The Labor Party in the Northern Territory has made it legal for all medical doctors to perform abortions up to 14 weeks into a pregnancy.  Previously abortions could only be carried out by a gynaecologist or obstetrician.

The legislative change also moved abortion provisions from the Criminal Code to the Medical Services Act.  With this vote the Territory parliament essentially defined abortion as ‘just another medical procedure’ to be assessed within regulatory frameworks rather than the criminal law.

Despite the controversy of the abortion measure, Labor members were not even granted a conscience vote and the whole parliamentary block of Labor members voted for abortion.

Attorney General Syd Stirling admitted that not one government member had even requested a conscience vote so as to oppose abortion.

Mr Wood, the Country Liberal Member for Nelson said, “You cannot just look at this law and say: ‘It is only a technical thing’. It is not. You have the full-fledged act of when you can allow a termination of a pregnancy. You cannot avoid that. Here is an opportunity as a parliamentary to say I agree or I disagree, but, no, it is just a technical movement from one act to another. No, it is not. It has come before as an act.”

Mr Wood continued, “If I do vote yes to the Criminal Code amendment, I am voting yes for abortion. Why did the government do this? Because it wanted to put this through quickly it wanted to do it non-controversially.”

In the end, only three members of Parliament voted against the abortion bill; Mr Gerry Wood, Dr Richard Lim and Mr Terry Mills. 

Dr Richard Lim summed up his opposition to the Bill, “I say to you the Medical Services Amendment Bill is a foolish and dangerous attempt by the government to have less scrutiny over and require less medical expertise to perform the terminations of pregnancies of up to 23 weeks. Perhaps, and more tragically, this government believes it is doing the right thing by shifting abortion laws out of the Criminal Code.”

“They way I see it, the termination of a pregnancy is not like any other surgical procedure that a doctor would perform on a patient. In any other surgical procedure, the sole person involved is the patient. Where an abortion is concerned, while we have the pregnant woman as the patient, there is another person involved,” Dr Lim said.

Tragically not one member of the Labor Party agreed, and the abortion bill passed 18-3.

This is an ominous warning for Victorians concerned about the decriminalisation of abortion.  In another jurisdiction Labor has just pushed through a pro-abortion Bill with no dissent from within their ranks.  Unless opposition mounts before, and after, the election to the Victorian Labor push for abortion, then there is a real risk that abortion on demand up to the moment of birth will become law in this state.