Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wants abortion on the national agenda, declaring pregnancies ended after the first trimester are immoral and arguing late-stage abortions were akin to infanticide. Source: The Age.
As Opposition Leader Peter Dutton sought to dodge the issue while it engulfs Queensland’s state election campaign, former prime minister Tony Abbott backed the right of Coalition members to retain a conscience vote on the matter.
Abortion is legal across all Australian states and territories, but political debate on the issue has been turbocharged by conservative pushes to change the law in Queensland and South Australia.
Senator Price, in her first public comments on abortion, said she could not support late-term abortions because “our aim should always be on maintaining life”.
“Late-term is anywhere past the [first] trimester as far as I’m concerned … Full-term becomes infanticide and I cannot agree with that,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald at the conservative Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in Sydney.
Her stance challenges laws that make abortions accessible until at least 20 weeks in most states and territories. After that, pregnant women generally require approval from at least two doctors, but doctors say these make up just 1 per cent of abortions in Australia.
Terminations late in a pregnancy are typically for serious medical or personal circumstances: genetic syndromes; late-diagnosed major foetal abnormalities; severe growth restrictions; or where continuing the pregnancy would severely harm the mother’s mental or physical health.
Senator Price backed her Coalition colleagues, Matt Canavan and Alex Antic, who along with United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet, have seized on the issue and tried to introduce “born alive” laws that protect babies when a woman seeks a late-term abortion.
Senator Price said they were raising important issues the Coalition should not shy away from in the name of political convenience.
Mr Abbott said he was not proposing legislative changes but he, like Senator Price, believed late-stage abortions were infanticide.
FULL STORY
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wants abortion on the national agenda as debate engulfs state politics (By Paul Sakkal and Natassia Chrysanthos, The Age)
