MPs fail in late bid to stop Bill

By Tania Martin
ATTEMPTS by four southeastern MPs to block the contentious abortion bill have failed.
Labor’s Tammy Lobato and James Merlino and Liberal MPs Nick Wakeling and Christine Fyffe voted against the bill in Parliament last Wednesday night (10 September).
This comes as the State Government attempted to pass legislation to legalise abortion.
The bill outlined conditions that would allow woman to have abortions as late as 24 weeks (six months) into a pregnancy.
Under current law, abortions are illegal but that doesn’t stop more than 20,000 terminations to pregnancies occurring each year.
However, in 1969 abortion was made more accessible to woman following a Supreme Court ruling.
Under the ruling abortion was considered legal if the pregnancy was deemed harmful to the mother in either a physical or mental sense.
Despite this the legal basis for abortion still remains contentious as it is still illegal under the Crimes Act.
The bill was passed through the Lower House last Thursday night without any amendments with a 47 to 35 vote.
Debating the issue in Parliament last week, Monbulk MP James Merlino said he couldn’t agree that abortion was just about an individual’s choice.
Mr Merlino said giving women the right to choose leads to a positive response from society.
But he said to dig deeper into the issue was to find people despite wanting women to have the choice are concerned about the number of abortions each year.
Mr Merlino said it was concerning the new legislation suggested the increase of the late-term abortion time frame from 20 to 24 weeks.
He said it was hard to understand how everything is done to save a premature child while down the corridor of the same hospital another baby of the same age is forfeited.
“This legislation is not middle of the road, it’s extreme,” Mr Merlino told Parliament.
Mr Merlino said if the government was serious about modernising abortion law it would have included late-termination panels.
These currently run at the Monash Medical Centre and the Royal Women’s Hospital with a panel of expects reviewing every late-term abortion on an individual basis.
“The panel considers the expectations of the child’s survival, and if survival is likely, it’s quality of life,” Mr Merlino said.
Gembrook MP Tammy Lobato told Parliament she was opposed to the legislation not because she was an anti-abortionist but because of the bill itself.
Despite voting against the bill, Ms Lobato actually supports the decriminalisation of abortion but she couldn’t support the introduction of 24-week abortions.
The bill will now need to pass through the Upper House later this year.