Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Up to 2,000 people gathered on the steps of the South Australian Parliament House to voice support for Ben Hood’s bill. If passed, the bill would uphold the right to life of babies in their third trimester, a move blasted as “extreme right-wing”.

A “huge crowd” of up to 2,000 people gathered on South Australia’s Parliament House steps last Wednesday, 25 September, to support Liberal MP Ben Hood’s bill seeking to alter the state’s abortion laws. The upper house Liberal MP introduced his private member’s bill earlier that day.

People packed shoulder-to-shoulder around the surroundings of Parliament House – a scene not expected by supporters or detractors. Police needed to block off two lanes of traffic on North Terrace to allow the crowd to safely voice their approval for the change to SA’s abortion laws.

If passed, the Termination of Pregnancy and Live Births Amendment Bill would ensure that babies over 27 weeks and six days would be prevented from receiving foeticide. The lethal injection is used in third-trimester abortions before the mother is induced into labour and the baby is delivered stillborn.

The bill allows the termination of pregnancy up to birth. But it requires that babies 28 weeks gestation and older be born alive and given up for adoption (if the mother chooses not to keep her baby).

The proposal received severe criticism from South Australian Labor Health Minister Chris Picton who labelled the move as an “extreme right-wing culture war bill”. The Guardian labelled Ben Hood as an “authoritarian banana” whose “mad bill” is about “a zealot’s crusade” to demand “cruel and ridiculous” medical outcomes. Liberal upper house MP Michelle Lensink claimed the bill was “one of the worst pieces of legislation” she had ever seen.

Ben Hood: “This is About the Fundamental Value of Life”

In his speech, Hood began, “In introducing this bill, we are touching on one of the most profound human rights issues of our time.”

He argued that his bill “is about drawing a line, one that ensures we uphold our duty to protect the most vulnerable among us, without infringing on the rights of those facing immensely difficult situations.”

His speech has attracted considerable attention, viewed on his X account 95,000 times in the past five days.

Today, I introduced my Private Members Bill titled Termination of Pregnancy (Terminations and Live Births) Amendment Bill 2024.

This bill raises an important but challenging question: when does a child’s right to life begin to matter?

The only way to terminate a pregnancy after… pic.twitter.com/2DgIgNH5E1

— Ben Hood (@benjaminrhood) September 25, 2024

The MP, who hails from regional South Australia, continued, “There comes a point where we must confront a simple and profound question: When does the life of the child begin to matter?”

“When do we as a society begin to recognise the humanity in the slightest and the most vulnerable among us?

“This is about the fundamental value of life itself.

“This bill is not about denying women the right to end their pregnancies. In fact, the innovation of this bill is that it allows a mother to end her pregnancy throughout all nine months and indeed right up to birth.

“This bill proposes a compromise. To protect the mother’s choice, and the child’s life.”

Data from SA Health reveals that during the 18 months from July 2022 to December 2023, 45 babies aged 23 weeks gestation and older were aborted due to the “physical or mental health of the pregnant person”. In other words, these babies were healthy and viable. (SA Health includes a separate category for babies who faced “foetal abnormality”, with 12 babies aborted for this reason between 2022 and 2023.)

This leads Hood to question, “Why should we end a human life when we have the option to deliver it early and care for that child?”

“A true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.

“At 28 weeks, a child in utero is in its third trimester and capable of surviving without the mother’s body. And I believe the measure of our society will be found in how we choose to treat these lives.”

Hood believes that “When a child can survive outside the womb, our responsibility extends to protecting that life.”

“This bill is about offering both compassion to the mother, and the chance for the child to live.”

“It Breaks Your Heart”: Flinders Medical Centre Midwife

In his speech, Hood revealed that a midwife from Adelaide’s Flinders Medical Centre had contacted him only the day before. The hospital in Adelaide’s southern suburbs now takes the cases of third-trimester abortion.

The midwife, who wished to remain anonymous, said she “could no longer stay silent”. She told Hood “what [she] had seen firsthand, [the] incredible burden that late-term foeticide places on mothers. The toll it has on midwives.”

“It breaks your heart to look after stillborn and neonatal deaths. It’s completely devastating.

“It uses up all your energy and compassion. But this is next level. And it is not what I signed up for as a midwife.

“We have all of the South Australian late-term foeticides at Flinders. It is far more common than we ever expected when the law was changed.

“I could go on and on for hours about the stuff we have seen.

“A 35-weeker showed up thinking it was a small procedure. She thought she could go by the afternoon. She didn’t even seem to realise she had to birth a baby.

“The Pregnancy Advisory Centre just called it a pregnancy, not a baby. That just confused the mother. And by the time she came to us, the baby is already dead.

“So many concerns we have about the understanding of what’s happening. But it’s all too late.

“I really struggle with foeticide. It’s a whole perfect baby. None of these babies have shown genetic abnormalities whatsoever. This is not midwifery. I hate it so much.”

Debate on Late-Term Abortion Continues

According to Hood, “This midwife told me that in the past three to four months, two healthy babies over 28 weeks have been killed by foeticide.”

The midwife’s claims of two healthy babies over 28 weeks as well as the above testimony of a 35-week terminated baby raise an important issue.

The Advertiser claimed that “SA Health data showed fewer than five abortions were performed after 27 weeks since abortion was decriminalised in South Australia in 2022, and there were no terminations after 29 weeks.”

Publicly available official SA Health data cannot verify or falsify these claims. There is a category for abortions performed after 22 weeks and six days up till birth. But there is no breakdown in this data giving more detail about exactly how old these babies are when they are killed. Whether these babies were 23, 25 or 35 weeks – SA Health data cannot say.

Either the testimony of the Flinders midwife is false, or the statements by The Advertiser are.

This has led Dr Joanna Howe, who helped draft the bill, to say, “Something fishy is going on” over the discrepancy over these claims.

Why is the Health Minister hiding the data and then selectively leaking it to media outlets?

Join me as we letterbox his seat tomorrow at 10am and meet outside his electorate office.

DETAILS
Meet at 10am
Everyone’s welcome (kids too 😀)
760 Grand Boulevard, Seaford Meadows… pic.twitter.com/LvlRvYLYn4

— Dr Joanna Howe (@ProfJoannaHowe) September 29, 2024

The debate on late-term abortion has received significant media coverage since Hood introduced his bill last Wednesday.

Hood claims that “By requiring early delivery, we are not only protecting the life of the child, but also sparing the mother of the trauma of a prolonged and avoidable medical process.”

One thing seems certain: while Hood’s detractors would wish that he goes away, his bill is set to be debated inside and outside of parliament for the foreseeable future.

___

Photo by Dr Joanna Howe.