Wallace said that there is strong community concern about Australia’s high abortion rate (estimated at around 90,000 a year nationwide and around 14,000 a year in Queensland), and particularly the horrors of late-term abortion.

“Debate on this issue tends to be stifled, with a lot of information about the practices involved and their implications either not collected or kept out of the public eye. Unfortunately Queensland is not alone in having children born alive following abortion procedures and then left to die. Victorian records show that this happened with 47 of the 309 post-20 week abortions performed there in 2005. We also know that gruesome partial birth abortions are taking place in Australia, despite this practice being banned in the US on humanitarian grounds.”

“We call upon Queensland politicians to institute a parliamentary inquiry to properly consider the issue of late-term abortion, the practices taking place, and the need to better assist women with unsupported pregnancies rather than assuming abortion is the only option.”

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